Do we always take away too much from how a football game starts? I think for the most part it matters a lot whether that’s fair I cannot say. On Saturday afternoon Pacific time–in a drizzly and windy Palo Alto–the Fighting Irish looked out of sorts and even disinterested while Stanford refused to stand down in a rivalry game. However, the talent discrepancy slowly proved too much for the hosts and Notre Dame eventually built a comfortable lead on their way to a 10-2 season.
Let’s recap the 2019 regular season finale.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | TREES |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 45 | 24 |
| Plays | 67 | 75 |
| Total Yards | 445 | 394 |
| Yards Per Play | 6.64 | 5.25 |
| Conversions | 6/16 | 5/15 |
| Completions | 17 | 28 |
| Yards/Pass Attempt | 8.5 | 6.0 |
| Rushes | 37 | 28 |
| Rushing Success | 52.7% | 50.0% |
| 10+ Yds Rushing | 8 | 4 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 17.3% | 19.4% |
Offense
QB: B+
RB: C
TE: B+
OL: C-
WR: C+
This felt like a poorer performance than reality largely due to the Irish defense playing poorly early on and the feeling like the Irish offense needed to keep pace. The offense sputtered through their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th series while punting on each drive. Outside of that, they played about to expectations while scoring 5 touchdowns, 2 field goals, and 1 missed field goal on the other 9 drives prior to garbage time late in the 4th quarter.
Ian Book was the unsung hero once again, not quite getting to his usual 300 total yards of late (officially 284 yards) but throwing 4 touchdowns while protecting the ball really well in less-than-ideal weather.
A couple of pivotal moments from Book featured his 6-yard touchdown pass to Tommy Tremble followed up by 3 straight completions culminating in a 41-yard touchdown pass to Chase Claypool. Also, Book’s 26-yard run on 4th down nursing a 4-point lead that would lead to another Claypool to break the game open.
The run game was modest at best yet again, picking up 113 yards from the running backs against a really porous Stanford defense. They were able to make up for it with some timely runs (see Book above) and just enough explosiveness to keep the Cardinal off balance.
Rushing Success
Jones – 6 of 14 (42.8%)
Book – 3 of 7 (42.8%)
Flemister – 3 of 5 (60%)
Lenzy – 3 of 4 (75%)
Smith – 1 of 3 (33.3%)
Armstrong – 3 of 3 (100%)
Jahmir Smith finished with -2 yards rushing while Lenzy’s 48 yards now moves the latter into the 3rd spot in total rushing on the season. Lenzy heads into the bowl game with 435 total yards on just 20 touches for a Rocket-esque 21.75 yards per touch average.
The Irish got a very good performance from the tight ends, including a touchdown for Tommy Tremble and 77 yards from Kmet. If Book hadn’t overthrown Brock Wright it would’ve been a superb day.
Officially, Stanford finished with 1 sack and 1 quarterback hurry although it felt worse than that when they weren’t blitzing very much. The stuff rate was a touch high–and coupled with the average at best running backs–it’s really making life difficult for the offensive line. I doubt anything happens to Jeff Quinn but next year the expectations are going to be sky high, particularly if Ian Book returns.
Defense
DL: B+
LB: D+
DB: C-
Things were nervy there for a little bit, right? As is usually the case, Clark Lea & Co. were able to adjust and shut things down though. The Cardinal offense came out on their first two drives accumulating 157 yards while jumping out to an early lead. Yet, that would be nearly 40% of their total yardage output on the day as Notre Dame forced 8 punts thereafter before the game was out of reach.
After those two series and before a late garbage time touchdown Stanford could only manage 3.83 yards per play which is particularly weak considering how much they were throwing the ball.
In that vein, I thought this game was largely about Stanford just being bad on offense. They scored on a patented box-out jump ball early in the game but largely tried to succeed with short passes and slants. Notre Dame did an okay job making life difficult however the Cardinal just weren’t sharp enough to consistently move the ball through the air.
Quite the quiet game from both inside linebackers Asmar Bilal and Drew White who combined for 6 tackles and zero stuffs. There wasn’t a whole lot of work in the run game, to be fair.
Stuffs vs. Stanford
(season stuffs in parentheses)
Ogundeji – 3.5 (13)
Kareem – 2 (20)
Jones – 2 (12)
JOK – 1.5 (15.5)
Lacey – 1 (4.5)
Ademilola, Justin – 1 (2)
Hamilton – 0.5 (4.5)
JGH – 0.5 (1.5)
Hats off to Ade Ogundeji who put together another fabulous game with 3.5 stuffs (8 over the last 2 games!) and the game-sealing sack fumble that led to Khalid Kareem’s recovered touchdown.
When we look back at this season the current +15 turnover ratio will explain a lot of the success. Book didn’t throw an interception in 9 games and the team forced 26 turnovers. That’s a good recipe.
Final Thoughts
Long-snapper John Shannon got the game ball for this game. He recovered the fumbled punt return.
No shame in believing this game plays out a bit differently if Isaiah Foskey doesn’t block that punt when trailing by 10 points with under 5 minutes remaining in the first half. That led to the sensational set of 4 completions from Book mentioned above and a 21-17 halftime lead that felt kind of dirty.
Stanford falls to 4-8 for the season, their most losses since 2007. I am sure they will improve next year with fewer injuries but my goodness is this the least scary they’ve looked from an individual talent standpoint in at least a decade.
Also, I’m not saying this matters but Stanford has been a .500 football program since they decided to add black trim to their jersey numbers prior to the 2018 season. It’s a weird look when they didn’t incorporate any other black into their uniforms a la the Trent Edwards era.
Notre Dame is currently at +1.58 yards per play on the season which is by far the best mark of the Kelly era and the second best (trailing 1996) since the start of 1994. Grains of salt with the schedule strength and of course we still have a bowl game to get our final number for 2019.
Jonathan Doerer picked up all this acclaim after last week and then missed one of his field goals today! The announcers looked correct in that a gust of win seemed to grab the ball on its way to through the goalposts. Everyone is human.
What is it that makes Stanford’s field always so slippery? In other news, the official box score states 37,391 watched this game in a 50,000 seat stadium. What a joke.
Many think that Chip Long is going to be moving on during the off-season. I don’t really care either way, although I generally think he’s done a good job or at least is a little bit underrated relative to the talent on hand. It seems like he just hasn’t been able to live down last year’s Cotton Bowl despite the team heading into this bowl season averaging 37.0 points per game just 0.6 points off the school record set in 1968. Although, a fresh face might be a good idea with so much experience coming back next year–it’s just I’m not sure how much higher the ceiling is without several inexperienced players breaking out in a big way.
Has this been the least satisfying season from the 2017-19 run? Due to the Michigan loss the easy answer seems definitively yes. I think we’ll look back at this year and remember a lot of really nice individual surprises (Bilal, White, Ogundeji, Jamir Jones, the beginning of Lenzy, our first look at Hamilton) but it’ll be surrounded by too many what-if scenarios. Book carried the offense for long stretches but couldn’t take the next step with a middling supporting cast. The defense was strong but Okwara was lost for the season and the Michigan clunker hurt deeply.
It’s just a strange one. Should the Irish defeat a team like Oklahoma State or Kansas State in a bowl game they’d finish 11-2 and one of those programs would finish with 5 losses and assuredly unranked. It doesn’t feel stale but the current 32-6 run since 2017 feels so much less fun than I ever would’ve anticipated.
“It doesn’t feel stale but the current 32-6 run since 2017 feels so much less fun than I ever would’ve anticipated.”
Stating the obvious, but it’s because those six losses are against Georgia, Miami, Stanford, Michigan, and Clemson, all representing missed opportunities to prove something on a national stage. None of the other 32 games that we did win carried the weight of that opportunity. Those six games were the checkpoints. I bet it feels different if you swap in wins against two of those for losses to, say, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
This is definitely the issue for me. 2017’s win over USC and last year’s over Michigan were the only truly noteworthy wins against very good teams. Other times that we had to show up on big stages – even against less than elite teams (2017 Miami, 2019 Michigan) – we fell short of the mark. Piling up wins against the likes of Vanderbilt, Temple, UNC, Wake, Bowling Green, UNM, UMass just isn’t very exciting.The watering down of the schedule is the cause of the 10 win season streak, of the feeling of hollowness surrounding those wins, and of the waning ticket sales and end of the “sellout streak”.
See mine just now. As for the sellout streak, there is quite a lot more going on nation-wide about fan attendance in general, so I am not sure about the causality,
I mean we just revisited the entire 2009 schedule and that schedule was tailor made for a 10 win season, and so was 08. And 2014 and 2016. Would have replacing bowling green with Purdue or Michigan state really changed all that much.
But going thru my head the programs wins over last 3 years
Great wins:0
Really really good wins: usc 2017, Michigan 2018, Stanford 2018 (decisive victory at time top 10 team)
Good solid wins: Michigan state, nc state, LSU, Syracuse, Virginia, Usc, Virginia tech, navy
Missed chances: Georgia x2, Clemson
Terrible losses: Miami, Michigan
I really don’t know how this stacks up against other 3 year stretches but I will say this program has had ample schedules in the last 15 years where they failed to win 10 games and build that program momentum and foundation (see 2016, 2014, 2011, 09/08). Hopefully they can continue to build on this a la Clemson 2011-2014 and make some sort of jump
These are schedules we used to go between 5-7 and 7-5 against, so I will always defend the success of this progress and call out as insane the parts of the fan base that twist themselves into knots maintaining that this is “mediocre.”
This success is not stale and is not hollow. I’ve enjoyed watching this teams and it’s success immensely. But it’s the missed opportunities at true greatness that may make it feel less “fun” than the three-year record otherwise suggests.
The 2008 schedule included the following teams:
2-10 San Diego State (ND won in a fourth quarter rally)
3-9 Michigan
5-7 Stanford
4-8 Purdue
0-12 Washington
3-9 Syracuse (which we famously lost)
I really don’t think we’ll ever see a worse bottom of the schedule than that one. And that ND team still finished just 6-6.
It definitely stacks up favorably against other three year stretches in Brian Kelly’s earlier tenure, and against pretty much any three year run under any of the other three previous clowns. However, this run is being compared by the institution to Holtz’s from 90-93, circ, which is pretty disingenuous. The quality of competition, the winning percentage, and the number of wins against top 10 teams is very different.
I’m not saying this isn’t a good run. I’m just saying that it’s not as good as Holtz’s, a comparison which our athletic department is explicitly making
The comparison is natural because it’s based on the end result of winning 10+ games three straight years now and the last time it happened. Everyone is all too aware of the differences between the two.
Blind resume comparison between 2017-2019 and 1991-1993.
Resume One
84% winning percentage over three seasons
Opponent winning percentage: 59%
Record against teams finishing ranked: 10-6
Resume Two
84% winning percentage over three seasons
Opponent winning percentage: 53%
Record against teams finishing ranked: 8-5
I bet everyone knows where this is going.
For reference before the 93 game of the century Notre dame had played 1 ranked team that season (a Michigan team that finished 8-4). Obviously going and beating the number 1 team in the country resonates a hell of a lot more than the current big game performances but I’m guessing the “ain’t played nobody” mantra has been a round awhile
That’s always one of those sneaky weird things about ’93 that schedule was quite soft.
With respect, I am not so sure. Lose two like that, to not great teams, and we would bemoan how we threw spaghetti sauce all over our Picasso — at least, that’s sort of the metaphor I remember from some sports writer in 1993 when we beat #1 Florida State, then lost to Boston College, justifying why we were not #1 after the bowls.
The point is, as Ara used to say, it’s the losses that folks usually remember.
For this season — I gotta say, it was lots and lots of fun for me at least to whip up on : USC, Navy, BC, Stanford. These are all teams we have trouble with, these are all in one way or another, rivals, and it is college football, and we beat them all. So I will take those wins, and nurture them, and especially thank Ian and the guys for that last drive against Va Tech, and the way we closed out. Pending the bowl game of course!!
As it is Thanksgiving weekend, even though there is no semblance of it over here, let me close by saying that this site and all of you are among the things for which I am truly grateful. Merci!
I’m not satisfied, but I’m not disappointed either. The way they lost to Michigan was just horrible. But I can live with a ten or eleven win season. I still feel like, since the 2016 season, the needle is pointing up. I think this is very good football. It can get better, and I expect it to. But this is very good football.
I was looking to see where our schedule ranked this morning. The 1st site I found, Teamrankings.com , had ND at 13th. A little surprising , no?
I don’t think Kelly boots Quinn but, it wouldn’t make me unhappy. No excuses next year for less than a very good Oline.
I think the schedule is fine overall, nothing too daunting but there are 5 teams currently ranked in the AP Poll which isn’t nothing.
FWIW (which admittedly might not be much), saw this on twitter from @NDJimSmall….Obviously the LSU wins aren’t the same as ND beating 22, 24, 25, but hey…Goes to show the perception of a team like Utah or Oklahoma or Baylor or Minnesota vs. Notre Dame, especially the way fans view this season.
AP Top 15 teams’ wins over teams ranked in today’s AP TOP 25
LSU: 3
OSU: 3
Clemson: 0
Georgia: 3
Utah: 0
Oklahoma: 1
Florida: 1
Baylor: 0
Alabama: 0
Wisconsin: 3
Penn State: 2
Auburn: 2
Oregon: 1
Notre Dame: 3
Minnesota: 1
3 teams in Top 10 — zero ranked wins…
https://twitter.com/NDJimSmall/status/1201260025186017280
For all of the consternation about the O-line (and I think it’s well-deserved in some respects), I think the lack of a consistent run game forced Ian Book to finally evolve and become a better QB. For whatever reason, he was either incapable or didn’t want to play the way he’s playing now before the VT game. I’ve always been a big believer in him and I think he could be great next year because I don’t think this improvement is a fluke.
While I can’t help but be encouraged by how the team has played since the Michigan disaster, I watch the UM-OSU game and shudder to think of Clemson doing something similar to us next year in our stadium. I’m already bracing for next year to be the penultimate “Kelly Legacy Season” because of who will be coming back and another top-heavy schedule that will be defined by two or three games.
Eric, not sure I understand your meaning re the RBs and the Oline. I infer that you mean the RBs are making the line look bad, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean. IMO, we have no better than average backs, who look worse because our line has been poor at run blocking most of the season. No holes make our backs look even weaker than they actually are. I realize we had serious injuries, but in truth there wasn’t much of a drop off with the replacement linemen, if any.
Then there are the multiple false starts by the line every game. Surely that’s coaching?
One irritation for me is calling stretch plays for Jones or Smith to run wide. They just aren’t fast enough, especially given the weak blocking.
Pass blocking was a bit better than run blocking, but not great. Book’s pass for Ted to Tremble was with a defender on his arm. Very athletic play by Book.
Book is the engine that moves this offense, with a big assist by Claypool. Both got better as the season progressed.
So Book is 19-3 as a starter and in 2nd place all time with 33 to passes, behind Quinn at 37, so if he can throw 4 again in the bowl, he’d be tied for that record.
I hope he comes back, and think he will.
Book is a much better athlete than many of us thought. While not lightning fast, he is fast enough and surprisingly somewhat elusive! His feet have been much calmer in the pocket the last three weeks.
Good rushing teams at the P5 level don’t exist with mediocre to poor running backs. We are getting virtually nothing out of the backs to distinguish them. Bad vision, below average speed, poor athleticism. Basically, in order to have a great ground game we need unrealistic perfect blocking from the whole team and that doesn’t address the balance overall in the offense and how opponents would gameplan.
The top teams scheme their backs to get in the hole on a linebacker and like that matchup most of the time. Sometimes it’s really effective. We do that and the play is over while we blame the blocking.
Don’t want to run outside? Great, now we’re even easier to defend in between the tackles. Now we’re asking linemen to take on more double teams and more blitzing defenders.
All I know is after watching hundreds of snaps and precious few impressive athletic feats from the running backs, when none of them were highly recruited, and Jones has the same success rate in 2019 as Dexter Williams in 2018, and we’re still a high functioning offense, and tackles for loss are average nationally, I don’t know how the linemen can receive more blame.
Thanks for the response. Couple things to add.
I didn’t say don’t run outside, I said don’t run Jones or Smith outside. Way too slow.
I think you’re saying Jones had the same success rate this year as Dexter last year? Another example of advanced stats being misleading. Dexter was a home run hitter. Jones, nah. Also Dexter had some gaping holes to run through. He wasn’t that great at beating linebackers as I recall a column you wrote about this very issue.
We have a modest Oline and a modest set of running backs IMO.
Moving on, it’s striking to me the gap between the true elites and the rest of CFB. There may even be another, smaller, gap within the elites. LSU and tOSU seem to be all by themselves. Clemson may be there too, but who knows until they play somebody, which will be in the playoffs. Georgia seems a step back, will see for sure in the SEC championship. I don’t see Oklahoma and definitely not Utah competitive with the top two either.
Then thinking about last year, Clemson crushed us and Bama in the playoffs. Wonder if Dabo can win it all again. I’m doubtful, but I hope he does. Great life story.
The advanced stats are useful in this case. If Jones and Dexter have the same success rate, but one is obviously better than the other, it tells you the line is actually doing its part this year blocking — the line is opening up the minimum yards needed for Jones’ runs to be “successful.” He’s just not doing anything beyond the minimum with his runs.
This is, perhaps, the biggest issue to me with the offense. Defenses are willing to accept that Tony Jones is sometimes going to get a 6 yard run, because he’s never going to turn that 6 yard run into 40. So they can scheme to stop our WRs, let their LBs take on the RBs with little additional support, and force Book to beat quality coverage (or exotic blitzes).
If Tyree or Williams can prove able to make just the first man miss next year, it could open up a whole new world for Book. I’m still not sold on Book ever being a top 5 QB, but I think he’s good enough to lead a top 5 team.
This nails it exactly.
Dexter’s acceleration and burst made the offensive lines blocking look “better” as he beat defenders to spots and punished second-level defenders for taking bad angles. The blocking could be the exact same for Tony Jones except he doesn’t have this ability like Dexter. Holes close quicker and linebackers make more tackles–not because blocking is worse–but because Jones can’t do more on his own.
Now, since their success rates are virtually identical there were flaws for Dexter, too. And he still averaged a full yard per carry more with a larger workload and was a better player as I think everyone would agree. But, Jones having a pretty nice year that no one expected speaks a lot to the offensive line, at the very least, doing a lot of good things that aren’t going to grab headlines.
It’s going to be a fascinating offseason. I’m seeing Lea on almost every mid-to-low P5 head coaching potential prospects list, and it seems like the ND beat writers have been beginning to do their typical stuff they do when a coach is about to leave w/r/t Chip Long. If we’re down two coordinators this offseason, that’s a major bummer. I think Lea is great and Long is good enough, and it’d be best for the 2020 season to keep the whole band together for one more run if we can.
On the other hand, man, the angry Twitter chorus that was angry when Quinn was hired appears to have been right. There’s no way a line comprised with that talent should be as bad as they have this season – and they were bad before losing Hainsey and Kraemer. Hopefully he and Todd Lyght find greener pastures over the offseason.
ND allowed just 15 sacks this year, which places them top 15 in the nation. ND was top 15 in Red Zone Offense. ND finished with a top 25 offense despite having 0 explosive players the first half of the season. I’m not saying the line was great, because they obviously weren’t, but Jeff Quinn is much lower on my list of concerns for this coaching staff than most people have him.
Agree. The line isn’t Joe Moore quality anymore, but they don’t exactly have 2 top-10 NFL picks on it right now either. And as Eric says above, the line isn’t under-performing so much as the RBs are so blah it doesn’t really matter what the o-line performance is, not going to result in great rushing this year.
(And when we did have 2 top-10 NFL picks on the line we gave up 30 sacks)
Were those the worst announcers we have ever had for an ND game? They were horribly wrong about almost everything. It got to the point that when they said something, I assumed the opposite was true. The announcers reminded me of Hammond… if he had been dropped, completely unprepared, into an Aussie rules football game and told it was ND vs Stanford football.
They were bad, but I will give Nessler credit for being honest. I laughed out loud when he said, referring to Braden Lenzy, “I haven’t called a Notre Dame game in 30 years, so every time I see that no. 25 out there I want to call him Rocket Ismail.”
Contrast Hammond, who surely would’ve called Lenzy “Chase Anastasio” and never realize or acknowledge his error.
It was Tim Brando and he was brutal. He compared, on another trip down memory lane, two of our current RBs to Tony Brooks and Ricky Watters, Egads!
Spencer Tillman was the color guy and he was just as bad. At points it seemed that they were both commenting on a game other than the one we were watching.
No offense is intended to the people who are minimizing the third consecutive 10 win season idea. I certainly don’t equate those years to the Holtz years.
What I do want to ask is, “remember when everyone said Kelly is no better than an 8-5 guy every year?” What happened with that? The answer is that Kelly has gotten past that, and is likely to get past it again next year.
There is no one who wants us to defeat one of the marquee teams more than me (since I remember when we were a marquee team and regularly defeated other marquee teams – I miss those days). But, Kelly has done more with less (in terms of the academic restrictions and the geographic issues, i.e., recruiting people to come to Northern Indiana when they can live and play in warm, sunny weather all year) than most coaches could do. The only way we’re getting past this, in my opinion, is if we hire a coach with spotty ethics and completely sell out our morals in terms of winning. There is no doubt that, if we did this, we would become a marquee team instantly.
Since we’re not going to sell out, if we do win a national championship (which we’re better positioned to do than we’ve been since the Holtz years), isn’t it going to feel great? And if we don’t, 10 year win seasons against a decent schedule, is serious fun for me (and again, I remember when we won National Championships with some regularity).
Have a Happy and Blessed Holiday Season, all of you, all over the world (including MoreNoise in the land of Baguettes).
Thanks for a truly lovely reply, CubsFan — which I share completely, and appreciate your putting in to words how I feel. Actually tonight I’m Reims, the land of champagne.
Wish I could share with all.
Speaking of which — can we organize an 18 Stripes Guinness party in Dublin next year for Navy?
Hey Noise, hope you had a great thanksgiving. Can you get a turkey for dinner there? When we were living in China and Hong Kong it was impossible to get a real turkey.
I’m tempted on the Dublin deal, but Navy?
Have a great Christmas!
Hey Kiwi —
1, French turkeys are better than US ones. Range fed, super delicious. Combine with US stuffing recipes, mmm! Eat leftovers while reading 18 Stripes comments.
2, I have attended the two previous ND-Navy contests in Dublin. Loads of fun each time. The Irish themselves are mystified by the whole deal and it does not resonate there, neither ND itself (why “Fighting Irish”), nor American football (is what??) — but the presence of so many ND and Navy fans, and Dublin having become quite the fun city in the past couple of decades, makes for a great time. Even better if we could have an 18 Stripes get together. I would be happy to organize 🙂
Noise, you won’t believe it, but I was at our annual homeowners meeting tonite and my buddy, also from ND, circa ‘74, was sitting next to me. I said “ hey some guys from the ND site I follow are talking about going to Dublin for Navy, want to go?”
Long story short,he and his wife just won a charity auction for a trip to the game. Crazy, huh?
Anyway, I’m up for it.