I’ll cut right to the chase – the defense was bad on Saturday. Really bad. The substitution penalty and the decision to kick the field goal probably cost Notre Dame the game against Navy, but the defense was absolutely brutal.
This is a strange thing to write because the defense played so well against Georgia Tech and Navy last year. It looked like the Irish had a formula for defending the option that worked pretty well. I won’t say Kelly and the defensive staff “solved” the option because that’s silly, but it looked like they had a solid understanding of the offense and knew the best way to attack it with the players at their disposal.
Then Saturday happened and you can throw that last paragraph out the window. The defense was a mess. There was confusion everywhere. Defenders played passive, probably because they were thinking too much. They just did not look ready to play.
Let’s get this over with.
The Pitch Was Always Open
How many times on Saturday did Navy QB Will Worth pitch to the slotback with no one in his vicinity? It felt like a million times. There were two culprits for this – a lack of aggression and some questionable personnel decisions.
Here’s Navy running a triple option in the first quarter.
It’s a standard triple option play. Trumbetti (red circle) is optioned on the dive and Martini (yellow circle) is optioned on the pitch. The wide receiver will go inside to block Julian Love and the slotback will go outside to block Donte Vaughn at corner. Take note of Love’s position at about the 14 yard line.
Trumbetti takes away the dive and Martini (yellow arrow) does a nice job of forcing a quick pitch from Worth. But look at where Love is standing (blue star). Worth has made his dive read and has moved on to his pitch read and Love has barely moved. He’s an easy target for the wide receiver. If Love plays aggressive and shoots into the backfield, Love could get a tackle for loss or at least disrupt the play enough for other defenders to rally to the ball.
Instead, Love is blocked, Vaughn is cut, and the slotback has tons of room on the edge. This was a recurring theme on Saturday.
And when the defense wasn’t paralyzed by indecisiveness, sometimes they just weren’t put in a position to succeed.
The circled player is Greer Martini. On this particular play, Martini is left completely unblocked and has a clear path to the pitch. But Martini is on the wide side of the field. Why are the coaches asking him to cover that much ground? Martini is a good player but he’s not Jaylon Smith.
Martini comes free but has no shot at making the tackle. Why was he in that position? Why wasn’t there more speed on the field? A potential third down stop turned into an easy first down for Navy.
A Lack of Discipline
This has plagued the Notre Dame defense all season, and it cost Notre Dame several times on Saturday.
Navy runs a QB sweep here. It looks like an option play but there’s no read – it’s a QB keep all the way.
Four players overrun the play. Four. No one stays disciplined and covers their gap. Worth has a gaping hole to run through. Drue Tranquil was at least far enough away that he recovers and makes the tackle.
Worth picked up a ton of yards on sweeps and midlines by simply cutting inside of Notre Dame defenders flying towards the sidelines.
A Lack of Adjustments
Maybe I should call this section “A Lack of Good Adjustments.” With Navy gashing the Irish on the pitch, Notre Dame started following the slotback in tail motion with a safety. When the slotback started his motion, the safety would turn his hips and start sprinting towards the sideline. This is an… odd adjustment. It’s not uncommon to see safeties cheat in the direction of the tail motion, but there was nothing subtle about what Notre Dame was doing. There was absolutely no chance for the safety to recover and help if the play went the other way.
So Navy started – you guessed it – going the other way. Navy simply put the slotback in motion then ran a play in the other direction.
That’s it.
This led to Will Worth’s long run in the fourth quarter.
There’s Jalen Elliot sprinting towards the sidelines.
As an extra bonus, Vaughn and Nick Coleman (both circled) also fall for the fake, essentially taking them out of the play.
Navy runs a fullback option with a pulling guard as an extra blocker. Navy has all of the Notre Dame defenders covered with Nico Fertitta optioned off.
There’s no one ever close to Worth when he keeps the ball.
Post-Mortem
Notre Dame used to just line up and mash Navy. Now we live in a time when they have a coach completely dedicated to figuring out Navy.
— Michael James (@navybirddog) November 5, 2016
ND defense used to just line up and play Navy. Now they throw a different look on every play and feel like they have to scheme for them.
— Michael James (@navybirddog) November 5, 2016
This sums up the state of the Notre Dame – Navy series quite nicely. Simply put, Navy has become the boogeyman for Notre Dame. Some of that has to do with a general uptick in talent at the Naval Academy. Navy is simply a better football program than they were 10 or 15 years ago. It’s not as easy to “line up and mash” Navy all game.
But the level of anxiety prior to the Navy game every year since the streak ended in 2007 is insane. It almost seems like Navy has gotten into the head of the entire Notre Dame football program. We have a coach who, after beating Navy four years in a row, decided it was necessary to create a separate scout team and coaching staff dedicated to stopping the option. I give Kelly credit for doing this since it seemed to work great last year, but we’re talking about Navy, not Alabama.
It feels like the goal of the football program is to not get embarrassed by Navy instead of just beating Navy. So we throw a ton of defensive looks at Navy that just confuse our own players, we play tight on offense, and make strange fourth down decisions.
I don’t have any good answers on how to change this. The specter of Navy is looming over the program and that’s just a weird place to be.
Great article Burger! Are the points you noted above the key differences between the 2015 ND option defense and the 2016 ND option defense? I completely agree about the lack of aggressiveness getting into the background – that was noticeable while watching the game. In your opinion, how much did Jaylon contribute to ND’s success stopping them last year?
The biggest difference between 2015 and 2016 is the number of different formations we ran on defense. In 2015, we stuck to two formations – the 4-4 and the 3-5, which are essentially the same thing. On Saturday we probably ran 4 or 5 different formations. It seemed pretty grab-baggy. I think that also contributed to the lack of aggression. We were playing so many young guys and they had to deal with so many different formations and responsibilities that they were probably overthinking.
I would say Jaylon was a big part of our success against GT and Navy last year. He didn’t make a ton of plays, but both teams tried really hard to take him out of the game. They couldn’t line up and run whatever they wanted, like Navy did on Saturday. It wasn’t all Jaylon – Tranquil, Shumate, and Schmidt all played great games against the option teams – but I think his presence alone changed the way they called plays.
@So under BVG we simplified and only ran two formations, yet this year without him we complicated things and ran 2x as many formations? I…I don’t understand.@
I think the biggest issue is the drop off in personnel from last year to this year. We’re forced to play way too many freshmen and the drop off from last years starters vs Navy to this year’s is way more than a 1 point differential.
You’re definitely right. The young guys seemed the most lost. What is strange to me is that Kelly seemed to make the defense more complicated than last year despite the youth. It seems like the right approach would be to simplify things so they didn’t have to constantly think about where to line up and what their assignment is. Last year’s option defense wasn’t overly complex and it worked just fine. I don’t know why Kelly felt the need at add a bunch of new formations.
Look who’s back on the main page! I haven’t been this excited by a burger sighting since 5 Guys opened a franchise near my house.
I hate that it was for this flaming trash heap of a game, though.
Kelly said Love played one of the best games he has ever seen from a freshman and you say Love screwed up. I believe you and don’t think Kelly knows what he is doing.
To be honest I can’t comment on Julian Love specifically. He might have played fine outside of the play I highlighted. I don’t remember any other egregious errors from him. The lack of aggression wasn’t just isolated to him.
Depends how we’re counting getting blocked the hell in the back on every major gain
Where’s Clearwall?