Those of us of a certain age (read: anyone over 20) remember when the idea of beating USC at all was a fantasy. The Trojans owned the Irish in the decade of the 2000s and it seemed like it would never end.
It’s important to be mindful of those dark days before jumping to the temptation to downplay or fret about Notre Dame’s 30-27 victory Saturday over the Trojans, which was not ND’s most impressive win but showed off a lot of winning traits that are always good to see.
The Irish defense came out with a new wrinkle tonight with a view to slowing down USC’s trio of impressive receivers – with the secondary down Shaun Crawford with an injury and TaRiq Bracy for some reason, DC Clark Lea consistently rushed only three to give them a helping hand – and it’s hard to say it didn’t work in that respect: The trio combined for under 200 yards, and by the time they did get going, ND had built a lead comfortable enough to hang on. And the three-man pass rush got enough heat on USC QB Kedon Slovis early on to keep the Trojans at bay.
Slovis and his team, though, adjusted by getting the ball out quicker, and Slovis played a dynamite second half, throwing accurate passes all over the field. Luckily, ND got one ballsy drive from Ian Book late to score what proved to be the clinching TD.
Let’s go over some of the keys to the win.
Tony Jones ran like a man
I would hazard a guess that Tony Jones Jr. felt a good deal of responsibility for the Irish’s inability to run the ball against Georgia three weeks ago, because ever since then he has been running like a man possessed. Tonight was his finest hour, as he shouldered the load for 25 carries, gaining a remarkable 176 yards, a career best and higher than all but two of the outputs the man he replaced (Dexter Williams) had last season. Pretty much every run featured him barreling through Trojan defenders. On a night where ND’s passing game was ineffective for a lot of the time, Jones picked up the slack and was the undisputed MVP of the game. The next time you are bemoaning ND’s lack of game-breaking talents at running back, remember they’ve got a pretty damn good one.
And what got us going?
A 43-yard scamper from @TonnJoness. #GoIrish ☘️ #USCvsND pic.twitter.com/5INWDO0ldL
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 13, 2019
ND’s running game as a whole was spectacular, gaining 308 yards and 6.4 per carry despite getting nothing from Jafar Armstrong, who quite clearly was not close to 100% (hope he’s closer in two weeks). I loved the Braden Lenzy reverse for a TD, the kind of play the Irish haven’t had the raw speed to run in a very long time. Look forward to more Lenzy in the future.
Well they don’t call him @blspeedy21 for nothing.
A little pre-Halloween trickery leads to a 51-yard Irish touchdown late in the second quarter 🎃
#9 ND 14 | USC 3
4:38 Q2 | NBC pic.twitter.com/8X2Qh0cCuI— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 13, 2019
Jonathan Doerer can be trusted
It was discussed a lot prior to the Notre Dame season that the Irish would probably find themselves going for it a lot more in iffy field goal areas because Jonathan Doerer isn’t Justin Yoon. I think we can put those discussions to bed. Doerer, who just last year had an inexplicable mental block on kickoffs and looked on the verge of developing whatever Steve Blass Disease is for kickers, was on freakin’ point tonight, making three 40+ yard field goals, including a 52-yarder. And he didn’t just make them; he drilled all three. And you might have noticed the Irish won by three, so those field goals were pretty important. ND’s got a kicker, kids.
Kedon Slovis is scary (so is Markese Stepp)
He’s not the best QB USC’s had recently, but the freshman Slovis, after a rough start against the wrinkles DC Clark Lea threw at him, stepped up in a big way and got USC back into the game. He repeatedly made great throws, didn’t look rattled and didn’t turn it over. SC’s got a good one. (Dammit.)
Markese Stepp is also terrific. Really wish that commitment to ND had held up. He’s a load. (He also had 10 carries, despite averaging over eight yards per tote. Umm…thanks, Clay Helton?)
Book shows some mettle
Get yourself a QB1 who can do both.@Ian_Book12 will happily pass or rush for a TD against your defense. His 8-yard run gives us a ten point lead late in the game.
#9 ND 30 | USC 20
3:33 Q4 | NBC#GoIrish ☘️ #USCvsND pic.twitter.com/MR8203ER67— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 13, 2019
Not that we didn’t know he had it in him, but Ian Book ripped off a TD drive in the late minutes that was the stuff of ND/USC lore. Facing a long field and with all the momentum on the other sideline, Book made a slew of excellent plays, including converting a 3rd and 10 with a heady scramble in scoring territory, then taking it in for the D on a QB draw. Book barely completed 50% of his passes and wasn’t on his game throwing the ball, but he got it together enough to throw down a fine drive and secure the win for the Irish. Great stuff.
Next up: Fall break for the ND students, a week off, and then another chance to send Michigan off our schedule with a blowout. Don’t screw up this chance, boys.
(Photo credit: Associated Press)
I was at ND for the 2005-2008 games. If you had told me on my graduation day that ND would be 7-3 against USC in the 2010s, I would have laughed and not believed it for a second. What he has done to USC is easily my favorite aspect of the Kelly era.
This rivalry is unique for its tendency towards streaks. USC won 10 of 15 from 1964-1982, with 2 ties. ND went 11-0-1 from 1983-1995, USC won 8* in a row from 2002-2009, and we’re 7-3 since then.
And so begins the “Lenzy Frenzy”.
He’s got to get on the field some more with that speed
Tony Jones went 25 for 176. Guess we don’t have to fire Quinn today. Very happy for TJJ, doesn’t have top end speed but he’s just solid.
Wasn’t pretty but it counts. Those 3 big guys for USC getting 29 combined receptions vs ND last year almost made the gameplan seem too cautious with the 3 high safety look, and SC feasted in second half once they figured it out. Still worked out well.
That 14 play drive in the 4th quarter was a thing of beauty. Book won the game with his legs converting a 3rd and 10 and then later with the TD run. Any win over SC is a good one.
The first quarter slow starts on offense every game really stands out though. Hopefully the bye week (and more Armstrong) really can help for a hotter start versus the scumbags next time out
Beating USC is always a great night. It seemed very much like a playing not to lose kind of game plan. I think there’s a pretty good chance ND could have overwhelmed and crushed USC if they just let their front 7 loose, but then maybe Pittman scores a 70 yard touchdown on the first drive or something.
They definitely forced SC to go down a long road of figuring out how to finish drives and that was (barely) enough.
If the offense wasn’t so stagnant in the first quarter, or if Young didn’t get so excited about his first TD return that he forgot to bring the football along, this game might have been a blowout and Lea would look like a Genius for his patient strategy. Either way he held them off enough and the offense scored enough points. So we’re all good. Only downside is that ND put another nail in Helton’s coffin.
Yeah, that dropped ball changed the complexion of the second half. I don’t believe in momentum, but I do believe in death blows that mentally break a team. I think USC would have given up after us finishing off dominating Q2 with a FG, then taking the 2nd half kickoff back for 6.
Tony Jones running like that reminds me of Robert Hughes at his best (senior year).
I was really impressed with a couple big hits by Hamilton. He laid some seriously lumber for a skinny kid (maybe just looks skinny because he is 6’4), and he did it with the front of his shoulder. Very impressed such a young kid is able to make such a big hit without launching himself or anything even remotely dangerous.
SP+ is out – https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/27836054/sp+-rankings-week-7-ohio-state-takes-top-spot. There was some discussion in the group chat that we might be better than Penn State. That is… unlikely. SP+ says we’re closer to Temple than Penn State.
As per my comments above, beating USC is fun and is always and everywhere good. But also, this team is good but not very good (much less excellent), and is benefitting from a weak schedule. We might go 11-1 – which at this point is probably more or less as likely as 9-3 – and not really be one of the 15 best teams in the country.
That has been the trend all season. We’re the only team in the AP top 10 outside of the SP+ top 12. Good but not great is true, and we’ll probably lose to Michigan. Avoiding the playoffs will be very good for us this year, but getting a chance to beat a G5 team in the cotton bowl helps optics for the season
I doubt that SP+ is the end all be all that a lot of people think it is. If it were, we’d never have major upsets, a la S Carolina vs Georgia for instance. Emotion on a given day, especially at this age level, is a major factor.
That said, we are not elite, but I’d bet we’re better than Michigan.
I mean, “they play the games on the field not on the computers” is a truism, but also SP+ says that South Carolina had an 8% chance of winning based on what happened in that game. It’s just that 8% probabilities happen 8% of the time, which is more than zero.
So by that reasoning it can never be wrong.
I love SP+, but I am puzzled by ND’s scores. It says our offense is top 20 but our defense is top 40? Switch that, and I’d understand it more.
Agree on that, even though I saw ND is 14th in the country in yards per carry at like 5.5ish. So they probably really like the run game, and to be fair, I think most ND fans probably perceive the OL and RBs lesser than the numbers say (besides annoying false starts).
IMO, Notre Dame gets conservative at times and doesn’t risk a mistake trying to blow a talented team off the field. And last night defensively they were obviously more than fine taking the deep stuff away at the cost of giving up a ton of 6-11 yard plays. So the game planning and scheming to win isn’t really conducive to an impressive SP+ score. So it goes
Just want to point out that you claimed in the group chat that we’d lose to Iowa, and that’s what most people were objecting to.
I love SP+ – I literally do statistical modeling for my living – but SP+, like any model, is constrained by the data it sees. It loves blowing out cream puffs because it looks at yards per play in non-garbage time. We’ve had less cream puffs. And our strategic choices also affect the rating. Our defense last night was literally designed to yield higher yards per play but force more plays. Which is why our ranking in defense is worse than in offense. We’ve also played more teams coming off of byes (or at least we will over the course of the season) which isn’t observed in the model.
Right now, Iowa is ranked above us. I call BS. Minnesota is ranked above us: I call BS. Missouri – yes, the team that lost to Wyoming – is above us. I call BS. I don’t think any of these teams will finish the season ranked above us in SP+. I also think we’re better than Utah, but hey, that’s just me.
Let’s see where our SP+ ranking is at the end of the season. For now, I find it a highly useful metric but not the end all be all.
I agree it’s not the be all end all, and its predictive utility, while impressive to gamblers at something round 65% ATS, is far from perfect. I do however think that midway through the season, being the only AP top 10 not also in the SP+ top 10 has to mean something significant.