A new college football season is always exciting and for this year in particular the Irish should be chomping at the bit to put the 2016 campaign behind them as quickly as possible. As usual, there’s plenty of hope combined with plenty of question marks. The biggest of all is whether this could be Brian Kelly’s last season in South Bend or is this the beginning of a late-era Renaissance?
One thing is for sure it’s now the Video Board Era (VBE for short) now at Notre Dame.
Temple (+18.5) at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 2, 2017
Time: 3:30 PM ET
Television: NBC
Series: 2-0-0 Notre Dame
In come the Temple Owls as the invited first guests to the renovated Notre Dame Stadium. They are coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons but have faced an off-season full of changes which included new head coach Geoff Collins as well as replacing long-time quarterback P.J. Walker and 7 starters on defense.
3 Matchups to Watch
Notre Dame Receivers vs. Temple Secondary
Temple’s front seven on defense has been gutted from a year ago but their secondary returns several players who had a successful campaign last fall finishing 17th in S&P+ passing defense. They will match up well with Notre Dame’s largely unproven and inexperienced set of receivers.
If the Irish can get two more receivers in a groove outside of St. Brown that’s bad news for the Owls.
Notre Dame Offensive Line vs. Temple Defensive Line
Two years ago the Owls completely neutered C.J. Prosise at running back limiting him to just 25 yards on 14 carries. The Temple front seven featuring only one returning starter has its hands full replicating that type of performance against Notre Dame in 2017.
If the Irish can get 150 yards on the ground from the running backs a win is virtually guaranteed.
Special Teams
For a program that leans on its defense as you’d expect Temple has generally had okay-to-decent special teams. Their four-year starter punter was suspended all off-season until very recently which is something to keep an eye on during Saturday. Also watch their placekicking competition which saw them go 25/29 on field goals last year with a pair of misses for each. Justin Yoon missed 4 out of 17 and might not be super sharp after taking the spring off and getting back into the groove this fall.
2 Stats to Consider
11 Career Passes
It’s a whole new world for Temple’s offense as they move on without P.J. Walker who–while not an amazing college quarterback–totaled 83 touchdowns throughout his career and holds numerous school records. The players in the running to replace him have a total of 11 career pass attempts.
More on this below as the Owls haven’t settled on a starter yet but redshirt sophomore Logan Marchi is expected to be their first option backed up by redshirt junior Frank Nutile, basically the same pecking order as 2016.
7.00 Yards Per Play
The last game against Temple felt like a bit of a slog primarily because of Prosise being shut down and Notre Dame’s 2 red zone turnovers. Other than that, great game! The Irish did make some big plays (Kizer 79-yard run, Mack 45-yard completion, Carlisle 31-yard completion) and actually finished with 7 yards per play, 299 passing yards, and 467 total yards.
Those stats finished second, third, and third most surrendered by a Temple defense over the past 2 years.
1 Prediction
Why could Temple still be a very good team? One solid reason is that sometimes it takes a while for the confidence and expectations of winning to wear off. You don’t see comments like this from a program that is used to failure:
Redshirt sophomore DB Kareem Ali @Kareem2Ali on playing Notre Dame: “We’re gonna go hard. We’re gonna kick their ass.”
— Matt Vender (@Matt_Vender) August 29, 2017
Of course, that comment came from a corner who has 1 career tackle.
But seriously, on the surface the future looks solid for Temple. Being able to hire the defensive coordinator from Florida as your head coach is no small potatoes. Adding offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude from the highly successful FCS Coastal Carolina to drag the Owls offense into the modern world should pay off at some point.
They also have experience at running back, receiver, and in the secondary with a nice combination of speed that should help off-set some of the bigger “power” players they’ve lost up front on both sides of the ball.
Here comes the caveat!
I don’t think Temple will be very good, at least straight out of the gate. The consensus seems to be that they will be taking a step back to 7 or 8 wins which is still good for them! Yet, I don’t see a ton of games that will end up victorious for them. They drop Tulane and cut their FCS opponents in half–at this point I really only see Villanova, UMass, East Carolina, UConn, and Army as contests they should be favored in and they even lost one of those games last year.
Collins has a very solid pedigree but Matt Rhule had a special type of defensive character and swag that will be tough to duplicate with extensive personnel losses. Bill Connelly is predicting a S&P+ fall from 16th to 30th for the defense which is sizable and I’d predict a tumble just a little farther.
One of the interesting things will be the vast amount of upperclassmen on the roster, many of whom haven’t contributed much as Temple is the least experienced team in the AAC this year. Will they carry the Rhule-era pride and continue the modern legacy? Or, really struggle to fill roles they’re not good enough for?
Most of all, I think Collins’ juggling of the competing quarterbacks–where it appears two or maybe even three guys will play on Saturday–portends disaster. Temple’s new wide-open spread system under Patenaude might be a little trickier to defend but swapping quarterbacks in and out could mute that supposed advantage of unveiling a new scheme.
Going from Rhule to Collins is likely a huge downgrade for Temple and with Notre Dame’s off-season of their own coordinator changes, debuting schemes, and increased optimism from a 4-8 season the pendulum has swung hard in favor of the Irish. Vegas has been paying attention to as the line moved another point in the last week and has been trending hard for Notre Dame.
I’m not super high on the Irish over the course of this entire season but for this one opener I think we’ll see a very strong and inspired performance. We should be quite pleased with Wimbush’s first game and while I’m predicting so few points for Temple that’s more due to their quarterback situation. The defense will have a good game but it might be a little deceiving.
- WINNER: Notre Dame 37 Temple 13
- VS. SPREAD (-18.5): Notre Dame
- OVER/UNDER (53.5): Under
- SPECIAL, WIMBUSH TD (3.5): Under
I like it. Keep talking that ish, Temple. Get ready for the butt smacking you so rightfully deserve.
Just a little etymology lesson (not entirely sure if etymology applies to idioms) but the saying was originally Champing at the bit. Of course, one could argue, and I would, that if society at large starts saying something differently, than that becomes the saying.
https://www.bathroomreader.com/2014/04/chomping-vs-champing/
Is that you Pablo Torre?
Why would studying bugs help here?
I totally forgot how good Prosise was that year. What a strange (but good) career for him.
There’s been so much to talk about this offseason in regards to ND football. Can the defense be any good? Can Wimbush put up monster numbers? Is Josh Adams going to be a top 5 RB in the country this year? Will the O-Line live up to their enormous potential? Is Kevin Stepherson just a figment of my imagination?
There’s one player who doesn’t seem to get talked about much at all. It’s not that he’s overlooked, it’s just that everybody probably expects a solid, steady year out of him. There aren’t any questions if he’s good. There aren’t any questions if he’s staying out of trouble off the field. There aren’t any reports of him having a bad practice. And because of that, I feel like I’ve heard nothing about him all year. But would anybody be shocked if Equanimeous St. Brown put up 1,300 yards, 77 catches, and 13 TDs this year? Those would all be top 5 receiving seasons in ND history, and none of those numbers would shock me.
Good points. I hope it’s that high but I would be shocked. I know there’s no other major obvious alternatives now, so maybe he will rack up a ton of targets, however with a new QB and playcaller I’m not bold enough to predict how they are going to be breaking things out and a top-5 season in history for all major metrics is a little more than I’d say.
Also, as the only main WR weapon, have to think he gets shaded over with more coverage too.
So, all in all I would take the under on all of those, but it’s nothing against the player at all.
I’d take the under too for sure. But if by Miami game I look up and he’s all of a sudden quietly gotten to 1,000 yards, it won’t shock me. I think he’s going to be Wimbush’s security blanket all season, with Alize Mack drawing safeties to the middle of the field away for Eq.
My 3 things to watch for:
1) The ND D-Line vs an experienced (but AAC caliber) offensive line – If the D-Line isn’t getting into the backfield regularly against Temple, my fears for the season are going to be amplified. Tillery should be wreaking havoc or drawing double teams (or both, pleeeeeease) all game
2) Wimbush’s Decision Making – He’s got the legs to run on anybody. He’s got the arm to beat anybody deep. But against a defense that has proven to be strong the past few years, how will he do reading coverage? His first start will be a great opportunity to see just how developed he is.
3) Chip Long’s Offense – I don’t think ND is going to hide very much. Lots of times, you see teams keep it simple in season openers against underwhelming competition, saving the complex plays for the big week 2 opponent. I don’t see that happening here. It’s Chip Long’s first game at ND. It’s Wimbush’s first game as a starting QB. If tempo is going to be a thing this year, they need to work on it week 1. If complex RPOs are going to be a thing this year, they need to work on it week 1. If a mix of 5 WR and 3 TE sets are going to be a thing this year, they need to work on it week 1. I don’t expect them to hold anything back for Georgia, and I’m excited to see what it looks like.
#1 on your list is for me too. I’m more hopeful on Daelin Hayes creating the mayhem though. If he’s quiet this game, yeah that’s very bad news.
#3 I agree, for a new QB and coach they shouldn’t be too worried about what they’re putting on tape early in the game (until hopefully it’s mop up time with backups and the typical vanilla schemes). Ideally it comes to that.
One caveat with this:
I believe Temple is returning their tackles (or maybe just one), so Daelin will be going against a guy who has experience with a 10 win, physical team. Not to mention this is Daelin’s first real test of a game.
Tillery, on the other hand, is an experienced veteran going against a Redshirt-freshman center for an AAC team. If he looks ineffective, I’m much more concerned, personally.
I think this is about where I stand too. Although it will go a long way toward boosting my confidence in the defense if Daelin has at least 1 sack by the end of week 2.
That’s reasonable. D. Hayes bread and butter is getting after the QB, and despite the challenge of potentially facing a veteran tackle, I’d still like to think he can flash somewhat. If it doesn’t happen against Temple, that would worry me.
Tillery’s specialty is, well, I’m not quite sure. He’s never been one to play behind the line with all his experience and despite weaker competition, I’m not so certain he’s going to be an impact player at any point, which is most of the trouble about the d-line. We shall see though and I do hope they all look great. They’ll probably have to do so to keep Temple to the 13 points predicted above. I kind of get the feeling it’s more a 41-27 game that’s less competitive than the final score seems.
Based on everything I’ve heard and read, Temple fans think the RS freshman center might be their best offensive lineman this season.
In honor of the new gameday chats – http://the-toast.net/2016/06/30/hey-ladies-take-it-to-slack/
Commenting here since the chat post has comments disabled. Slack seems to really suck. i can’t use it since i haven’t upgraded from Vista yet. i know it’s too late now, but we probably should’ve used Discord. Anyway, enjoy the game everyone…i generally wasn’t too active on the gameday chats anyway.