You can bet Notre Dame wasn’t expecting to schedule this night game with 4 losses already on the board and Stanford coming to town with a 3-2 record. So breaks the streak of 5 straight meetings between the Cardinal and Irish in which both programs come into this rivalry while being ranked in the AP Poll.

In fact, this will be only the 3rd time ever with the game in South Bend that neither team is ranked.

Stanford (+3) at Notre Dame

Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, October 15, 2016
Kickoff: 7:30 PM ET
Television: NBC
Series: 19-11-0 Notre Dame

Stanford has been dealing with one of the country’s most difficult early-season schedules, something that differentiates them from Notre Dame right now in 2016. The Cardinal started out the season with 3 straight wins against the (currently) 43rd, 24th, and 14th ranked teams according to F/+ while the highest rated team Notre Dame has even played is NC State at 44th. However, the Stanford offense showed signs of cracking very early on and nearly cost them against UCLA where they went 58:36 of game time without scoring a touchdown.

Through 5 games, their offense has scored only 9 touchdowns and these struggles finally came home to roost in the last two weeks as David Shaw was dealt his second and third largest defeats since taking over on the Farm in 2011.

3 Matchups to Watch

Notre Dame’s Defensive Pressure vs. Ryan Burns

Something might have to give this weekend where Notre Dame comes into the weekend with 3 sacks all season (zero from the defensive line!) while Stanford has given up 12 sacks over the last 2 games–including an astonishing 8 surrendered to a fearsome Washington defense in Seattle.

With a shaky ground game unable to carry the offense things haven’t been off to a great start for redshirt junior Ryan Burns’ first season as starter. He’s completing passes at roughly the same clip as Kevin Hogan a year ago but the explosiveness has completely vanished. Burns only has 5 touchdown passes and his 7.4 YPA is second-to-last in the Pac-12 conference. Can he take advantage of a leaky Irish secondary?

Christian McCaffrey’s Health vs. Notre Dame’s Tackling

I mentioned in our summer preview that the history of football is not kind to players who get overworked and try to come back with a strong season as a follow up. So the Football Gods had their way with McCaffrey who has essentially tumbled from Heisman contention and left last week’s game against Washington State with an undisclosed injury.

McCaffrey did return to the sidelines after going into the locker room but with his team being blown out he wasn’t risked. It’s a safe bet he’ll play this weekend. The Irish bottled McCaffrey up last year (94 rushing yards, 19 receiving yards) but got killed by Hogan’s arm down field. Can he be effective enough against a really bad Notre Dame defense?

DeShone Kizer vs. Stanford’s Pass Defense

Stanford has faced some really good offenses this year and over the last couple weeks it hasn’t gone very well giving up 86 points to the Washington schools. The advanced stats still think things are pretty well for the Cardinal defense although the pass defense a lot less so.

Starting corners Alijah Holder and Quenton Meeks were hurt a couple weeks ago and to add to the pain safety Justin Reid will miss the start of this weekend’s game after a targeting call in the 3rd quarter against Wazzu. Over the last two week’s Stanford has given up 567 yards through the air and 7 passing touchdowns so Kizer and Notre Dame will be licking their chops.

2 Sides of the Line

Stanford’s offensive line had to replace 3 starters from a year ago, and along with an injury to their best player, have really struggled to put things together in 2016.

Returning starter junior Casey Tucker (6-6, 301) was at right tackle in 2015 but flipped over to the left side to begin 2016. That only lasted 3 games before Tucker switched back to right tackle against Washington where he promptly left the game left with a leg injury and did not play last week against Washington State. Redshirt junior David Bright (6-5, 295) moved over to right tackle against the Huskies after making his first 4 career starts at left guard. In Bright’s place, the Cardinal played a banged up redshirt sophomore Brandon Fainaika (6-3, 314) for his first start at left guard against Washington.

Redshirt sophomore AT Hall (6-5, 295) began the season with his first career starts at right tackle and has played the last 2 games on the left edge. Right guard and center have remained steady for Stanford where 5th-year senior Johnny Caspers (6-4, 300) returns as a starter from 2015 in the former position and redshirt sophomore Jesse Burkett (6-4, 302) has started for the first time all season at the latter position.

Also, note that junior fullback Daniel Marx (6-2, 245) has missed the last two games with injury.

The Cardinal are also rebuilding their defensive line depth where 7 out of their 11 players are either freshmen or redshirt freshmen and they continue to rely on only 4 bodies up front.

At nose tackle redshirt sophomore Harrison Phillips (6-4, 285) is back after going down with a season-ending injury in the opener last year. He also missed the USC game this year with a knee injury. While he was out, Stanford turned to 5th-year senior Jordan Watkins (6-5, 274) who has been a journeyman in Palo Alto. For his part, Phillips isn’t much of a gap-plugging lineman and has 3 sacks in 2016.

On the edge the prominent player is redshirt sophomore Solomon Thomas (6-3, 273) who has racked up 18 tackles, 4.5 TFL, 2.5 sacks, and 4 quarterback hurries. The other defensive end is redshirt freshman Dylan Jackson (6-6, 261) who hasn’t been productive with just 6 tackles.

1 Prediction

David Shaw isn’t used to losing much and he’s only lost two games in a row once before–back in 2014 when Stanford was destroyed by Oregon and then dropped a close home game to Utah. That season looked like it was going to go off the rails then the Cardinal swept their final 3 games (including hammering a ranked UCLA team) after a middling 5-5 start.

Which direction will this edition of Stanford finish? Is this going to be another 8-5 season? Could it be even worse? One thing that has to give Stanford supporters some faith is that their early-season schedule has paved the way for a pretty soft landing down the stretch, plus the entire schedule only features one ranked team right now and that’s already out of the way.

On the negative side of things the Cardinal offense is going to have to get a lot better on offense in order to survive the rest of the season. We’ve liked to say that the Great Stanford Regression™ is coming and while that hasn’t manifested quite yet the truth is their defense isn’t near the suffocating unit that used to be able to allow their offense to ManBall™ their way to some ugly wins. Since the beginning of 2015 the only offense they’ve held under 4.0 YPP was a brutal UCF unit, in other words, Stanford hasn’t been an elite defense for upwards of 2 years now.

That’s not to say that defense has been the problem for the Cardinal the way back-to-back 40-point contests from their opponents in recent weeks have suggested. The Stanford offense has offered almost zero help lately and going by the raw numbers are actually downright bad.

They’ve been abysmal in the red zone while scoring touchdowns on only 50% of their trips (t-107th nationally) but the more amazing stat is they’ve only entered the red zone 8 times through 5 games. That stat is dead last in the country and maybe one of the most outrageous figured I’ve ever typed in a game preview.

Of course, we can safely assume that Stanford is going to have plenty of success on offense against this Notre Dame defense. In addition, McCaffrey likely isn’t really hurt all that much and probably benefits from getting some rest last week. Burns has been pretty mediocre at quarterback, however, he’s been smart enough and accurate enough to keep moving the chains.

Speaking of moving the chains, I’m zeroing in on third down conversions on Saturday night, and in relation, which team is setting themselves up for the easier conversion opportunities. Last year, the Irish absolutely ripped Stanford’s rush defense apart for 299 yards on 35 carries–the most rushing yards the Cardinal have given up since Oregon in 2010. Unfortunately, Notre Dame’s rushing defense has been stuck in neutral for 2016 while Stanford is only giving up a respectable 3.71 yards per carry against their schedule.

So there’s reason to believe that the Irish may not trust their run game and will come out slinging it around. Perhaps not the worst game plan but it could lead to some tough third downs where Notre Dame has been abysmal over their last two game (4 for 27) and not much better stretching back over the last 4 games (13 for 50).

This Stanford team is so incredibly beatable, though. Still, you’ll have to forgive me for being a gun shy about a win under the circumstances of this season. I’m tempted to think there’s a great stress-releasing win, at night under the lights, via an overwhelming offensive display from the Irish as they frolic in the non-hurricane atmosphere.

I believe the more likely scenario is a fairly well-played game from both sides featuring a not-terrible performance from Notre Dame’s defense and just not enough from an Irish offense forced to carry so much weight. Also, watch out for field goal kicking where Conrad Ukropina is coming off an uncharacteristic 1 for 3 performance against Washington State. He nailed the game-winner last year against Notre Dame and throughout his career has been pretty clutch (25 for 29 since 2015). Something tells me Yoon and Ukropina will be front and center this Saturday.

Notre Dame 27

Stanford 29