As expected, Notre Dame needed to score 40 points to beat USC and just couldn’t get there. On Saturday night, the Trojans alternated between whirling Caleb Williams plays and a calm sense of confidence in their execution to beat the Fighting Irish. By the mid-3rd quarter, USC led 24-7 and it would be too big of a hole for Notre Dame to climb out of in the Coliseum.
USC now heads to the Pac-12 Championship Game while Notre Dame awaits a less-than-desirable bowl bid.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | USC |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 27 | 38 |
| Plays | 52 | 61 |
| Total Yards | 408 | 436 |
| Yards Per Play | 7.8 | 7.1 |
| Conversions | 5/8 | 9/13 |
| Completions | 23 | 18 |
| Yards/Pass Attempt | 12.2 | 10.5 |
| Rushes | 26 | 39 |
| Rushing Success | 62.5% | 62.8% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 2 | 9 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 8 | 4 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 23.3% | 23.0% |
In many ways, it was a weird game that looks a lot more even in some of the stats than portions of the game felt with a handful of breaks going against Notre Dame in a way that couldn’t be overcome. Let’s recap the final regular season game of the first Marcus Freeman season.
Offense
QB: B+
RB: C+
TE: A
OL: B-
WR: B+
Notre Dame was the offense that wanted to hold the ball, limit possessions, and keep Caleb Williams off the field. Well, the possessions were limited but it was mostly because USC’s offense (almost 11 more minutes in possession) remained on the field, not Notre Dame’s unit. That meant only 8 full offensive drives (and 7 really, if we remove the garbage time touchdown possession to finish the game) to keep the game competitive.
It didn’t feel like the Irish had to be perfect but these drives hurt:
Drive #1 – 3 and out to start the game
Drive #2 – Failed 4th down sneak by Mitchell Evans
Drive #4 – Pyne lost fumble on the mesh point
Pyne’s interception on the 7th drive also hurt but that fumble really seemed to close the door for the Irish. Even with it being only the 4th possession for Notre Dame, it was the middle of the 3rd quarter and the Irish would’ve needed well over a point per minute of offense to finish the game after USC would score in response to make it 24-7.
I feel bad for Pyne, but it was difficult not to see something bad happening between the talent discrepancy versus Caleb Williams to turn the tide. He played really well for the bulk of this game!
Again, weirdly, Notre Dame’s rushing success rate looked very strong but was complicated by several factors. One, it wasn’t very strong out of the gate. Two, the team fell behind. Three, possessions were limited so there weren’t many opportunities to eat clock. And lastly, there wasn’t enough explosiveness, particularly from lead running back Logan Diggs whose 66% success rate was watered down by 2.8 yards per rush, and incredibly, only a longest run of 6 yards.
Rushing Success
Diggs – 8 of 12 (66.6%)
Estime – 4 of 6 (66.6%)
Pyne – 1 of 3 (33.3%)
Evans – 0 of 1 (0.0%)
Tyree – 2 of 2 (100%)
Unfortunately, Notre Dame probably should’ve come out passing much more to start the game. They would run the ball on 8 out of the first 10 snaps then saw Pyne come up short on a drop-back 3rd down scramble before the failed Mitchell Evans 4th down sneak. It was 10-0 at that point and the Irish wasted a quarter of football not doing much on offense.
Pyne completed 88% of his passes, threw for 86 more yards than Caleb Williams, and went 2 of 2 for 44 yards with a couple of conversions on 3rd down. There was that failed 3rd down scramble mentioned above, but how crazy is it that Notre Dame averaged 7.8 yards per play, converted 71.4% on 3rd down, and at times the offense felt like it was slowly falling too far behind to win?
Defense
DL: C
LB: D
DB: B
I will be honest, this is kind of what I expected from the Notre Dame defense facing USC. After all, I predicted 38 points from the Trojans and it’s one of those things where it’s more difficult experiencing those points over the course of a game but they have to get the scoring through some ways of beating the Irish.
I know Al Golden and Co. will probably feel like they should’ve done more against the Trojans’ run game. I tend to agree. Their starting running back was out and it felt like maybe this could be an area where the Irish could win. Instead, Stanford transfer Austin Jones put together 16 successful carries and 154 yards on the ground to pace the USC offense.
With Cam Hart and Tariq Bracy out you had to feel like USC was going to get theirs through the air and to watch the Trojans put up 10 explosive runs for a total of 150 yards was really deflating.
Stuffs vs. USC
Bertrand – 3
Foskey – 2.5
Ademilola, Jayson – 2
Kiser – 1.5
Watts – 1
Joseph – 1
Botelho – 1
Henderson – 1
Rubio – 0.5
Brown – 0.5
Still, it’s not like Williams struggled throwing the ball either. He completed 82% of his passes, never threw 2 incompletions in a row, found just enough explosiveness with 136 yards on 6 separate completions, and he was only sacked twice in a game where Notre Dame really, really need 2 to 3 more sacks to turn things in their favor.
If I had told you before the game that no USC pass-catcher would have more than 45 yards I’m sure we all would’ve thought Notre Dame had won! But, Williams spread the ball around to 9 different pass-catchers and Lincoln Riley did a masterful job with this play-calling and scheme to cook up some easy completions against the Irish.
Plus, Caleb Williams made devastating plays with his legs while scrambling to throw in addition to 52 rushing yards and 3 scores.
Final Thoughts
There was some talk pre-game that Irish running back Audric Estime wasn’t 100% healthy, but for some reason it never felt like he was featured in the 1st quarter much at all this season. The stats show Diggs with only 10 more carries in the 1st quarter (with 1 fewer game played) than Estime, though.
USC should have quite a bit of turnover on their roster, especially on offense. Most of the offensive line, both running backs, and Jordan Addison should be gone. I’m sure they will be an attractive destination in the transfer portal to play with the likely reigning Heisman Trophy winner. A quick look at their schedule and they play San Jose State and Nevada out of conference so it’s highly likely USC comes to South Bend next year undefeated.
If that’s the last game for Michael Mayer at Notre Dame he did it in fashion with 8 catches on 9 targets for 98 yards and 2 touchdowns. The same goes for Isaiah Foskey who totaled 1.5 sacks and a forced fumble, possibly in his final Irish game.
Since the Syracuse game, Lorenzo Styles finished the season with 53 receiving yards. Deion Colzie finished with all 192 of his yards.
The Williams OPI call on Xavier Watts, I wonder how the game changes if that ends up an interception? That was also a stupidly risky (Heisman showcase perhaps?) play-call from Riley, in my opinion.
It’ll be a long off-season figuring out Marist Liufau’s game. He barely came off the field against USC and finished with 2 solo tackles and no stuffs. On the season, he had 3.5 TFL and 0.5 sacks in 12 games. That’s insane lack of production given how often he attacks the line of scrimmage.
The 3rd & 20 completion for 12 yards and subsequent play-call from Fowler is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in broadcasting. Even receiver Mario Williams jumped up with the “first down” signal.
One feeling I can’t shake — ACC teams are really, really bad. Like next-level bad. I’m certainly not despondent over this loss — Williams is an incredible, magical player and Riley is a hell of an offensive coach. But, in the back of my mind, I sort of wonder whether ND is piling up wins against garbage. That goes for the post-2016 Kelly era too.
100%. I thought that somewhere between clemson losing to south carolina, unc suckinrhg and whatever the hell the syracuse BC game was last night. The ACC stinks, BK feasted on them and freeman I guess did too. That is why USC being good and having series with ohio state and a&m are so important. ND needs a real sense of where they are. If nd played and beat jaxon dart and usc last night, no one would be thinking of the challenges that still need battled.
I’m glad USC is good and they’re certainly not infallible. ND needs it and freeman needs it. In 12 years BK never emphasized the need for difference maker at qb. His measuring stick was stanford 2010-12 and bama 2012 and he kept them as his measuring stick through to the end. And that’s how you go from book to coan to pyne.
As I said before — SC being good is not a good thing for Notre Dame. We do not need it. We need the opposite of that. We need for them to wander in the wilderness forever so we can have free reign to recruit Mater Dei and St. John Bosco.
The only potentially productive thing from SC being good is teaching ND a lesson about what top-flight offense looks like. Otherwise, this is a terrible development.
Echoing you again. The tendency to have one or the other program have stretches of domination is scary to me, who am traumatized by same. Lots riding on next two years.
To be faaaaiiir, while USC was better last night, Caleb Williams was a star, and we need to learn from this, I do think Riley’s USC is gonna be like his Oklahoma – really good but not great. Like capable of making the playoffs especially in the chaos of the pac 12 (avoiding Washington and Oregon was also a huge help) but it won’t be like having Bama/Georgia on our schedule. More like another Clemson. So I’d rather them still be crappy and worse but I also think they’re going to be beatable
Mater Dei…lol. How many kids from there has ND landed while SC sucked? It’s zero, right?
Yeah, and I think USC has like 7 players right now anyways from Mater Dei, who they mostly still landed even when they sucked, so…
Hasn’t Bama been like killing it in So Cal recruiting, i.e. Mater Dei’s Bryce Young? Might hurt the schools like Bama and Ohio State and (maybe) Texas if USC builds up and keeps more of their players at home more than it would negatively affect Notre Dame all that much, aside from having to play better players.
It’d be nice if USC was like a consistent 10th-20th type of team. Seems like they are either a complete joke/train wreck or a top-5 team and not much in between. Unfortunately now it’s going to be the latter, which sucks for Notre Dame’s strength of schedule, but so it goes.
Yes, but we ALMOST got CJ Williams, so that proves…something
SP+ basically agrees – ND almost never finished in the SP+ at or above its poll ranking in the post-2016 resurgence.
Whereas now Michigan is seeing the results its SP+ status would have predicted in the bulk of the Harbaugh era (2020 excepted).
ND recruiting really hadn’t been that good. The 19-21 classes were ranked 15, 9, 18. That made them clearly second most talented acc team, good enough to whoop in the acc and some bad usc, stanford, navy teams but this team and most of those teams weren’t that talented. With usc good and some heavyweights on the schedule, there is no juking the stats anymore. ND is gonna have to be better, in big games and reflected in SP+
Indeed, a very important part of Michigan underperforming its SP+ from 2015-2019 was having to play Ohio State every year. We haven’t had to do that.
Not to be too dismissive of lincoln but urban, the bosas and chase young ain’t walking through that southern cal door. urban and that ohio state was pretty much the equivalent of pete and the 2000s usc. that ain’t lincoln
Counterpoint is he turned a 4-8 team last year into 11-1 with a potential playoff path and has more elite QB/WR’s on the horizon.
Has a long way to go to get to total Pete Carroll deathstar status, but the first 12 months on the job have them in that type of trajectory. Not saying USC will be instantly re-awakened but Riley has already shown he can use the portal to cover up problems and augment their natural strengths.
Yeah, if I had to wager what will be the #3 program of this decade after Georgia and Alabama I think USC may even be ahead of Ohio State at this point. I liked it better when Clay Helton was coaching them.
It’s going to be interesting. Reilly’s an incredible offensive mind, but his teams at OU seemed to get worse year over year. The number of highly ranked linemen coming out of the west coast is heading the wrong direction, and maybe SC is able to fix that with the transfer portal, or they might be looking at trying to win despite having weaker lines.
I’m not sure I’d include Bama in the next decade. Saban will retire and I don’t know that anyone will keep the Death Star fully armed and operational
He’s never going to get to that point. Riley is a fundamentally different coach from Carroll.
If SC is fortunate enough to skate again next week as they have for most of this season with their insane TO margin, Georgia will beat them by approximately a thousand points next month.
11-1 is 11-1 but this has been a total house of cards. Given the move to the B1G, things may not ever be better for him than they are right now.
Slight aside, rank fan bases from most despondent to least after yesterday:
Ohio st
Notre dame
LSU
Clemson
ineligible: miami, oklahoma
most: ohio state easy. they have to be questioning EVERYTHING.
Clemson: are they done? they cant even dominate the acc and the program is kind of sneakily a mess
LSU: that was rough, now staring down a 4-5 loss season
Nd: probably tied with LSU for least of the 4
BK has made LSU conflicting for me. I was stationed in NOLA and followed them loosely and kind of became a mild fan but, now I want him to lose. But then I want him to make Finebaum eat his words too so… it’s complicated.
LSU: fans can and should feel optimistic based on year 1 rebuild results.
Ohio State: probably depends on what happens next but, oof.
Clemson: more oof.
ND: It was a bad result for us on the field and off, as nearly every one of our meaningful opponents also crapped the bed but, I’m not despondent. I see a team that has some of the pieces to take the next step and a HC that is (at least) focused on recruiting to help fill the gaps. I’m not savvy enough on the X and O to make any commentary on coordinators.
Because I’m a “hold me, I’m Irish” person I do tend to fixate on our negatives, and to be clear, watching our biggest rival and our biggest enemy both likely make the CFP (with the latter seemingly very likely to win a game in the CFP before we do, GD it all to hell) while it’s very clear we are spinning our wheels unless we are either elite at QB or elite literally everywhere else very much sucks!
But, Ohio State might be most despondent as the Buckeyes appear to be very soft under Ryan Day and getting softer every year. Something needs to change. Clemson and ND probably 2 and 3 in some order. Tigers have a lot to fix themselves but have the advantage of no other behemoth in their league to worry about while they try (though FSU is clearly on the come).
LSU shouldn’t be despondent at all. Yesterday sucked butt for them and next week may yet suck more but they saw some major positives this year and appear to be fine long term.
I’m not exactly an optimist either, but good news:
-SC is good, but this isn’t a Pete Carroll program. We can hang with and beat them. Pete Carroll would have won last night’s game 47-10.
-Our problems are easily identifiable and fixable: Upgrade QB. Replace the OC and QB coach. Just doing that will get us to double digit wins on the regular. Add in better overall recruiting, and we’ve got a stew going.
Ah I make my argument above then realize you basically said the same here
The LSU fans I know (quite reasonably, imo) are debating whether they will win two or more natties under Kelly. One is just assumed. They’re pretty happy.
LSU beat auburn with a 7% win expectancy. They were really a 4 loss team. I mean BK is a great coach and lazy recruiter but at lsu that will still mean a lot of talent enough for him to win and presumably big. I would still take saban on the who will win more titles in rest of their career
One thing about LSU is while Kelly can waltz into a top type recruiting class pretty easily – they’re #5 right now – the roster is also already loaded. Previously classes were #7 last year and a few #4s before then. If Notre Dame can consistently pull top 5 classes under Freeman then that means a big step up in on field talent
Kelly was outperforming with not as good recruiting classes. If he can low-effort his way into the same amount of talent as Marcus Freeman is pulling while recruiting 24/7, I’d say BK has very good odds of winning a title at some point in the next 10 years.
Kelly didn’t have to play an SEC schedule before either, which will only get worse with Texas/Oklahoma joining
I feel like each expansion of the postseason makes it harder for Kelly to win a title. He probably could have pulled off a single win against Kansas State in the BCS title game, but running a gauntlet of the SEC championship game and then two or three games against very good teams is too much.
LSU won titles with Les Miles and Ed Oregeron. Brian Kelly is a (much) better coach than those two.
Prime Les, not sure I agree. Coach O is a wild one but the dude managed to have Burrow, who took an all time step up in QB development, and two top ten NFL receivers on his roster at the same time
Yet both Les and DACOACHO have titles and Kelly doesn’t.
Agreed on the coaching point, worse coaches than Kelly have fallen into success just by being at LSU and the natural advantages of the talent/culture on hand that attracts a lot of talent (kinda like the kid Perkins who was a top-10 recruit and already electric. We all know Kelly had little to do with that).
I guess by definition expanded post-seasons make it more difficult to win a title since there are more hoops to jump through, but there’s also an advantage for LSU because it’s easier to make a 12-team playoff than a 4-teamer.
Especially in their division/conference, expanded access/availability to a national championship is a very good thing.
History says that Kelly has a very good chance of winning a natty at LSU if he stays for the next 5+ years. Not a guarantee, but (unfortunately) you have to like his odds.
If Kelly can land the equivalent of Joe Burrow or turn back time to the BCS era, then I’m inclined to agree. Otherwise, not so much.
tOSU is the most despondent, though perhaps for the least viable reason. Still a tough place for them to be in.
I think Clemson should be second, even though they should/could win the ACC their program is on the downside these days.
LSU probably third given general over-reactions. Winning SEC West in Kelly’s first year is very impressive, but it also has to feel empty with three losses. But how many times are they gonna beat Saban?
ND a close fourth at this point. Some soul searching to do, but there’s no real shame at losing @USC, the problems already popped up earlier in the season.
As I watched Williams do his Fran Tarkenton impersonation I was left wondering if he hadn’t barely escaped each time, what would people be saying? A few 10 -20 yard losses might have changed perception of his game. Alas.
Perhaps we’ll see if he can escape Georgia’s athletes.
Eric,
Thanks for the writeup. After the games this year, I have been looking forward to your takes, and the ensuing exchanges and viewpoints from all, like I used to look forward to reading Lou Somogyi’s takes. Which I style as high praise.
So a query: did USC’s ability to run their tailback have anything to do with an ND (Al Golden) effort to avoid getting beat on long passes?
And an observation: the USC QB’s ballhandling skills were really quite good, I thought; they set up his several runs up the middle. .
IMO, the linebackers really struggle at times. It’s really worrisome given Freeman and Golden’s background.
What are the LB’s doing in these clips?
Maybe Jim Leonhard will be looking to stay in the college game after being spurned by UW? (Doubt it’s realistic, but it’s fun to dream). After Elko-Lea-Freeman, there’s some value for a DC on the rise to make a pit stop at Notre Dame.
Yes please
Is Golden on the move already?
Probably not, but ‘challenge everything’ is the Freeman mantra, right? I have no idea if they would push Golden out the door after one year, but if there’s a chance for improvement it’s nice to think they’d consider a bold move an extra expenditure to get there.
I’d be worried about changing the defensive scheme for the fourth time in as many years. I’d give Golden an incomplete for the season; some stuff to like, but a bunch of negatives which might be a scheme problem or maybe just a talent one.
The last sentence is what I’m honing in on. I don’t know if Golden is a problem either, but I’m not hesitant about changing systems again. There won’t be many kids around for four years as it is, whether it’s been two, three or four different systems, what difference does it make?
Is Leonhard’s scheme better? Can he coach ’em up better? Does he recruit better and attract more talent? Is he interested in the job? If those are all yes answers, they should go for it. Obviously, I don’t know if that all aligns, but I don’t think Golden is too good to be upgraded on, if the opportunity presented itself.
You called it out above, but Liufau has basically zero football instincts. It’s hard to believe that Sneed and/or Kollie shouldn’t start next year over him (maybe sliding Kiser inside).
I will say until today I’ve been pretty impressed with Bertrand since the UNC game. Not sure what was going on yesterday.
He looks like he’s still used to bowling over HS kids and never learned that even say Marshall has guys big and strong enough to brick wall him
All he is capable of is crashing into the line and causing disruptions. Zero nose for the ball. Might have a package and value in running downs, but his snaps need to be cut in half next year, at the very least. At best Liufau is a special teams ace type, not unlike a Bauer type.
Yep. And it’d be one thing if he was just a bit undersized and got caught up at the line sometimes, but he goes directly at linemen like he’s going to bowl them over and keep going without getting tripped. This is maybe fine in very short yardage situations. It’s useless on passing downs
Liufau is doing the same thing in these clips that he does every play. Running into and being swallow by a lineman.
I think the most important takeaway from the game yesterday is ND needs to get into the transfer portal and NIL game aggressively. It’s pretty clear that the development-heavy/“our guys” Clemson-type model is not enough to be a serious contender any more.
I really think ND should just lean into its eliteness and make sure that nobody who can get into school and that has an interest in attending has a financial reason to go anywhere else. I don’t think ND will necessarily become *the* transfer destination given location/academics/etc., but everyone who is good and can get in should be offered top dollar to do so.
Does anyone have a good bead on what bowl game we’ll be in and against whom?
Sounds like it’s the Gator Bowl against South Carolina or Mississippi State.
Yikes, I hope not SC who is now on a role it seems and has an explosive offense.
One has to wonder where we would have finished in the Pac 12. Seventh? Behind USC, Utah (beat SC by 1), Oregon, Washington, Oregon State (lost to SC by 3 and beat Oregon), UCLA (lost to SC by 3). We lost to Stanford but beat Cal by 7.
We may well have been playing for the ACC Championship or contended for a division title in the Big 10.
All the discussions have me thinking, as I am AWOL from grading my student AARs from our war game this weekend (no, the French, nor anybody not US, do not have a clue about Thanksgiving). So some points for consideration:
Lot of good discussion here, and I don’t want to derail any of that, so apologies in advance for my ignorance on the transfer portal rules. Lot of names are starting to pop up with intentions to enter the portal. What are the rules regarding contact with those players? Can Freeman and Co. reach out to them now?
McNamara announced his intent to transfer. I assume he’s worth going after, no? Although there seems to be some smoke around Iowa(!!!) with him.
I assume when they announce they’re in the portal, it’s already fair game for teams to use the portal to contact them. (Or it will be as soon as those processes go through and update).
McNamara lost his starting job, I’d like to think Notre Dame can do better. To me, he’s not much more than 6’1 Drew Pyne instead of 5’10 Drew Pyne. If that’s the best option, so be it, but hopefully they can upgrade a little more than that.
That seems like a fair analysis hooks. I don’t know much about him other than what you already said. I agree we really need someone who would move the needle a bit more for us.
From 247
They also track everyone in the Transfer Portal: https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/TransferPortal/
Thanks juice!
Is Golden a good recruiter? He seems pretty replacement level as a DC.
And if anything, a below average developmental coach considering Liufau, Kollie, Sneed were all invisible most of the season, outside one diving interception against a mediocre Syracuse.
All good points. Some personal thoughts. IMO Pyne had an awesome game, exceeding my expectations. Our OLine outperformed USC’s on the basis of pass protection though USC had a good game plan slanting their DLine towards our left side where we usually ran behind. I don’t see USC’s as playing like a Joe Moore finalist. Our LB play sucked.
Wondering if this year USC had come in mid-October would the loss have had the same impact and with a Clemson win combined with a subsequent winning streak, including Stanford, going into the bowl games. USC going to the Pac 12 championship and a CFP spot would be viewed as one of those “good losses” and six weeks in the rear view mirror.
Once upon a time… there was the Big E picks. It be interesting calculation season percentages for those who predicted ND wins/losses on the site. Those interested can post or not their accuracy in predictions. Not too many coaching changes exceeded Freeman’s 8-4 – Kelly (LSU), Riley (USC), Dykes (TCU), Lanning (Oregon), DeBoer (Washington). Three new Pac 12 coaches in such a competitive conference with so many nationally ranked teams. Still most of their (Pac12) successful transfer QBs will be departing.
Swarbrick has quieted the ND to a conference cries, preserved access to bowl games, and was instrumental in formulating the new CFP while recruiting talent to ND continues at a high level to an independent ND. We’ll see about the media deal he is negotiating. I would like us to continue the USC rivalry when they become part of the Big 10 but I can’t see us scheduling them in September.