Note the 2:30 eastern start time this week, friends.

A little bit of the SEC is coming to South Bend this weekend. I do stress a little bit. The Vanderbilt Commodores return to Notre Dame for the first time since 1995 when the Irish won 41-0 while opening the following season in Nashville in a much tighter 14-7 victory.

Meeting number three takes place this Saturday afternoon as Notre Dame continues its 2018 home stand.

Vanderbilt (+14) at Notre Dame

Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 15, 2018
Time: 2:30 PM ET
TV: NBC
Series: 2-0-0 Notre Dame

Vanderbilt arrives feeling pretty good out-scoring Middle Tennessee State and Nevada by a combined 76-17 scoreline to open their season 2-0 while moving up to 67th in the F/+ rankings, 24 spots better than where they finished the 2017 season.

3 Pre-Game Topics

The Derek Mason Project

This is now Mason’s 5th season with Vanderbilt despite spending most of his tenure on the hot seat. Thus far, his teams are an abysmal 6-26 within SEC play with only one additional Power 5 victory thrown in there, a 14-7 win over Kansas State last year.

It’s been a tough act to follow James Franklin’s pair of 9-4 teams that each finished ranked before Mason arrived from Stanford. There’s some hope that the highly respect defensive mind Mason will improve upon last year’s 34.1 points surrendered against FBS teams and a really poor 43.2 points allowed within conference play. In combination, the Commodores are looking to senior quarterback Kyle Shurmur lifting all boats on offense.

Can the Irish O-Line Re-focus? 

We should see Brandon Wimbush more comfortable running the football and God willing learning from the mistakes made last week. Whatever gameplan was used last week let’s hope it’s been scrapped for the rest of the eternity. The questions up front on the offensive line are a little more complicated.

Quite simply, the line needs a good performance after spending the last 6 quarters really struggling at executing basic blocking assignments. If they put the first 2 games behind them it eases plenty of concerns in hopes the line is beginning to gel under new coaching. If they struggle again, there may not be many answers for this offense in 2018.

Will Irish Fans Break the Internet?

You know how message board forums get flooded with inane posts after watching a couple series from a game? You know how some people thought it ludicrous that PJ Fleck’s teams sport a paddle on their helmet? I present to you Vanderbilt’s massive helmet anchor!

Talk about distracting, I feel like this will take up 40% of the internet bandwidth through the first quarter of this weekend’s game. You can’t play poorly against a team with a gaudy anchor* on their helmet.

*It’s actually pretty cool but should replace their standard helmet logo.

2 Key Opponents

QB Kyle Shurmur

The son of current New York Giants head coach Mike Shurmur he was a low 4-star recruit and one of the top prospects hauled in by Derek Mason. He’s slowly improved as he begins his senior season, raising his YPA by a yard last year, improving his accuracy slightly, while throwing 16 more touchdowns (26) as his interceptions (10) stayed the same from 2016.

In the small sample size of 2018, Shurmur’s season has been very strong putting him just inside the Top 30 nationally in passer rating. At minimum, he’s developed in to a solid college quarterback. The Irish could find out if he’s taken his game to the next level this Saturday.

WR Kalija Lipscomb

Last year, the Alabama defense was able to shut down Lipscomb and hold him to zero catches. In his other 13 games since the beginning of 2017 he’s been a major big-play threat for the Commodores with 51 receptions, 755 yards, and 11 touchdowns.

Lipscomb is a solid 6’1″ and 200 pounds and should offer a challenge to the Irish secondary.

1 Prediction

How much are we liking the bounce back factor from the Ball State game that felt, at least emotionally, like a loss? For the most part, the answer to question should guide any score prediction. If the Irish are locked in and ready to roll this should be a comfortable game in the second half and a likely cover.

Staying on the emotional side of things, I’d actually prefer if this game was in Nashville. Although the recent success of road games isn’t great I’d much rather this team get a little more uncomfortable and off campus for this game after witnessing them completely overlooking Ball State and complacent to a worrisome degree.

To move off the emotional side of the game, there’s a case to be made Notre Dame’s quarterback and offensive line will be so disheveled that even being locked in won’t make things appreciably better. That’s pretty much the nightmare scenario. If that happens, even if this is a close victory, I couldn’t think of another way of being 3-0 and feeling less enthusiastic after how we all felt beating Michigan.

Derek Mason also brought back Jason Tarver to be his defensive coordinator. Tarver was his co-DC at Stanford in 2011 and has been bouncing around the NFL before and after prior to arriving in Nashville. The Commodores are likely pretty poor on defense anyway but they’ve limited MTSU and Nevada to just 3.97 yards per play, one spot worse than Notre Dame in the national rankings. I don’t really agree with the Vanderbilt upset picks but you have to admit if it happens the recipe is kind of right there staring us in the face: Senior quarterback becoming a lot better mixed with a new coordinator making the defense improved without Notre Dame having much scouting on their scheme changes.

I’m expecting a close game. If we don’t see Wimbush running early and often I’ll be shocked. There should be a hard overreaction to saving his legs and body last week, for sure. For the rest of the offense I don’t really know how things will click although I err on the side of not great and won’t be predicting 30+ points any time soon until I see more improvement. Luckily, the Irish defense has been pretty awesome and should be the best unit on the field by far to help gain another win.

Vanderbilt 17

Notre Dame 26