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:Â A
RB:Â B
TE:Â B
OL:Â 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:Â B+
DB:Â 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?
It’s been fun watching Ian Book turn into an elite QB right in front of us. He won’t win the Heisman but should get invited in a fair world. Dungy compared him to Montana, another often unappreciated QB while at ND, at least by his coaches. He meant in terms of Book being able to find ways to win, and the team’s obvious faith in him when the chips are down to take them down the field. Very Montana-like.
Lets see what happens in two weeks, and hopefully beyond that. I’ve loved watching him and will be sad to see him go. I’m disappointed the Wake game cancellation wiped out a chance to see him play next week.
I’d be interested in seeing where he stands in the various QB career stat categories.
I really like the Joe Montana parallel. Good for Dungy who knew Joe back in the day. Though Ian has done much to limit interceptions from the outset, Joe had to grow into that.
I think he has a good chance to be (virtually, I assume) invited with a strong ACCG (win or close loss, Book plays well). It’s weird to me the number of finalists that get invited is arbitrary, and if you aren’t flying them out anyway, why not include more guys in your made for TV event.
As an aside, it’s definitely one of the most wide open years I can ever remember. Trask, Mac Jones, and Devonta Smith are probably 1/2/3 in some order, but Jones and Smith will split votes, and so much hangs in the SECCG. Ian is probably in that next tier with Fields & Lawrence, plus maybe Breece Hall for people that love voting RB or for a Big 12 rep?
Was McKinley’s drop in the end zone a result of the ball coming out of the sun? I think he made a hand motion to his eyes after the drop.
Yes, I think so.
I believe they said that on the radio broadcast
Apropos of nothing from the post: One of my favorite ND football things ever is Tommy Tremble running free and looking for somebody to block. He runs with such desperation to find somebody to annihilate; it’s delightful.
I think Williams’s juke on the play he went over 1,000 yards was about as impressive as Salerno’s punt catch. He made a D1 football player fall over without touching him. Classic Kyren.
And according to Dungy one of their best defenders.
“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.”
All fun and games until the opening formation and starters in game 1 next year is Wilkins, Davis (is he coming back)?, Mayer and Takacs. Half-joking on that.
I hope that it isn’t, like today — but…Is this the peak of Brian Kelly? Four straight 10 win seasons. 33-3 in the past three seasons. Riding high going into an ACC title game (still weird to even think that..). Is this as good as it gets? Book is gone next year and who knows what the QB situation is going to be. The OL is turning over 100% besides Patterson, who doesn’t have a lot of time to heal from a serious surgery on a big guy and will presumably be changing to a LT role. The DL is going to lose a lot and the best/most productive player on defense in JOK is going to be gone.
Hope this ride isn’t over, but ND is likely playing 2 incredibly powerful teams in their next two games, and then a third even better team probably in Alabama if they make it. We’ll see what happens, but fun to enjoy these heights now because it might not always remain so constantly great.
It does seem hard to envision things getting much better than they were this season. And with a new QB to break in next year (it will feel like FOREVER since that happened by opening kickoff 2021), it’ll definitely be different.
Hopefully the peak will either be in a month and 5 days, or in 2022 or ’23, though.
My first thought about next year being Lenzy, Austin, Johnson, and Mayer was that I hope there is a QB starting that can take advantage of those weapons. It will be a shame to see those guys (and Kyren and Tyree in the running game) struggle if it takes half a year for Pyne or Clark get up to speed. Like this year maybe some holes are filled by the transfer portal. McCloud and Skowronek have totally been key to this year. The II podcast guys noted that McKenzie Milton just entered the portal, and agreed that ND should at least kick the tires on him. I know he was hurt and is still getting back to full health let alone game speed, but he’s veteran, good passer, runs/ran well, has been in and won big games. His tape looks alot like Book to be honest. If Milton can be his old self again, he could totally maximize NDs playmakers next year. Maybe Pyne or Clark can.
I feel that they’ll be down a bit next year, but with all the young talent, look out in 22-23
Keep in mind that BK has a good track record with new QBs, so hopefully he can continue that with whomever wins the job next year
the schedule is also pretty favorable next year as a transition before ’22 and ’23 journeys to Mordor. It won’t be easy by any means, but there’s no top-5ish team like there’s been the past few years with UGA and Clemson. The top tier opponents opponents are Wisconsin, UNC, USC then probably Cincy?
There’s some good QBs and offensive firepower there but all of those games are home (except the Badgers at Solider Field), it’s a pretty favorable run all things considered. Then you play both Ohio State and Clemson each of the next two years and you better have it together.
Hopefully 22 and 23 are prime years for Tyler B to be showing off as a future 1st round draft pick!
I’ll have some thoughts on topics like this later in the week!
Forgot to add the Tremble GIF laughing at the fallen defensive back in the end zone:
Funny stuff. This year’s team is just downright mean. Gotta love it
Good news on Salerno – https://twitter.com/Matthews0520/status/1335747072709038084?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1335747072709038084%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2F247sports.com%2Fcollege%2Fnotre-dame%2Fboard%2F102374%2FContents%2Fmatt-salerno–156300548%2F
Thankfully his sense of humor is still intact as well.
I want to once again apologize to Ian Book for the negative things I’ve said about him in the past! Boy did the light switch go on for him this year! It’s big boy Football from here on out and while we’re the underdogs, I really believe we have a fighting chance.
I also want to note that I’ve been on the Javon McKinley hype train for 2 years! Last year when I tweeted that I thought he should get more run Javon’s mom liked my tweet, so that was pretty cool!
This was such a strange game:
At halftime, Ian Book was on pace to throw 56 passes vs. Syracuse.
Matt Salerno had a double-digit yard punt return, and it wasn’t even the most yardage ND gained on a punt in this game (due to the penalty).
Tommy Tremble got down in a defender’s face, pointed at him, and laughed on an ND touchdown. He somehow didn’t get flagged for that.
We averaged 7.1 yards per carry, in a game where it felt like we were pretty poor running the ball…and that 7.1 YPC includes 6 carries for 11 yards by C’Bo and an RB I didn’t know was on the roster.
At one point in this game, Tommy Tremble got tangled up with a defender. They both were being weird, refusing to get off each other, and Tremble decided to just stand up…with the defender hanging on his back…upside down. He was wearing him like a backpack.
I remember seeing that with Tremble. Honestly thought the Syracuse player was about to get hurt lol.
B. Clark out for season with some kind of ACL issue.
Who knows about spring practice at this point anyways, but this is even more reason to potentially dip into the transfer portal for an experienced QB. Clark is by no means experienced but at least has been in the program for a couple of years but if he is not ready to go next summer/fall then we are down to just Pyne and Buchner as the potential starting QBs. That is not an ideal situation.
Is Buchner enrolling early? I seem to think that he is but can anyone confirm?
He is enrolling early. He talked about it during an interview with Pod of Gold.
https://www.ndinsider.com/irishstew/pod-of-gold-qb-commit-tyler-buchner-on-preparing-to-join-notre-dame-next-season/article_4d30bbb7-4214-5e4b-8fd2-c50d4da37547.html
I don’t remember the details so someone else can feel free to weigh in as well, but my memory at one point he was transferring high schools and not planning to enroll early, then COVID canceled the California football season and changed his plans.
OK, well that’s good at least. Hopefully we can have spring practice and the coaches will be able to really make a decision at that point about looking to get a potential transfer.
If Notre Dame doesn’t want 2021 to be a rebuild/reload year, they really need to bring in a transfer QB. Feels like they rarely end up working out, but if only to be a bridge for a few games for Buchner, or give an experienced body in the QB room, they need it.
I don’t think this is true by the way. Here’s what Kelly said:
“Brendon had ACL surgery in high school and that knee has been cranky, so the knee brace is to give him more stability through the rest of the season. Then he’ll get evaluated at the end of the season as to whether there needs to be a procedure cleaning it up or a reassessment as to where he is with with that knee.”
It doesn’t sound promising, he’s wearing a brace again and has knee pain but is not out for the season officially. (Though Pyne playing over him last week might all but officially make Clark out for the season).
But with the brace they’re hoping he can finish the season, and then likely have to get it cleaned up again in Jan/Feb.