When you think of a really bad offensive gameplan under Brian Kelly which game pops into your head? The hurricane game against NC State? Several others from 2016? Maybe the Tulsa game from 2010? Arizona State or USC from 2014?

May I submit the loss to Michigan in 2013? People think I shouldn’t do this but we’re taking a quick look back at this travesty of a loss.

Full disclosure, and I mean FULL disclosure: I went back and re-read my game review on the old site from this loss to Michigan and I didn’t criticize the gameplan nearly enough as I thought I had in my memory. In fact, I kind of glossed over it quite a bit. Allow me to defend myself:

1) The loss disproportionately came down on the head of Bob Diaco and the defense. In fact, you could argue this was the beginning of the end for Diaco’s time at Notre Dame as fans would very quickly turn against his far too heavy and out of shape defense, plus point to his lack of fire and weird profiling on the recruiting trail. This was an absolutely middling Michigan offense and to give up 41 points to them remains utterly embarrassing.

2) To this point in the season (September 7th) we hadn’t gone through the full Tommy Rees senior season experience yet. There’s no doubt that the next 11 games retroactively colored the way I view this Michigan loss. I will fully admit that much.

I don’t think we can say any loss to Michigan flies under the radar but of the bunch in recent memory this one is clearly the least memorable. However, a win here could’ve completed 3 straight wins for the 2012-14 era and arguably should’ve ended the series forever this way with the 37-0 shutout the following season.

The 2013 Michigan game can be summed up, offensively, as one in which the Irish basically stopped running the ball. Despite being an overplayed criticism that Kelly has thrown the ball too much this it the one game where that stereotype played out on national television. It was pretty ugly.

 

The 53 passing attempts in this game are tied for the 3rd most during the Kelly era in a non-overtime game. It’s also tied for the most passing attempts in a game (again non-OT) over the past 7 seasons.

These pre-2017 Kelly teams always seemed so allergic to running on 3rd down and yet in this game, of all games of course, they did it 4 times. The first 2 tries failed (runs of -1 and 2 yards coming up short) while the latter 2 attempts were successful (14 yards and 2 yards, respectively).

That tracks with the run game being pretty meh early on (53 yards at 4.8 per rush in the 1st half) and then looking much better (52 yards at 7.4 per rush) later but there were so few attempts it’s difficult to establish a relationship of any sort.

This game featured 8 separate instances where the Notre Dame offense threw the ball at least 3 snaps in a row (exempting punts). It seems like the Irish offenses in recent years haven’t done this in an entire season worth of games. There were even 5 separate instances of throwing the ball at least 4 times in a row against Michigan in 2013.

At the start of the 2nd quarter, Notre Dame drove for a field goal to tie the game 10-10. From this point forward–until the end of the 1st half–the Irish offense would throw 13 times, run 2 times, with 1 spike thrown in as well. This included a brutal stretch of passes on 8 of 9 plays culminating in an absolutely brutal Rees interception (14:00 mark in the video above) that ended up with Michigan taking a 27-13 lead.

On Michigan’s second to last touchdown of the day (19:35 in the video) I noticed #30 trying to chase down the ball-carrier and looking like running was the most laborious activity on earth. That was Ben Councell who, according to the roster, weighed 254 pounds at the time. Linebacker play has changed a lot in less than a decade!

Notre Dame went for it on 4th down twice in this game. The first was an end of half Hail Mary from backup Andrew Hendrix (presumably they didn’t like Rees’ arm strength?) that was a line drive throw batted down well before it reached the end zone. The second was an infuriating attempt on 4th & 4 from the Michigan 17-yard line at 21:30 of the video, as follows:

*A screen is blown up on 3rd down after a poor block from Troy Niklas.
*The Irish go 5-wide on 4th & 4 without a mobile quarterback.
*Michigan has 2 players jump off-sides but the ball isn’t snapped.
*Rees senses something and begins making changes at the line.
*The ball is barely snapped before the play-clock runs out.
*An-off balanced floater from Rees falls incomplete in the end zone.

The diving Stephon Tuitt interception touchdown in the end zone came just 3 plays later, closing the gap to 34-27 in favor of Michigan. Oh, what could have been an iconic moment in the history of this series was completely wasted.

Michigan punted on their next series and it was a shank job. After a 16-yard run by George Atkinson III on 1st down, the Irish threw the ball on their next 4 plays and settled for a field goal to only close the gap to 4 points. Michigan would drive for a touchdown, featuring a pair of 3rd pass interference calls (the game was in Ann Arbor of course) including one where corner Bennett Jackson picked off Devin Gardner. Just brutal.

Down 11 with 4:18 remaining, Rees was sacked on 1st down then threw 8 straight passes culminating in a 1st down tipped pass off Amir Carlisle for an interception in the end zone. Early in this 2013 season, the offense went to Carlisle a lot and it didn’t work out too well.

I’ll be honest, when Tommy Rees was hired as offensive coordinator at Notre Dame just 6 seasons after this game I worried his vision for the offense would look a lot like this loss to Michigan: Scattered emphasis on the run game, an abundance of 5-wide sets, incessant play-call changing at the line with seconds remaining to get the snap off, back-breaking interceptions, and little bang for your buck when you’ll struggle to push the ball down the field and take 50 passing attempts to get to 300 yards.

Thankfully, this fear has been unfounded thus far.