Notre Dame didn’t quite move into upset watch in the first half against Syracuse but things were tense for far too long. Thanks to a late 2nd quarter flurry, the Irish built up a nice halftime lead and spent the rest of the game keeping the Orange at arm’s length to clinch a comfortable, if ultimately unsatisfying, win to conclude a perfect regular season.

Next up will be the ACC Championship Game in 2 weeks in Charlotte against Clemson, a program who has won the last 5 league title games.

This was definitely a weird game. Case in point, Syracuse led 7-3 with 6:35 remaining in the first half and they had the ball! It was the same score with under 5 minutes remaining and Ian Book had just fired an incompletion on 3rd down to give the ball right back to the Orange. Things looked pretty bleak at that momet.

Stats Package
STAT IRISH CUSE
Score 45 21
Plays 77 65
Total Yards 568 414
Yards Per Play 7.4 6.4
Conversions 8/17 6/15
Completions 24 18
Yards/Pass Attempt 7.7 6.1
Rushes 40 35
Rushing Success 47.3% 50.0%
10+ Yds Rushing 6 5
Defense Stuff Rate 23.0% 23.3%

 

A roughing the passer penalty extended Notre Dame’s drive and the Irish finished up the half with 3 touchdowns. From there, Syracuse never really had a chance.

Offense

QB: A
RB: B
TE: B
OL: C+
WR: B

Notre Dame nearly had 600 yards of total offense and this was definitely one of those games where it never really felt like the offense was humming right along. Clearly, a 94-yard touchdown run by Chris Tyree makes things looks prettier in the box score but this game was much more of a slog than expected.

Ian Book was not helped out by a handful of ugly drops and went through a few brief moments of lacking sharpness in the passing game. However, yet again the Irish quarterback lifted up the whole offense with 338 total yards and 5 touchdowns. His 30 wins as starter now move him into the top spot in school history and he finishes his Notre Dame career with zero losses at home. What a career so far.

It wasn’t all gravy for Book on Saturday, though. He threw his first interception in approximately 3,000 passes on an underthrown deep ball where he didn’t see the safety support coming across the field. There were also some conservative throws (7.7 YPA isn’t great) and a few misses he’d like back, plus a fumbled snap that cost another turnover. Nevertheless, with a little more help and focus from the rest of the offense this easily could’ve been a game with 60 points on the scoreboard and even more growing Heisman hype for the Irish quarterback.

Rushing Success

Williams – 10 of 20 (50%)
Book – 4 of 6 (66.6%)
Tyree – 3 of 6 (50%)
Flemister – 1 of 3 (33.3%)
Ekanayake – 0 of 3 (0.0%)

Give them credit, Syracuse bottled up Notre Dame’s run game for most of the afternoon. The run game was largely out of sync and pretty ugly, especially in the first half. It took Kyren Williams a while to get going and eventually the run game wore down the Orange later in the game. A good sign for Williams, even when he doesn’t appear to play well or have a good game he’s at 50% rushing success and 110 yards on the day.

The Irish did well with some explosiveness on the ground. Book (28 yards and 17 yards), Tyree (94 yards), and Kyren (23 yards, 16 yards and 14 yards) combined for 192 yards on these 6 carries. Still, the other 34 carries on the day went for just 91 yards, or 2.67 per rush. Again, weird game as Syracuse had to feel good about this effort but they still gave up big plays on the ground and through the air anyway.

That’s a drop, dog.

Dillan Gibbons got his first career start at right guard while Josh Lugg picked up his 7th career start sliding over from right guard to center in place of the injured Zeke Correll. After the game, Brian Kelly said that veteran Tommy Kraemer wanted to play on Senior Day but it seemed like more of a tactical switch to replace Gibbons on the 4th offensive series. Syracuse nearly had a stuff on one of every four plays and this was definitely one of the poorer efforts from the offensive lines this season even if it resulted in the second-most rushing yards in a game all season long.

Javon McKinley finally scored his first touchdown of the season, and then added 2 more. He should’ve had 4 on the day with a would-be 7-yard touchdown pass dropped on the opening drive of the game. He’s now up to 660 receiving yards, which I’ll say again, I did not see coming in 2020.

Defense

DL: B-
LB: B+
DB: D-

The defense arguably sleepwalked through this game even more than the offense. At the very least, they had more mental errors resulting in too many big plays allowed to a poor Syracuse offense. Giving up 6.1 yards per play (a season-high for the Orange) and 50% rushing success is a pretty bad day at the office for this talented of a defense.

Quarterback Rex Culpepper completed a long pass of 37 yards, notched an 18-yard touchdown, while Syracuse scored on runs of 40 and 80 yards, respectively. That brought the Orange 175 yards on just 4 plays.

Now, their other 61 plays resulted in 239 yards for 3.9 per play. It was just a little disheartening to see Syracuse kind of give up relying on Culpepper’s arm after their first 3 series all entered Notre Dame territory and they still ripped off those long touchdown runs. After those first 3 series, Culpepper finished 9 of 15 for 68 yards and it has to bug Clark Lea that Syracuse still scored 2 more touchdowns when they were so one dimensional.

Stuffs vs. Syracuse

MTA – 3
Ogundeji – 2
JOK – 2
Bauer – 2
White – 1.5
Lewis – 1.5
Hinish – 1
Mills – 1
Bertrand – 1

Another weird aspect to this game was that Culpepper only managed 185 passing yards and the secondary grade was so poor. That’s because the tackling was atrocious at times (both long rushing touchdowns for Syracuse came on exceedingly poor angles from safeties) and Notre Dame did little to allow Culpepper to dink and dunk to open receivers on his first read early in the game.

Case in point, freshman corner Clarence Lewis finished with a game-high 12 tackles. Twelve tackles! 10 solo stops! He made a few good plays (forced fumble, pass break-up, and beautiful sideline tackle that should’ve brought another pass break up) but was targeted often and gave up what seemed like a dozen receptions.

We probably don’t need to read too much into this game as it mattered little to everyone involved. Plenty of guys shined in the final home game of the year, too. Owusu-Koramoah, White, Bauer, and Tagavailoa-Amosa all played very well, I thought.

Final Thoughts

The Notre Dame seniors from the 2017 class who committed after the disaster 2016 season just finished their careers going 25-1 at home with 24 straight wins. Yeah, we know more games are played today than decades past but these seniors leave as the first class ever in Notre Dame history to win 10+ games in 4 straight seasons.

We can talk about Kevin Austin or Jordan Johnson as disappointments this year for various reasons. For me, Braden Lenzy so far in 2020 hurts a lot. He averaged 18.9 yards per touch from scrimmage last year and seemed like he would be a huge weapon this year with 1,000 total yard potential. In this final home game, Lenzy had 4 targets, 1 catch (a pop pass) for 0 yards. In 2020, with 7 games played he has 7 catches for 63 yards and just 8 rushing yards. Lenzy-Austin-Johnson with Michael Mayer is potentially explosive as hell next year but it sucks that all 3 of those receivers will be coming off so little production this fall.

Rex Culpepper is an inspirational story for overcoming cancer. But, he may have the ugliest throwing motion I’ve ever witnessed from a Notre Dame opponent.

What is this?

Syracuse punted from the Notre Dame 41-yard line and 42-yard line on their first 2 possessions of the game. The latter decision was more understandable as it was 4th & 26 following an offensive pass interference call a couple plays earlier, but still. As a heavy underdog, the Orange punted in Irish territory on 4th & 6 which is insane.

I have a theory that Notre Dame is a lot more stubborn to tweak their gameplan if it isn’t going that well against weaker competition. This felt like one of those games on both sides of the ball, but Ian Book covers up so many things on offense while usually Clark Lea is correct about an opponent not being good enough to put together a bunch of long drives and a couple dozen completions capped off with 3 or 4 touchdowns.

A few penalties absolutely killed Syracuse, a hallmark of a bad team. There’s probably another alternate outcome in their favor during this game if they aren’t called for the roughing the passer on Book late in the 2nd quarter on 3rd down. It’s quite possible Syracuse would’ve taken a lead into halftime which would’ve at least colored this game much differently.

Instead, from that roughing the passer penalty until halftime, Notre Dame scored 3 touchdowns from 10 plays for 146 yards while Syracuse false started twice in a row to start their series trailing 10-7, lost a fumble, and totaled just 35 yards on 9 plays.

Book’s scrambling 17-yard touchdown in the 3rd quarter may have been my favorite play of the game. He was coming off his interception the series prior, Syracuse had just coughed the ball up and gifted it back to Notre Dame, and settling for a field goal would’ve kept the game competitive at that point. Instead, on 3rd down Book’s touchdown made it 31-14 and effectively killed the Orange off for good.

Another bizarre coaching decision from Syracuse: Immediately after Book’s touchdown run mentioned above Culpepper threw a heinous interception right to Daelin Hayes. But, Notre Dame missed a 50-yard field goal afterward so the Orange were still alive. Then, on 3rd & 12 they tried to run it (it didn’t work for just 1 yard) and punted it right back to the Irish. Three plays later, Notre Dame led 38-14 and it was really, really over.

Was the most impressive thing from this game the fact that Matt Salerno didn’t fumble while getting blasted and targeted after initially fumbling a punt return?