September 13th, 2021. That’s the day that Troy finally returned the Homeric favor and sacked the protagonist of the Greek tragedy that had unfolded in Los Angeles over the last several seasons. It is with profound sorrow that we Irish fans bid farewell to Southern Cal head coach Clay Helton, a fine gentleman who most definitely deserved more time to right the ship. No, it has nothing to do with his 1-4 record against Notre Dame – why would that factor in? We mourn his departure only because we believe deeply that our rivals should have the best stewardship possible at all times, in the spirit of quality competition and fair play, and we know Clay Helton was that kind of leader.

Seriously, though… Helton occupied one of the hottest seats in college football, but even so his dismissal seemed rather abrupt and surprising. After just two games of the 2021 season, the second an embarrassingly complete loss to a Stanford team that had just been blown out by Kansas State, USC administration decided that they had seen enough. Helton came to USC as Lane Kiffin’s quarterbacks coach in 2010. He served as the interim head coach for the 2013 Las Vegas Bowl, filling in for the other interim head coach Ed Orgeron, who assumed the interim tag when Kiffin was famously left on the tarmac and then stormed off in a huff over not getting the interim tag removed. Helton stayed on as Steve Sarkisian’s offensive coordinator, then picked up the interim tag again in the middle of the 2015 season when Sarkisian left to deal with his alcohol issues, then lost the interim tag when the Trojans named him the permanent guy that December.

After that chaos, in his first two full seasons at the helm Helton went 21-6 and logged two top twelve finishes and a Rose Bowl win; that level of success would elude him over his next three-plus seasons as he went 19-14 with just one bowl appearance, a resounding loss to Iowa in the 2017 Holiday Bowl. To compound the on-field troubles, USC recruiting had taken a sharp downwards turn from the beginning of his tenure. His first two full recruiting cycles, 2017 and 2018, each resulted in a class ranked 4th nationally. His 2019 class ranked 20th, which is well below what USC should be able to do but not catastrophic. His 2020 class was a catastrophe though; it ranked 64th and had no quarterback, no running back, no tight end, no defensive ends, no linebackers, no defensive backs. Jonah Monheim, an Irish OL target, was the second highest ranked player in the class at 356th overall. Helton bounced back with the 7th ranked class in 2021, but the damage was done – the 2020 class had exhausted any little shred of goodwill he may still have had.

Notre Dame (-7) vs. Southern Cal

Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, IN
Date: Saturday, October 23rd, 2021
Time: 7:30 PM ET
TV: NBC

USC debuted at #15 in the preseason AP poll and climbed to #14 after Penn State beat Wisconsin in Week 1. Then the wheels came off against Stanford, which knocked them out of the top 25 and precipitated the firing of Helton. Interim head coach Donte Williams, who Helton stole from Oregon in a legitimate coup for recruiting, has had a bumpy ride. The Trojans are 3-3 overall and 2-2 under Williams’s watch, with convincing road wins against meh-at-best Washington State and Colorado teams and convincing home losses to so-so Oregon State and Utah teams.

They still commit a ton of penalties, which was a hallmark of the Helton Era; they rank 124th nationally in penalty yardage per game with 80.7. They have roster holes at key spots and injury issues at other spots. To say that the program is unsettled at the moment would be to characterize it quite charitably. They’re still USC, which means they do have some quality skill position guys and they always carry some level of danger, but they’re a mess.

USC’s Offense

QB Kedon Slovis has continued to regress; his passer rating as a freshman in 2019 was 167.7, as a sophomore was 144.1, and so far this year is 133.8. It looked like freshman Jaxson Dart had Wally Pipped him on the strength of a monster performance against Wazzu when Slovis got hurt, but it turned out that Dart was also hurt in that game. He suffered a torn meniscus that has kept him out of action since; he returned to practice in a limited fashion a couple of weeks ago, but it seems highly unlikely that he’ll actually be able to play. Slovis has one good game, against Colorado, and the rest of his outings have ranged from bad to so-so. Most of his problems relate to the horrific offensive line, which has posted a misleadingly good 2.7% sack rate – Slovis is very good at getting the ball out and the offense is designed around quick throws already.

The offense revolves around WR Drake London, who has three times the receptions and yards of any other USC receiver and twice the yards from scrimmage as the next guy. In fact, London leads the nation in targets per game at 15.3 and is fourth nationally in percentage of team targets at 36.9% (UNC’s Josh Downs, who the Irish will see next week, leads in that category at a massive 41.6%). Stanford is the only opponent so far to hold London under 130 yards; stop him, and the USC offense is going to have a long day. Of course, it’s not nearly so easy as saying “we want to stop him.” Slovis will try to get it to London no matter how covered he is, much like how Ian Book viewed Chase Claypool, so there may be opportunities for takeaways. If London doesn’t just assert his ill, of course. It’ll be interesting to see if the staff tries to match up Cam Hart, who at 6’2.5″ and 205 pounds is a better physical matchup for the 6’4″, 210-pound London than other Irish corners.

Sophomore WRs Gary Bryant – the highest rated player from that subpar 2020 recruiting class – and Tahj Washington are capable targets but not gamebreakers. Tight ends Malcolm Epps and Michael Trigg are worth keeping an eye on; they’re not a huge part of the offense, with just 16 combined catches, but they’re averaging just under 17 yards per catch and have two of the Trojans’ eight non-London receiving touchdowns.

Senior Texas transfer Keontay Ingram, another former Notre Dame target, paces the rushing attack. Super senior Valvae Malepai has pitched in as a change of pace, but over the last couple of weeks TCU transfer Darwin Barlow has emerged a bit as a speedier second option. Their run game is okay but nothing special; in fact it’s been a bit Jekyll and Hyde, with respectable-to-good performances against San Jose State, Stanford, and Colorado and bad-to-awful performances against Wazzu, Oregon State, and Utah. There’s no middle ground, really. The run game is an afterthought in OC Graham Harrell’s version of the Air Raid, so I suppose the up-and-down outings aren’t too surprising. Regardless, what danger the offense poses to Notre Dame’s defense is very unlikely to manifest on the ground.

It’s no secret that USC wants to throw and particularly that they want to force the ball to Drake London, who is far and away their best player. Getting quick pressure on Slovis, who has been prone to the yips at times, and effectively doubling London will be the key to slowing that down. While Michael Pittman in the 2019 USC game is a common touchstone for those wondering how the Irish will defend London, I suspect that the gameplan to contain David Bell in this year’s Purdue game will be a better comparison. What made 2019 USC so hard to defend wasn’t so much Pittman himself (101 catches for 1,275 yards) as it was Pittman combined with Amon-Ra St. Brown (77 catches for 1,042 yards) and Tyler Vaughns (74 catches for 912 yards). Drake London was the fourth receiver on that team; this year’s second receiver, Tahj Washington, is almost exactly on pace to match London’s 2019 production. Context matters.

USC’s Defense

USC is the third-lowest ranked defense on the 2021 schedule per SP+ at 81st nationally (Navy is 88th and Stanford is 103rd, if you’re wondering). They’re 89th in FEI defense. They’re 79th in scoring defense, 110th in passer rating allowed, 110th in passes defended per game, 99th in sacks per game (with five of their ten sacks against Colorado), 124th in tackles for loss per game, 106th in yards per play allowed… They’re just bad.

As you maybe guessed from the above discussion, there are holes all over the defense because of recruiting misses, and those holes are exacerbated by recruiting hits that haven’t panned out on the field. They’re very thin on the defensive interior in particular. DE Drake Jackson hasn’t produced as expected but he is definitely the most talented player on their defense and can cause problems if the game plan doesn’t account for him. There are some other guys with names who play defense for them, but, eh.

They’re so bad that there really isn’t a whole lot to say here, because there isn’t anything that they do well. There isn’t even anything that they don’t do poorly; in fact it’s kind of a miracle that they’re 3-3. As long as the revamped Irish offensive line can keep Jackson out of the backfield, there should be opportunities for yardage all over the field.

Prediction

Clearly this all adds up to an Irish blowout, right? Not so fast, my friends. If any of the 2017-20 Notre Dame teams met this USC team, yes. If any of the 2017-20 Notre Dame offenses replaced this Notre Dame offense, yes. But until we see more play-to-play and drive-to-drive consistency from this Notre Dame offense, it feels very risky to predict a blowout. The potential is there pending a few big answers that are still hanging out there in the ether.

Key questions:

1) Will the Notre Dame defense be able to bottle up Drake London? They did it to Purdue’s David Bell, who had 64 receiving yards against Notre Dame and has averaged 154 yards in his other games. London comes into this game averaging 139 yards per, almost one third of USC’s overall average output per game. Contain London and their offense will have a hard time being effective, as Stanford can tell you (4 catches for 68 yards and one garbage time touchdown). Let him loose and we’re probably headed for a shootout.

2) Will the offensive line’s Virginia Tech performance be the new normal? The Irish rushed for 192 yards on 41 non-sack carries against Virginia Tech. They also, for the first time this season, gave up no non-sack tackles for loss. Once Andrew Kristofic replaced Zeke Correll at left guard early in the game, they were able to maintain a clean pocket and get some push in the run game. If that was the real deal, and if they built on it further in the off week, then they could make some real noise in this game. If not, white knuckle time again.

3) How well will Notre Dame manage the quarterback situation? Brian Kelly all but named Jack Coan the starter on Monday, saying he gives the team the best chance to win games. He also said that Tyler Buchner is improving and is clearly a big part of the picture no matter what shape it takes. It seems clear that we’ll see both guys in the game tomorrow, regardless of how well it may be going. Will it work? Will we see continued growth from Buchner? Is the beginning of the Tyler Buchner Era slowly unfolding before our eyes?

4) Will Kelly stay perfect when taking a ranked Notre Dame against an unranked USC? This marks the 22nd time a ranked ND will meet unranked USC; ND is 13-6-2 all time in such meetings and has won five straight. Kelly is 4-0 in such games. That doesn’t mean anything to the kids who will play this game tomorrow, but it’s fun to point out.

As much as we love to take shots at USC, it’s truly excellent to get this game back on the schedule after COVID caused the first interruption in the rivalry since the end of World War II. I don’t care if we never play Michigan again. I do care that we continue to meet USC regularly, preferably with heavy stakes on the table for both sides but not required. This is one of the most storied rivalries in all of American sports, and it’s good to have it back.

While I think the potential is there it’s hard for me to predict a huge Notre Dame win in this game. I’ve seen this movie too many times; the 2018 and 2019 Notre Dame teams were much better than USC on paper and ended up in dogfights both times. At the same time, USC’s defense is truly terrible, they’ve folded like a cheap lawn chair every time they’ve faced adversity this year, the gap between Notre Dame’s strengths and USC’s weaknesses is much larger than that between USC’s strength’s and Notre Dame’s weaknesses, and oh by the way the game time temperatures are going to be in the low 40s.  This was one of my favorite Twitter sightings from all the pregame coverage:

Here is Notre Dame’s regulation offensive scoring this season, with opponent SP+ and FEI defense ranks:

  • Florida State: 38 points, 67th, 57th
  • Toledo: 32 points, 26th, 25th
  • Purdue: 27, 27th, 24th
  • Wisconsin: 20 points, 2nd, 3rd
  • Cincinnati: 13 points, 8th, 5th
  • Virginia Tech: 32 points, 33rd, 31st

USC, as noted above, ranks 81st in SP+ defense and 89th in FEI defense. I have a hard time seeing how they’ll hold the Notre Dame offense under 30 points (assuming a minimal number of self-inflicted issues, of course). Likewise, while their offense can move the ball and will likely find some success, I have a hard time seeing how they get over 30 themselves. The key will be to jump on them early. If Notre Dame gets up 14-0 early in frigid weather, Katy bar the door. If it’s a back and forth affair, I do think the Irish will still pull it out – can you bet against them in a close game at this point? – although it will certainly be tenser than it needs to be. In the end I like the Irish to exert their will and bring a decent lead into the fourth quarter before giving up a cosmetic score late.

Notre Dame 38

USC 27