It’s been 9 years since South Florida’s insane first-ever game against Notre Dame. A lot has changed since that 5 hour and 59-minute debacle brought us perhaps the weirdest game in school history. Brian Kelly has remained in South Bend but USF has since fired Skip Holtz, Willie Taggart, and Charlie Strong. They return to northern Indiana this weekend with first-year head coach Jeff Scott.
The soon-to-be 40-year old played at Clemson in the early aught’s and became the Tigers’ receivers coach 6 years after graduating in 2008. In 2015, Scott was given the co-offensive coordinator title and was on board for the best era in school history. After having his name floated for numerous jobs in recent years, he finally took the USF job where he picked up his first career victory last week against Citadel.
South Florida (+25.5) at #7 Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2020
Time: 2:30 PM ET
TV: USA
USF has been an interesting program stretching back to their Big East days where they won 8 or 9 games every year from 2006 to 2010 and were routinely discussed as one of the top growing smaller programs. Since joining the American Conference in 2013 their results have been all over the map. They steadily improved in the league culminating in a 11-2 season, followed that up with 10-2 in 2017 in Strong’s first season, but faltered to 11-14 overall and 5-11 in the AAC from 2018-19.
The Bulls remained largely untapped potential, especially in recruiting. They’ve finished nationally ranked in 66th, 76th, 65th, and 77th place before falling to 109th in 2020 during a coaching transition. There’s hope that Jeff Scott can quickly invigorate the program and use his offensive chops to improve that side of the ball following a dismal 2019.
USF’s Offense
South Florida has been wandering in the quarterback wilderness since the impressive Quinton Flowers graduated following 8,124 passing yards, 3,672 rushing yards, and 112 touchdowns in his career. Our old friend and former Notre Dame commit Blake Barnett won the starting job in 2018 and played decently on their way to a 7-0 start. But, the Bulls lost their 6 games of the season and have been a mess offensively ever since.
Barnett came back for 2019, quickly lost the job, and had season and career-ending ankle surgery.
USF went into 2020 with a 3-way quarterback battle including Barnett’s replacement Jordan McCloud, plus North Carolina transfer Cade Fortin and Alcorn State transfer Noah Johnson. Against Citadel, McCloud started and saw most of the reps while Johnson was inserted occasionally and Fortin was held out and not active. The Bulls also gave some playing time late to true freshman Katravis Marsh.
We’re likely to mostly see McCloud–a redshirt sophomore and little brother of former Clemson and current Buffalo Bills receiver Ray Ray McCloud–under center on Saturday unless something drastic changes in their gameplan. Extremely generously listed at 6’0″ and 193 pounds, McCloud has shown flashes of being a good runner but has struggled to develop as a passer.
Not officially listed at 5’9″ 163 pounds.
USF only ran 64 plays against triple option Citadel last weekend but on the 5 series with McCloud at quarterback they scored one touchdown with a turnover on down, missed field goal, and two punts. The offense generated only 4.75 yards per play and McCloud finished with just 68 passing yards on 16 attempts.
In Johnson’s 3 series, the Bulls scored 2 touchdowns as the quarterback accumulated 73 yards of offense on his own. If McCloud starts as expected and struggles we will probably see Johnson come in sooner rather than later.
Their ground game could be pesky to deal with. In addition to the diminutive McCloud, USF really likes junior Johnny Ford (5’5″ 172 lbs) and sophomore Kelley Joiner (5’9″ 179 lbs) at running back. Ford missed nearly half of 2019 but had a big freshman season. These two combined for 158 yards on 17 carries last weekend. If McCloud isn’t the smallest quarterback Notre Dame has ever faced, surely this will be the smallest combined backfield.
The biggest issue for USF is their offensive line which was pretty bad last year giving up 45 sacks and 85 tackles for loss. Despite the 302 rushing yards against Citadel, the Bulls still allowed 3 sacks and 11 tackles for loss overall. They were also missing 3 offensive line starters in the opener and it’s possibly COVID related.
If USF can’t protect their quarterbacks this could get ugly, even if their speedy backfield makes an occasional play. Clark Lea has shown repeatedly that he will devour a one-dimensional offense. For example, the Bulls’ leading returning receiver from last year, Randall St. Felix, caught 4 passes in the opener for 7 yards. That’s with a long of 8 yards! Even the short-passing game and screens haven’t been working well at all behind this line.
USF’s Defense
New defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer was the long-time DC at Oklahoma State (2011-17), spent 2018 at Charlotte, and last year with Lane Kiffin at FAU. He’s installed a base 3-4 scheme which he found success using against the pass-heavy Big 12 offenses. The Bulls have decent size up front but a very small secondary–I would expect the Irish to utilize plenty of heavy sets with tight ends and try to overpower their opponent this weekend.
USF has also been dealing with plenty of depth issues, what with COVID, injuries, and the natural attrition from a new coaching staff.
Last year, the defense was quite aggressive finishing with 99 tackles for loss (tied for 15th nationally). They picked up 7 TFL in their opener against the triple option and will likely try to stay aggressive against Notre Dame on early downs.
Linebackers Dwayne Boyles and Antonio Grier are their biggest playmakers. Grier especially had a big game against Citadel with 10 tackles and a sack. Their front is also boosted by Wofford grad transfer DT Thad Mangum who debuted with 9 tackles and a tackle for loss.
The Bulls secondary is reasonably experienced and pretty solid. Obviously, Citadel’s offense didn’t pose much of a challenge in this regard but I wouldn’t expect any part of USF’s defense to be a pushover.
Prediction
Needless to say, both of these programs are in far different places than back in 2011 when each side were breaking in promising second-year head coaches. Today, Brian Kelly is an elder statesmen in South Bend and Jeff Scott is brand new blood for USF.
That fateful day back in 2011 saw the Irish lose as 10-point favorites at home. This weekend, Notre Dame comes in as whopping 25.5 point favorites. Now, here are my 3 questions as we approach Saturday:
1) Can Charlie Weis Jr. craft a winning gameplan upon his return to Notre Dame Stadium?
Oh, you haven’t heard? Yes, you have. Charlie Weis Jr. will be back in South Bend where he grew up as a teenager as his father coached the Fighting Irish from 2005 through 2009. Weis Jr’s first job came as a offensive quality control assistant at Florida in 2011, then he spent 3 seasons as an undergrad team manager assistant at Kansas under his father before moving on to Alabama as an offensive analyst for 2 seasons. In 2017, he was an analyst for the Atlanta Falcons then spent the last 2 years as the offensive coordinator at FAU under Lane Kiffin.
Memories…
The 27-year old is going to have his hands full this weekend. His offensive is severely over-matched and needs to show some semblance of a competent passing game in order to allow their running game some room to breath. It’s likely to be an unhappy return for Weis, Jr.
2) Will Good Ian Book make his return to Notre Dame Stadium?
The good news for Ian Book is that his floor remains pretty steady. Even his bad games where he deservedly doesn’t play well as he did against Duke aren’t that full of struggles. The bad news is that he’s yet to show he can raise his ceiling considerably and the opener last Saturday provided us with a lot of the same bad habits that plagued him at times last year.
He enters Saturday in a quietly precarious situation. If he doesn’t put together a solid performance at minimum he’ll start to feel pressure internally just the way he acutely senses it too much in the pocket. It would take a serious multi-game drought with a couple losses to even think about replacing Book–so he shouldn’t feel that much pressure in that regard–but if he wants to go out with a bang things need to improve from the Duke game.
3) Can the Irish build some confidence at the receiver position?
Perceived No. 1 receiver Braden Lenzy is slated to make his return to the lineup this Saturday. Although, if he’s truly coming off a hamstring injury it may be foolish to expect him to play 60+ snaps against USF. Either way, we will see if more trust can be built with the receivers at large.
Last week, the tight ends and running backs were targeted so often that it seemed like Rees & Co. weren’t too interested in getting the receivers involved without Lenzy. Maybe this changes the more reps the offense can get together?
***
At first, glance, I thought this weekend’s spread was far too high for an opponent with a decent-to-good defense and Notre Dame working through some issues with their receivers. Then I checked myself and reaffirmed my faith in Clark Lea drilling down hard on USF even if star safety Kyle Hamilton is held out nursing a sprained ankle.
I also realized the Irish won 5 games just last year by at least 25 points and during the Kelly era are averaging nearly 3 big wins of this nature per year. If it’s going to happen, realistically this is one of the best bets of the season. Sorry, Charlie.
TV:
NBCUSAHaven’t had to edit the “Home_ND_Preview_Template” file in a while.
So, so true.
Also, fire Swarbrick.
Was the USA network thing this Saturday due to the U.S. Open on NBC or because of a contract deal with NBC allowing them to put 1 game each year on an affiliate? Or I guess it could be both…
In years past there seems to always be one game on NBC sports network so I wonder if the USA thing is the same deal.
Maybe USA ran out of Harry Potter marathons.
So ironic that USA is running Harry Potter marathons. He’s not even American!
I think it’s odd they didn’t just move it over to NBC Sports Network – curious what they’ve got going on a Saturday afternoon that would get more eyeballs.
Premier League is on at 3 PM which we should bump out of that slot but the ratings will probably be close since we’re not playing a good team.
Agreed. But to be totally honest, we’re lucky the game is just on a broadcast network and NBC didn’t put it on their streaming Peacock service.
As much as we all occasionally gripe about BK, it is kind of nice for the ND program to have had some consistency and a large number of winning seasons — this pops out when reading about a school like USF on their 4th head coach in the same time period.
I will be very disappointed if the aliens don’t visit us again. Between an early kickoff and faster than light travel, they’ll have plenty of time to get to dinner in Chicago.
they’ll have to visit again, can’t watch from home since USA isn’t part of their package
Feels like another game where it may take the defense a second to adjust to a very different offense, and one of their tiny fast guys could break a decent one, and then we will clamp down and dominate.
Their aggressiveness defensively (which they’ll need to stop the run at all) seems like it will open things up for Lenzy + the screen game
ND will stick to their two TE sets and I think we’ll see a little better cohesion between Book and the TE’s and RB’s in the short pass game. Kelly has stressed a better start and he’ll get one. I expect a much better performance.
ND’s DL will devour the USF Oline injured returners or not. The LB’s were good last week after their own slow start, we’ll see improvement there as well. Not much of a passing threat from USF. They move the ball late vs. 2nd and 3rd teamers.
ND 44 – 13
I’m kinda worried about their diminutive backfield. Not actually sure if there is much evidence to back this up but I feel like little guys have torched us before (Javian Hawkins, Brandon Radcliffe from UofL in recent years)
I’m more worried that our defense might decapitate one of the little dudes.
Does anyone else get weirded out when ND is getting +20 or more on the spread? I think I may be paranoid, and good point on the Irish winning by 25 or more 5 times last year; my suspicion is probably a “me” problem hedging my emotional bets for a mid 2000s slugfest. My gut has a lot of Louisville 2019 vibes here, but it sounds like USF doesnt have the talent (or scott satterfield) that UL does.
In Lea I trust, crush these nerds, go IRISH!
It’s tough to shake that feeling. I saw an ESPN bottom line stat that ND was 3-0 last season at covering the spread when -20 or better, a streak broken since they didn’t cover on Duke (though coulda/shoulda with a little more effective offensive play).
Even Louisville, after 2 possessions for each team it was 14-7 UL and then the rest of the way Notre Dame outscored them 28-3. They pretty much got on track after a little bump in the road early to figure out how to defend them and that was that.
But slow starts have been an issue in general, and doubly so as big favorites. The defense usually adjusts and performs really well, the offense is more often to slog through it. Tough to cover a big number if it’s close at halftime.
FWIW, Sagarin thinks very very little of USF, and thinks we’ll win by about 28. Not much data in his model yet, of course, but Vegas is not the only who thinks this won’t be close.
No. We crap on bad, overmatched teams now.
Felt bad for that poor punter.
Until he earns a new nickname Jordan Botelho The Punter Hunter.
The first hit, before the other bad snap block and TD, was hard.