Well, that game was something. At times uninspired, lethargic, and gloomy. Other times, gritty, explosive, and something approaching dominant. Both Wimbush and Adams sustained injuries (they appear to be fine, phew!) and that may be what we remember most from this game. That, or a possible warning about the defense that finally showed some cracks against an efficient spread offense.

PASSING OFFENSE

Wimbush played in roughly 75% of the snaps in this game and set a new personal record with 390 total yards, almost 100 yards over his previous high. His 280 passing yards were also a career high by a wide margin.

Citing his toughness and leadership afterwards Kelly gave the redshirt sophomore the game ball and with good reason. Wimbush missed badly on a slant route and screen pass but otherwise looked as effective as he has all season. With some quicker decision making, fewer drops, and a full game of snaps this could’ve been a historic performance.

Coming out party is now official for Chase Claypool who caught 9 passes for 18o yards with one amazing touchdown effort. He’s now overtaken St. Brown (another pedestrian 2 for 36) for the most catches and receiving yards on the season.

RUSHING OFFENSE

All this offense does is make big plays on the ground. I’m not sure if this was the first game that felt this way in 2017 but in real time it didn’t truly feel like the Irish dominated for 380 rushing yards. Long carries by Wimbush (50), McIntosh (45), Book (43), Stepherson (35), and Dexter (32) added 205 yards to what would’ve been a solid outing against a solid defense.

Underrated stat, the Irish were able to stay on schedule really well and limited the nation’s best defense in tackles for loss to just 4.0 overall for the game.

Player 1st/2nd Yes 1st/2nd No 3rd/4th Yes 3rd/4th No Total
Wimbush 3 3 4 1 63.6%
McIntosh 4 3 0 2 44.4%
Jones Jr 5 5 0 0 50.0%
Book 2 1 0 0 66.6%
Stepherson 2 0 0 0 100.0%
Dexter 1 2 0 0 33.3%
Adams 2 3 0 0 40.0%
Total 19 17 4 3 53.4%

 

Wimbush is a cheat code if you allow him to convert this many 3rd or 4th down situations with his legs. On the day he had runs of 6, 5, 14, 2, and 6 to move the chains, plus there were a pair of touchdowns in there too.

Beyond that, this was a pretty “meh” day for Notre Dame’s level of play this season. Which is kind of fun because they increased their season rushing average to 324.7 yards per game!

My favorite play of the game was this McIntosh cut that left Wake Forest’s safety with a blown tire near midfield. Do you notice how McIntosh cuts similarly to George Atkinson III like he has skis on?

I hate to say this because it’s fun and a great marketing idea right now but I refuse to buy or wear the #33Trucking hats. I don’t blame anyone for participating I just can’t walk into a web of jinx like that. Of course, Adams gets dinged up and only carries the ball 5 times to temporarily halt his Heisman campaign.

PASSING DEFENSE

Snap judgement I was very disappointed with the defense. After taking some time to review things I felt a little better with a healthy heaping dose of these are college kids who took their foot off the gas when the game was technically in garbage time during the early 3rd quarter.

Clearly, the Wake Forest tempo bothered Notre Dame and their first 3 out of 6 drives were pretty solid even if they only scored 10 points. They ran 88 plays (tied for the most since the Syracuse game last year) in just 28:07 time of possession. The previous fastest moving offense this year was Boston College and they had a snap every 21.4 seconds of possession. The Deacons beat that with a snap every 19.1 seconds.

At one point, this game was 34-10 after the first Irish possession of the second half yielded a field goal. Up until then Wake had run 43 plays for 235 yards at 5.46 per play–not very good for the Irish defense, maybe the worst half of the season, but extremely far from really bad. From that 24-point lead onward, Wake ran 47 plays (in just 5 series!) for 352 yards and 7.4 per play–that’s really bad even with some prevent defense.

Giving up 37 points is bad enough, especially with no short fields or defensive scores, but the biggest problem on Saturday was how Wake was able to methodically move the ball. Their longest play from scrimmage was 37 yards and they also had gains of 32 and 30 yards. That’s not too bad, although the Irish had only allowed 9 plays of 30+ yards all season. What was worse were 25 plays for the Deacons that gained at least 10 yards–that’s almost double the Notre Dame defensive average heading into the game.

I don’t know how much of that was an opponent knowing Elko’s defense but they executed a style of offense that could cause a lot of problems against more talented opponents in the future.

In terms of pass defense, Julian Love’s 3 break-ups plus another interception led the way while 8 quarterback hurries was pretty good, as well. Other than that, plenty of teaching lessons. The Demon Deacons had 20 first downs via the air, 30 completions, and Notre Dame mustered just one sack on 48 attempts.

RUSHING DEFENSE

Notre Dame was actually +3 in tackles for loss differential which was a huge win for the team. Te’von Coney especially continues to play at a really high level with 3 TFL’s and another sack.

Wake did rush for 239 yards at 6.0 per clip and it’s difficult to gloss over that from any direction. The former stat is a season-worst by 54 yards and no offense had averaged over 4.72 per carry until the Deacons this past Saturday.

The Irish also allowed 51.2% success rate on the ground and 20 successful carries overall. This is probably a major outlier game but all the same it was a really poor performance from the defense taken as a whole.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Notre Dame definitely won the return game pretty much limiting Wake to nothing of note while Sanders put up a 52-yard kick return and Finke had 12-yard punt return. Kickoffs also looked really clean from freshman Jonathan Doerer.

Yoon missed a kick from 50 yards but nailed two others. Wake’s kicker has been very good throughout his career and missed from 41-yards which was unusual for him.

TURNING POINT

If there ever was a game where a 99-yard touchdown drive wasn’t talked about very much this was the one. The Irish were coming off Yoon’s missed field goal but forced a 3 & out late in the first half. Unfortunately, Wake’s special teams downed the punt right on the half-yard line in front of the Irish end zone.

Wimbush connected with Claypool for the crucial 3rd down completion to keep the drive alive initially. From there, it was all rushing yards culminating in a Wimbush 28-yard run that brought the ball down to the Wake Forest goal line–but also injured Wimbush in the process. Was it his knee? His thigh? No, apparently his left hand!??

Ian Book calmly came into the game after a timeout and found Weishar in the end zone to grow the lead to 31-10 before the break. By the way, #BookClub members the backup quarterback quietly went 8 for 8 through the air with 104 total yards in one quarter of play.

3 STARS

  • Brandon Wimbush
  • Chase Claypool
  • Te’von Coney

FINAL NOTES

I didn’t think it was possible to be unimpressed by a 300/300 effort from the offense but somehow this game felt that way. How, I do not know! Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson even quipped afterward that it could’ve been a 900-yard game had the Irish not dropped several deep passes after the Deacons loaded up the box to stop the run. The 710 yards is obviously a Kelly-era high (falling 10 short of the school-record) and the 8.45 YPP was a season-high, as well.

I think it’s difficult to watch the defense giving up yards no matter what the circumstances. In this vein, Wake’s 587 yards was a season-worst for Notre Dame by 91 yards. It was also the 2nd most yards given up by a Kelly team, only USC in 2015 (590) accumulated more.

You can’t say this coaching staff has made many mistakes this season. The decision to give so many reps to transfers Freddy Canteen and Cam Smith during pre-season was pretty questionable. It makes you wonder where Claypool could be right now with more focus on his skills even if they claimed he was being too inconsistent during camp.

He was banged up a couple times on Saturday yet Khalid Kareem may be the biggest surprise player of the season. He’s now up to 5.5 tackles for loss and 5 quarterback hurries without playing a ton of snaps.

Would you like another blah stat from this defensive effort? Wake totaled 34 first downs, while NC State and USC combined for 32 against the Irish.

Brandon Wimbush is the 64th overall rusher in college football right now. The only non-triple option quarterbacks ahead of him are South Florida’s Quinton Flowers, Mississippi State’s Nick Fitzgerald, Louisville’s Lamar Jackson, and Arizona’s Khalil Tate.

The Irish had 6 red zone appearances on offense but failed to score a touchdown twice. The first was a quick out to Cole Kmet that was dropped (and probably would’ve fallen short of the first down marker unless Kmet broke a tackle) on third down and the second was in the 3rd quarter when the ball got down to the Wake 5-yard line only to see a 1-yard run and a pair of incompletions to Claypool.