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.
Wofford is a very good college QB. His timing and decision making made it tough on the Irish D. Load up to stop the run? He passes. Stop the pass? They run. Try to stop both? QB keeper. Must be close to what defenses experience trying to stop BW & company, except Wofford’s passing is generally more accurate/efficient and BW is terrifying as a runner.
It isn’t getting a ton of play, but Love’s pick turned out to be super important in putting a couple of scores between the teams and preventing a nail biting shoot out.
The concerning questions now seem to be, why did the defense p;lay poorly, and will this signal a continued downward trend?
Here’s what BK said today, three key points:
“I think it starts with, from a coaching standpoint, if we had to do some things differently, we definitely would have done them differently. Maybe got too cute in terms of what we were trying to accomplish. Maybe trying to cover up some things that we thought they knew about us. Didn’t do what we normally do. We’ll take some of the blame for that in terms of coaching. I think that’s part of it.
Then we got up 41-16. We didn’t handle ourselves in a manner to close out the game the way we have all year. So a little bit of coaching there, a little bit of having a killer instinct on defense, and Wake Forest executing extremely well.”
Yeah I’m not super concerned about the D. We were coming off of two huge games against top 15 opponents (holding both to just 14 points apiece), so a let down in some aspects isn’t too surprising. I feel confident our D will be fine heading into Miami next week, and think we’ll match up well with Miami’s style of offense.
I worry about Morgan. I won’t say he’s playing bad but I think he’s playing hurt and he’s playing well below the level that he’s capable of. Coney has come on very strong, surpassing even Tranquill the past few weeks.
Any word on the Irish Turnover Rosary, to combat Miami’s Turnover Chain?
Heard all over campus this week: Our Lady of Ball Security, Pray for Us!
Per Frank Leahy’s policy, any player that commits the mortal sin of turnover is required to go to confession.
And double the lashes for the apparent lack of self flagellation this season.
One more note, ND is now the national leader in Yards per Carry at 7.04
Well, that’s awesome.
Eric, 20 years from now you’ll be sitting at the base lodge of the north face of the Eiger, looking up with your binoculars with a halb of Kolsch on the arm of your chair, and you’ll say, “Who is that dude free climbing? Crazy! And, holy sh*t, that’s not a helmet, that’s a baseball cap. What’s it say? Oh my Lord, it’s a #33Trucking cap! That guy must be 70, but he looks like he’s 25 or something!” And you’ll dig deep in your memory and remember that you wouldn’t buy the hat, but Concrete Charlie did, and you’ll hold up your beer in a toast and I’ll see the glint of sun off the glass just as I am attempting a dangerously complicated inverted move, and it will distract me and I will plunge 5,000 feet. And you’ll think, “Damn, I wish I had just bought the hat and not made it into some sort of iconic thing…”
Oh, I want a hat and will get one eventually.
This is great! Let me toast you now, and perhaps prevent a future fall!
Or, I could just do option number two I guess.
Now I feel like I have to buy one.
I expect to have mine this week. Got notified it shipped before I left on Thursday
This was my favorite recommend in the history of comments.
You a climber Charlie?
No, Mouth. But 19 years and 364 days from now I will stay at a Holiday Inn Express in Kleine Scheidegg and think I am!
And why is Murtaugh going to be chilling at base lodge? Is he too afraid to “dive right in,” to borrow from Charles Weis?
The defense looked gassed on that last series. I mean hands on hips, mouth open, tired. I don’t think they subbed out very well, probably because of Wake’s tempo. That defense looked like they didn’t want to play at the end of the game. That concerns me. I want to see how they do with Miami.
I think they maybe didn’t want to play. They just held two pretty good offenses scoreless for 5 quarters in two games and only gave up three offensive TDs. Now they’re playing Wake who has this annoying elusive offense, it’s freezing, raining, freezing raining, the game is clearly out if hand, but these little bastards just won’t quit, and oh we need to go play a top 10 teams next week. I’m glad they had their let down against Wake. Tranquil better make good on his promise and punish Everyone else on the schedule.
Couldn’t agree more with this. If I was out there and looking for a week to slack a little bit because I’ve been busting my behind for months – it would’ve been against Wake. Not worried unless they don’t show against Miami, but I don’t think that’ll be the case.
At the same time, though, what’s fun about getting gashed? I’d think it’s a lot more fun to dial in and punish someone.
Somebody in the post game interviews talked about Wake’s tempo keeping the D from subbing well. Good point. Does Miami play tempo a lot?
I don’t know about tempo but the Miami QB threw several picks against VA Tech bc he was late and staring down the receivers. I don’t think they’ll be able to replicate Wake’s passing strategy. I think the only team on our schedule who could is SC and, whelp, too late for them.
If somebody said in June that through 9 games:
– Wimbush, the undisputed starter, would be a 51% passer and have fewer than 1300 yards passing (but only missed one game)
– EQ St. Brown, despite not getting hurt, would only have 22 catches and less than 300 yards
– Alize Mack would have fewer than 20 catches and only 154 yards
– Stepherson would have 8 catches for 101 yards
– We would still be shuffling our right tackle between Kraemer and Hainsey
– Daniel Cage would not be playing
– Darnell Ewell would come into camp so out of shape that he had no chance of seeing the field
– Scott Pagano would not enroll at ND
– MTA would be consistently getting important snaps
– Nick Coleman would be our best safety
– Nick Watkins would be getting pulled out of the game in passing downs
What would be a reasonable guess for a record? 4-5?
Instead, there are (not wholly unreasonable) complaints about a game where we racked up 700 yards of offense. Heck of a job by all involved.
reading that list and pretending it’s August… well a little bit of throw up came into my mouth.
Good to remember all of that. One major takeaway would be the job Elko’s done with the d-line since a lot of those concerns are directly related. And I’d say we also have to give a big hat-tip for an amazing leap forward by Tillery whose season has gone pretty much towards the best case scenario right now after being rocky at best early in his career.
And, the flip side is if someone said in June that Josh Adams would have a website and hat and branded hashtagged twitter phrase to promote a legit Heisman candidacy, that would cancel out pretty much all the zany type of stats and observations that certainly are out there. What a wild trip this season has been.
Totally agree; I meant to imply by the last bit there that, despite all that seemingly negative stuff, this season and the 8-1 record hardly feels fluky. There are tons of positives, almost too many to list, but I think you’re 100% right that Tillery playing like a guy who might get drafted in the first hundred picks *in 2018* has to be near the top of the list (also, Nelson playing like a guy who might get drafted in the first ten picks *as a guard* is also up there).
But, perhaps the more amusing thing is that some of those seeming negatives aren’t even bad! The Kraemer/Hainsey thing is working pretty darn well, plus it has gotten them both a lot of experience, which will pay off a lot next year (or this year if one of the two gets hurt). MTA is just a straight-up good rotation DT! Nick Coleman is pretty good! Nick Watkins probably should be coming out of the game in passing downs, because Troy Pride is a better deep-ball cover corner! It’s all pretty good right now.
I’m with ya all the way, it is really bizarrely great how this season has gone and pretty much the polar opposite of last year when everything that could have gone wrong or conspired against the team did (probably aided by poor CBK decisions plus all things BVG). Now, suddenly the magic is working in the positive way and they’re playing very well.
Semi related but boy I hope Tillery does come back. Also regarding Nelson, why not go high? Could be like the Redskins taking Scherff 5th overall, and I believe he was the first o-lineman of that class to make the Pro Bowl. I don’t think Nelson would be bad in that range for a team if the fit was right. Also, all things considered, if I was running an NFL team, had a top-10 pick and wanted to boost my o-line with it, I think I’d take Nelson over McGlinchey at this point.
As much as the AP Poll sucks as a way of actually ranking teams, I love that there is no debating about what scenarios might make it change. If you lose you drop, if you want to move up, you need the teams in front of you to lose. No endless debates.
I really wish the committee would only release a ranking at the end of the year, similar to basketball.
So I get the “predictability” aspect of it, but as long as we recognize that teams are still working to improve their resumes, what’s wrong with saying “this is how we see it right now?” It shouldn’t be a bad thing that from last week to this week, that it’s entirely possible that some teams jump other teams when the lower ranked one adds more to their resume than a higher ranked team does. It’s nice to know/be able to see that the committee is looking at those things. I also think it’s great that they can tell us “If you don’t play anyone, being undefeated isn’t worth all that much” like they just did to Miami/Wisconsin.
I’m curious as to why you think that’s a bug, not a feature?
There is absolutely nothing better about the AP poll than the CFP rankings in terms of actually ranking teams. The AP was just wayyyyy better for my personal enjoyment of reading the internet. It eliminates all the insane debate about what could happen if 1 million different things take place.
That’s why I wish they would only release one final ranking. Then people can debate about which teams really should have gotten in, based on actual results, then move on.
Murtaugh I don’t understand your GAIII/skis comment. Please splain. I don’t understand what he does that looks like he has skis on.
Also you do realize it was crazy slick out there?
It was a cool cut, man. Just live with it. Enjoy it.
Cold cuts, what?
Also I should note that I liked the cut and can live with it. I just want murtzy so splain hisself.
Since you asked….
I’m not explaining myself.
You would
I think he’s saying he liked the cut of Drick’s jib.
But it’s a family blog so I wouldn’t go into it any deeper.
He’s saying his cuts are rounded; as opposed to planting a foot and making a change in directions that’s like two straight lines meeting if you imagine the path, Deon’s path had rounded corners, sort of like the turns of someone skiing
Which is exactly what the run looks like, especially the cut in the middle of the field. Really kind of an amazing movement, so bravo to M Eric for having seen that. I wonder if it was partly because the field turf was slippery with all the rain?
Joe Wilkins just committed to ND!!! We finally have a cornerback in this class.
Guys we’re 1 road win away against the decent but not great Hurricanes from being in the playoffs. Mediocre Navy and Stanford squads will not pose a legitimate threat…*Runs from the tomatoes*…but I do kind of feel this way in the back of my mind. Relevant November football feels so nice.