If the 2022 season starts taking off in a good direction following next week’s open date, we might look back at the second quarter of Saturday’s 45-32 win over North Carolina as a turning point.
The Irish were plodding along through the first quarter, again largely unable to move the ball even against North Carolina’s horrendous defense. But the switch flipped in the second, and ND’s offensive line started moving people around, creating huge holes and opening up the field for Drew Pyne in turn. For the first time since the Marshall disaster, you could squint and see a world where this season can be a modest success.
Competent offense!
It is, of course, impossible to divine how much of Saturday’s success on offense was due to Notre Dame and how much was due to North Carolina, whose defense was so putrid it wouldn’t surprise me at all if their DC, Gene Chizik, got the ax tomorrow. The Heels could literally have ordered their players to get as far away from #3 as possible on Drew Pyne’s wheel-route touchdown to Logan Diggs and I’m not sure he’d have been more open than he was.
That being said, however bad North Carolina’s defense was and is, it’s a mark of progress that the Irish treated their defense like you’re supposed to treat a bad defense. They had no trouble at all moving the ball in the final three quarters unless they stopped themselves (I’m not at all crazy about QB sneaks with Pyne, and Audric Estime handed over a touchdown in the final minutes). Everyone played with total confidence and focus. It was a far cry from last week’s Chinese fire drill in the early going. All coaches involved, certainly including Tommy Rees, deserve kudos for that change.
In the early going, the writers’ room was going bananas wondering why Diggs was playing at all when Tyree and Estime were having so much success. By the end of the game those calls were quieter. Diggs is still clearly the #3 to Tyree and Estime’s 1A and 1B, but there’s a role for him in this offense when it’s clicking, and it was nice to see him looking mostly healthy again.
While we’re gushing over the offense, though…
Until things got weird (I feel like that phrase appears in every ND/North Carolina recap), the ND defense played a near-perfect two and a half quarters. From the get-go, the Irish made Carolina one-dimensional by stuffing the run. (Even counting the requisite QB scrambles, ND allowed only 66 yards on the ground, about 2.5 yards per carry). Drake Maye got his at times, but forcing the Heels to the air proved fruitful as the front line was able to get a push fairly often, even creating the first defensive turnover of the season to open the third quarter. Rylie Mills stood out with two sacks, and at times even the beleaguered Irish linebackers got in on the fun with some strong tackling.
Things certainly weren’t totally clean, as JD Bertrand managed to get himself tossed out of another game for targeting and the secondary was susceptible to a few big plays. But hey, the Heels move the ball on just about everybody, so you can forgive some of that when you drop 45 points and are never seriously threatened in the second half.
Drew Pyne
If ND can win with Drew Pyne at quarterback, this is how. Tremendous running success made things very easy for Pyne under center, and he made some really nice throws in response. He also showed poise and made good decisions when he took off – his third-down scramble for a first down early in the game was a low-key important moment in the game as ND found its footing offensively. For a guy who was inspiring conversations about Steve Angeli two weeks in a row in the first quarter, things seem to be headed in the right direction for him, which is much-needed.
Sloppy finish
Clean it up, guys. Estime fumbling at the goal line, the secondary falling asleep on 4th and 21 and some silly penalties made what should’ve been a 52-20 win much more irksome than it should have been. I’m glad these are the kinds of complaints I have after this one, though. I’m also fine blaming this on North Carolina, which, man oh man are they an undisciplined team. How about two different late hits out of bounds that took place beyond even the white paint of the sideline area? I’m sure their head coach flipping his lid on the sideline about a flag has nothing to do with that.
ND has made it to the bye week. Not stunning they are 2-2, but a bit surprising this is how they got there. Things get interesting in the next game against a similar high-flying offense, the BYU Cougars.
-I know it’s a rule no one can ever give Rees credit for much of anything — and make no mistake he was playing on easy mode today against that defense — but it was a great gameplan and well-called game. Having the o-line dominate helps make the OC look good, but the misdirections and play actions and fake pitches really had UNC on their heels (no pun) and opened up everything. Rees did a masterful job today.
-I don’t get what Bertrand was supposed to do. Loved Orlovsky going off on the call: he was right, it was ridiculous. It’s a 6’1 guy with great tackling form (leading with his head up) and drilling a 6’5 guy. There’s some contact high but the head was not the emphasis, and Bertrand did not launch into “targeting” anything, he was making a common collision tackle. I get erring on player safety, but that’s a terrible result. If he was going in with the crown, I would get it, but that was just rotten to uphold.
-From being a Steelers fan, Bill Cowher would take pride in “taking the air out of the ball”. Get a lead, and grind it out. ND did that today, and proudly so. Everytime UNC got close, they would just take over on the ground. I thought Estime looked totally gassed when the zoomed in on him at the end and then he coughed it up. No biggie in the grand scheme of things, but considering Tyree scored from the goal line and even Diggs was effective on the interior, I would hope Rees and Freeman learn a lesson about rotation there more than finishing. No need to run a guy past the point of failure when you can accomplish it with a substitution.
-It got closer towards the end, but from the time this was 38-14, it was over. Who knew we would ever have a fun game this season where the Irish would just have their way and look good? I didn’t expect that much success or easy feeling. Especially with the left side of the OL getting on track, dare I say the Marshall game looks like the outlier and they probably should still win a lot more games this season (not that I’m expecting 9 or 10 as a total).
I agree on the targeting call. That was a nothingburger, but for whatever reason, the refs decided they wanted to be the stars of the second half.
I’m not convinced that should have been targeting, but you can’t unload on a defenseless receiver these days. I think that would have been a personal foul in the NFL too.
Didn’t they pass a rule that the targeting can be looked at after the game and if overturned the player can return the next game? Or was that rule passed for next year?
Yes, this is in effect. Submit a request to the NCAA national coordinator of officials for review and it can be overturned.
It’ll be an interesting test case for sure then.
576 yards of offense! Very good for sure. Even if NC has horrible defense (as Eric pointed out in his pre-game article), the offense was exceptional. Does Tommy Rees get a pass for the time being?
Are Mack Brown teams notorious for lack of discipline? Granted the NC team is young but their discipline was unimpressive. Coaching leadership is to blame.
Did the officials call the game a little too tightly…especially, the end zone celebration penalty on Green?
Comfortable road win.
ND is improving much faster than I expected. We’re already at the point where most mistakes are fixable instead of fundamental. Not only can the offense do basic things consistently, we’re actually developing a bit of a downfield passing threat, which I thought might never happen with this team. Pyne, Mayer, and Estime had excellent games today, even with the fumble. And credit where it’s due – Tommy called a very good, logical, effective game today. We are so much better when we’re not behind the chains.
Not too worried about the defense, although I would like to see Golden dial back the aggression a bit.
Not to be a sore winner, but my god, UNC is annoying. They don’t even try to run the ball or play defense, so the game takes forever. Their passing attack is largely useless unless a WR is a mile open. They whine for flags and then throw a fit when they get called for anything. They’re as doughy soft as their coach. I thoroughly enjoy watching ND grind this team into little blue particles of dust and humiliate them, which we did today.
Also lol Miami.
RBs were on track for an A+ game until that Estime fumble. Also, I wonder if we would have beaten Marshall if Patterson were 100% in that game. Realizing UNC’s defense is godawful, the line has looked *so* much better the last two games, presumably as Patterson has healed up.
8-4 seems plausible now, which I would not have anticipated.
Also, writers should join the plebe Slack during the games imo. We want the good takes!
I heard Mike Golic, Jr a few weeks ago talk about how HH’s techniques and what he wants from his guys take a little bit to get used to. So I wonder if that is part of the slow OL start and that as they get more used to HH’s coaching, they will take off (even against good teams).
And agreed 7 or 8 wins is very reasonable. Though I am more worried about Syracuse than I had been. Their QB has played pretty well so far apparently.
I watched them against UVA on Friday night. They’re decent, but their offense strikes me as barely controlled chaos and I think better defenses will turn them over a lot. Maybe not great news for us since turnovers are not our defense’s thing, but Syracuse is not exactly a well-oiled machine.
Seems like Cuse’s QB had great games against Louisville and unconn, but he’s been more average the last two games.
Really good QB play is the thing I’d least like to go up against. I don’t think Cuse is going to be great, but if we’re an 7-5/8-4 type team, they could turn out to be like a 9-3 type team and be better than us (with especially good QB play anyway). But we’ll know a little more before they play us since they have NC state and Clemson before us.
Unrelated: Check out BC against FSU tonight.
Guess we won’t be getting any Jurkovec Was Wronged articles for a while.
Yea, he hasn’t been good this year at all.
His offensive line is brutally bad. He’d be better off behind five moderately sized stationary rocks than those imbiciles.
One other thing — THAT IS WHY WE DEFER IF WE WIN THE TOSS. The game was effectively over like 5 minutes into the third quarter because we did that and followed a FG at the end of the second quarter with two touchdowns early in the third. Thank god Freeman is not as stubborn as Kelly about this.
Belichicking another team was pretty sweet, that’s for sure.
It was a fun watch, but all the reasons for the win:
These are all wrong. The real reason is
Freeman & Manti Front Page Pic > than Freeman & Starbucks Front Page Pic
Need to find a D Advisor or Asst Coach Role for Manti