Previewing Notre Dame’s trip to North Carolina State with advanced stats. Raise your hand if you saw this turning into a critical contest for the Irish to ensure bowl eligibility at the end of the season.

If looking for additional information on the statistics and terms used here, great starting points are Football Studyhall’s Advanced Stats Glossary, Bill Connelly’s Five Factors, and Brian Fremeau’s FEI ratings.

NC State Offense vs Notre Dame Defense

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New offensive coordinator Eliah Drinkwitz is off to a red-hot start in Raleigh, coming from holding the same position at Boise State. He’s a young guy (33) who has coached under Gus Malzahn (when that was a good thing) and Brian Harsin at Arkansas State and Boise State.

Expectations were for the Wolfpack offense to fall off with the loss of Jacoby Brissett to the NFL and the loss of three starters on the offensive line. And while the competition hasn’t been the toughest, NC State has been incredibly balanced and efficient offensively.

The rushing game was strong in 2015 (8th in Rushing S&P+), but figured to take a step back with a less threatening pass game and less elusive QB. Then Boise State grad transfer Ryan Finley stepped in, and has been on fire to open the season – he’s completing 72.4% of his passes with nine TDs and zero interceptions.

The Pack offense may not be this good, but is the ND defense good enough to find out?

Finley has been red-hot, but threw just one TD and four interceptions in 70 attempts at Boise last season. He’s definitely an efficient passer, but some regression feels likely, and the Wolfpack have faced an FCS opponent, and defenses ranked 40th (Wake Forest), 83rd (East Carolina), and 77th (Old Dominion). Opponent adjustments still like the NC State offense a lot, but we’re still dealing with small sample sizes and some pre-season projections at this point.

The running game hasn’t been as explosive as it was last season, but has made up for it with hyper-efficiency, and the same home-run threat backs are back. The offensive line peripherals show a group that’s been pretty stout in run-blocking for a second straight year despite some turnover.

But if it’s the passing game that feels more likely to come back down to earth, the Irish have well-known issues there. While there were encouraging 2nd half signs against Syracuse, the Irish still have a ton of inexperience at corner and safety without much of a pass rush to help them out.

It will be interesting to watch how aggressive Notre Dame plays the short passing game. Against the Orange, the Irish adjusted to play coverage designed more towards bend but don’t break as Larz mentioned in his excellent film post. The Wolfpack haven’t completed many long downfield passes – will they be able to nickel and dime the Irish to death? Or will the Irish step up the aggression or finally cause enough havoc to disrupt the short to intermediate passing game?

Lots of scary skill position guys

Senior RB Matt Dayes is the clear lead back, and is averaging 5.8 YPC which is actually a decrease from last season’s 6.5. The explosive runs haven’t quite been there yet, but he averaged 7.6 highlight yards per opportunity last season, which is in CJ Prosise / Josh Adams 2015 territory.

Eric mentioned Jaylen Samuels in his preview yesterday and his unique role in the Wolfpack offense as an H-back type. He’ll get a few carries out of the backfield and do nice things with them (6.1 YPC) and is also the most targeted Wolfpack receiver and leader in receptions.

Stephen Louis is the guy most likely to take a long pass to the house – he has just 13 catches but 328 yards on the year (25.2 yards/catch). Louis has a nice combination of speed and size at 6’2 to pose a matchup problem for Notre Dame’s defensive backs.

If first-down runs don’t work, the Wolfpack pass twice

NC State has been pretty average in their run-pass splits on standard downs, but tilt much more pass-heavy on passing downs, where they run only 23.9% of the time (119th nationally). The weather could alter this plan a bit, but it’s worked so far – Finley and the offense rank 8th in Passing Down S&P+, with the 6th highest success rate in the land. The rebuilt line has held up well enough against opponent pass rushes (26th in adjusted sack rate) to be pretty predictable with throwing the ball on early passing downs.

 

Notre Dame Offense vs NC State Defense

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As with the offense, NC State’s defense has been red-hot to start the year. Almost the entire front seven from 2015 has returned, and the Wolfpack have continued to excel against the run while faring slightly worse against the pass.

It’s clear that Dave Doeren’s team is a quality group this season, but it’s pretty difficult to assess just how good the Wolfpack are. S&P+ likes the team quite a bit, currently ranked 25th in the nation. FEI on the other hand, which indexes a little more heavily on strength of schedule and quality performances against top opponents, ranks NC State 67th.

For me, the defensive improvement to start 2016 is easier to buy as the real deal than the offense. The only key departure in the front seven was DE Mike Rose, who led the team with 10.5 sacks last year. But the rest of a big and disruptive line returns, and they’ve been the key to NC State’s success.

Running will not be easy, but you have to keep trying

The Wolfpack line has been extremely active, ranking 5th nationally in DL havoc rate (10%, which is almost as high as the Irish defense’s combined total from all three levels). NC State has been aggressive on standard downs, keeping defenses to low efficiency levels and making negative plays in both the run (14th in stuff rate) and pass (17th standard down sack rate).

So with a run game that’s been inconsistent this season, it’s tempting to think about airing it out a bit with this matchup. The Pack secondary is likely the weakest unit of their defense, and the Irish could try to exploit mismatches on the perimeter of the defense.

But as Irish Illustrated’s Pete Sampson pointed out on Twitter, it’s critical for Notre Dame to keep the threat of the run alive throughout the game, even if there are some struggles:

 

 

Tarean Folston is probably to return, and maybe this will be the type of game that gets him going – not a lot of space to operate in, poor weather conditions, and fighting for yards between the tackles.

Winning the 3rd/4th and short battles

There are few weak points in NC State’s start, but one area that stands out is their struggles on both sides of the ball in power run situations. Offensively they’ve only converted 52.6% of these attempts (117th), and defensively they’ve yielded first downs on 83.3% (114th).

These areas have been struggles for the Irish in recent years, but look to have turned around in the first trimester of 2016. Notre Dame has converted 85.7% of their power runs (3rd/4th and 2 or less), good for 11th nationally, and held opponents to 57.1% (25th).

Hit a few more big plays

It’s going to be a challenge against the NC State defense to put together sustained drives. They limit defensive efficiency too well, and are too disruptive rushing the passer and stopping the run. Eventually, they’re going to break through for a loss of a few yards, or the Irish will have a dumb penalty, and drives will stall earlier than Notre Dame would like.

The way around this is to hit a few explosive plays, which had been largely absent until the MetLife Stadium explosion last week. The talent is there to make it happen – ESB is now averaging 21.6 yards per catch, Kevin Stepherson 22.6, and CJ Sanders and Torii Hunter are both over 14.

Predictions:

S&P+: NC State 40, Notre Dame 33
FEI: Notre Dame 32, NC State 28
MB: NC State 30, Notre Dame 23

This feels like a game where the Irish could finally put some things together defensively and beat a team they should be much more talented than. It’s easy to play the “NC State ain’t played nobody” card, but the underwhelming defenses they’ve faced from ECU, Old Dominion, and Wake are sadly not any worse than Notre Dame’s right now. DeShone Kizer has turned the ball over more often in games where he’s pressured more consistently, which seems likely in this one, and I don’t like wet conditions for a young receiving group that’s put the ball on the carpet a few too many times already this season.