If you are inclined to look at 2017 Notre Dame football as Year One of a reboot – and certainly Brian Kelly has done nothing to indicate it isn’t – then consider the first checkpoint passed.

Notre Dame easily dispatched Temple 49-16 Saturday in a game that was not free of nits to pick; but oh, how nice it is to pick nits after a 33-point win over a pretty decent Group of 5 team, rather than ask big-picture questions like “Are we doomed?” after losing back-to-back home games to terrible Duke and Michigan State teams.

Let’s take a look at a few of the key discussion points. To save time, let’s go ahead and put our “yes, we know, it was Temple with a new coach and a new quarterback” caveat out of the way now so you know it applies to everything.

#RTDBK

If you’ve spent the past four seasons screaming “RUN THE DAMN BALL KELLY” at the TV, today was the day for you. ND ran for 422 yards! Four hundred twenty two! We had three 100-yard rushers! (Josh Adams 161, Dexter Williams 124 – on six carries! – and Brandon Wimbush 106.) Has that even ever happened before? A Twitter search turned up nothing.

ND ran it 44 times to passing 30 with Wimbush. It’s safe to say Chip Long wasn’t blowing smoke up our butts when he said he wanted to run the ball; even though I expect the Irish to pass much more often when they aren’t comfortably leading most of the way, today was a great example of ‘when it’s working, just keep doing it’.

It’s too bad Williams’ pass blocking keeps him from seeing more of the field; the dude runs like a pissed-off wildebeest. I don’t like him more than Adams because the latter is a more complete back, but damn he’s fun to watch. Would love to see his stints last a bit longer.

Wimbush

The talk about Brandon Wimbush for three years has boiled down, basically, to ‘raw, but potentially special’. We saw nothing to change either part of that evaluation today. The raw numbers were not that great; 17/30, 284 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT (a pretty bad one, and he got away with at least one more). But we saw what could make him special too; he continues to be great running the ball, and his TD throw to Nic Weishar was a classic example of an ubertalented guy making a reckless throw and just out-throwing blanket coverage. He also made a very good deep throw to Equanimeous St. Brown that had to be about 4% better to be caught (and maybe should’ve been anyway).

Probably my favorite part of his game today was that he never looked timid. The guy doesn’t have the bluster of the person who was in his shoes two years ago, but he’s every bit as confident.

Elko’s new defense

If you thought Brian VanGorder’s stink could get completely washed off the defense in one off-season, you were sorely mistaken. There were plenty of missed tackles, guys over-running the play, and the same offensive play repeatedly gashing us (let’s hope Georgia doesn’t like throwing bubble screens). But we also saw glimpses of what could be, even on a defense that’s definitely not as athletically gifted as the offense; ND got to the quarterback occasionally, even recording three sacks. They forced a turnover. Most of the time, guys either made the tackle or got help from some friends. Temple only ran for 85 yards and gained 310 overall.

ND’s defense never needed to be great to win most of its games; it just needed to be adequate. It was very much adequate Saturday.

Start strong, finish strong

There were a few ‘2016’ type moments there in the middle of the game where it seemed like ND was going to do that thing where it starts hot, then lets the other team back in the game by any means necessary. (The Wimbush pick in particular, and BTW, Justin Yoon, we really want to like you, so please stop missing field goals.) But the Irish shook them off and ended with a couple of big-time TD drives. Scoring TDs on 4 of the first 5 drives and 3 of the last 4 will probably win you most games.

So there you are. The season is back, and ND looks good (though we’ll quickly get an answer to how good when Georgia visits next week). What could be better than that?

(Photo credit: Indianapolis Star)