Rakes Report #148: May you be in heaven before the Devils know you're dead (The Duke Review)
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1) The beginning of the 2020 Notre Dame opener was a true perfect storm of terrible on offense. You had a game plan that wanted to come out and focus on the run against a defense that was happy to sell out against it. Maybe you’d turn to a veteran receiver to loosen things up over the top but they all departed after last season and the two guys with the most potential as deep threats were injured. You would have taken the spring to build a rapport between your quarterback and new targets except spring ball and much of the offseason was wiped out by a pandemic. On top of that, you had experienced players making mistakes with drops, missed blocks and bad throws. And then as an added bonus the other team got on the board early due to a weird play that was maybe offensive pass interference.
After the game, Brian Kelly said that Duke threw some stuff they hadn’t seen on film at them, which, sure, but you still need to at least run a single successful play in the first quarter.* Blocking wasn’t clean in the early going but Ian Book did not play well, seeming uncomfortable in the pocket and throwing a bad pick in the red zone. It’s tough to feel out these things when the quarterback is skittish and pass blocking is suspect so I’m not sure how to fully evaluate Tommy Rees, but I have a few notes, including: How is the first deep shot of the game coming on the first play of the fourth quarter? Could we maybe turn on the misdirection and play-action a little earlier? Duke came into this game with a top 40 defense in both the SP+ and FEI and some legit talent on the defensive line but that was a rough start.
* Seriously, if you use the success rate metric — 50 percent of necessary yardage on first down, 70 percent on second down, and 100 percent on third and fourth down — Notre Dame hit 0 percent in the first quarter! Literally not a single successful play. But 47 percent in the fourth, which is great to put things away.
But the most important thing: Notre Dame never seem panicked and just kept plugging away with their talent advantage to win their first game of the season and 34th in the last 40 opportunities. If you’re going to work out kinks, work them out at the top of the ACC standings with a zero in the loss column.
2) There was a lot to like on offense once things got rolling. Kyren Williams received the game ball in his first career start after dropping 205 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns. He looked sensational, almost taking a long screen to the house, powering in a goal line carry for a touchdown and making the correct read on a fourth and short that resulted in another score. His feel for the game as a runner and receiver was as advertised (plus he threw in a great block on the touchdown throw) and the Irish appear to have a feature back for the foreseeable future.
Five-star freshman tight end Michael Mayer had a couple plays that made the “Mini-Gronk” moniker being thrown around seem not totally absurd. Chris Tyree got loose on a kick return and run that looked very fun. Joe Wilkins stepped up nicely after Bennett Skowronek injury and should get way more looks going forward. Avery Davis had an awesome touchdown catch where the former quarterback, tailback and defensive back showed off great hand strength. Jafar Armstrong almost scored on a nifty catch and run when Rees finally started using some play-action and misdirection. And after a couple rough plays, Tommy Tremble ended up with five catches for 38 yards and some key blocks, including on the second Williams touchdown.
Taking out the final drive that was just Jahmir Smith running into the line four times for 11 yards, over the final three quarters Notre Dame ran 50 plays for 350 yards for a perfectly acceptable seven yards per play. Final numbers are fine, it’s just that the opening quarter didn’t inspire much confidence.
Additional point on Williams: While we talk about offensive lines making life easy for running backs, running backs can also make offensive lines look a lot better or worse than they actually are. In 2013, Notre Dame had both Martin brothers, Chris Watt and Ronnie Stanley (that’s two first rounders, a second rounder and a third rounder) but finished 53rd in the nation in yards per carry because there wasn’t an elite tailback to really take advantage of what those guys were offering. Hopefully the offensive line and Williams/Tyree duo can make each other look good with some assistance from their quarterback and offensive coordinator.
Additional point on Rees: Tough break when you call a perfect screen pass, your linemen get in position and then the quarterback misses the throw in a fashion that causes the ex-coach color commentator to be audibly pained. It’s Tommy’s job as both offensive coordinator and quarterback coach to get Book ready to play, but the players have to make the easy ones, too.
Additional note on offensive line: Last year, they were really bad at power success, which is converting 3rd and 4th down conversions of two yards and below, ranking 106th at 62.2 percent. On Saturday, they went four-for-five in such situations, which is a nice start. (They ranked 23rd with 78.3 percent in 2018 despite being kind of crappy at other stats, so take that for what you will.) Also, speaking of starts, no false ones on the Irish!
3) Defense was shaky in the first half as they worked off some rust, rotated a bunch of guys and dealt with some questionable officiating, but they stood up when they needed to in the red zone. In the second half, the Duke offense ran just 25 plays for 103 yards and held the ball for only ten minutes and two seconds. Their tailbacks got nothing all game (59 yards on 20 carries) and while Chase “Wait, are we sure this just isn’t Jimmy Clausen?” Brice made some nice throws and found himself in a groove a couple of times, he still was sacked three times, hurried a bunch more, fumbled once and completed just 54 percent of his passes. Clark Lea is just really good at his job.
The best thing about the defense was how many guys stepped up. Kyle Hamilton and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah were one hundred percent as advertised, with Hamilton snuffing out the first drive basically on his own and JOK becoming the human personification of havoc rate. Second-year defensive lineman Isaiah Foskey was terrifying off the edge, echoing a previous holder of his No. 7, while Kurt Hinish was a force in the middle. Both Nick McCloud and TaRiq Bracy made some nice plays at corner and Shaun Crawford had both a fumble recovery and very silly penalty. Notre Dame might not face a legitimately challenging offense until…ummm….Louisville, in their sixth game? So keep holding teams to one touchdown per game between now and then and we’ll be in good shape.
Reports on Hamilton’s injury point to an ankle sprain of unknown severity, which requires a huge sigh of relief after how bad it looked. Unless he is fully good to go in the next 13 days, I think it makes sense to just sit him until Florida State on October 10. If Notre Dame can’t get past South Florida, Wake Forest and Bye Week without him, then we should probably just pack it in for the season anyway.
4) Shoutout to both specialists, as Jonathan Doerer was a perfect 2-for-2 while Jay Bramblett not only pinned the Blue Devils back a couple times but also had the first good offensive play of the game. (A bad punt, however, did set up the lone Duke touchdown.) Transfer Isaiah Pryor was great on punt coverage, JOK started the game with an awesome tackle on the initial kickoff and there was the aforementioned 38-yard Tyree return.
5) Best call of the game: The fake punt, backed up pretty deep in Irish territory, that helped the offense finally shake loose a little. Worst call of the game: What in the world was Kelly doing not calling a timeout at the end of the first half? 40 seconds bled off the clock and the half ended with the Irish a) kicking a field goal as time expired b) on third down c) with a timeout still in their pocket. Unconscionably brutal game management, but thankfully didn’t end up mattering.
6) NBC notes: Good debut for Tony Dungy as color commentator, as he was clearly excited, provided some good insights and wasn’t nearly as chatty as his predecessor. (Not going to criticize him for confusing Tommy Rees and Ian Book, a thing I have done repeatedly.) Loved NBC broadcasting the full RALLY video that was posted to social media prior to the game, which included plenty of Black Lives Matter imagery. Still many race-related issues to be sorted out at Notre Dame as a whole but the athletic department has continued to promote the voices of its players talking about issues that are important to them and should receive credit for that.
7) Winning Is Hard/Schadenfreude Round-Up: Shall we start with our temporary conference brethren? We heard all offseason about how good North Carolina’s offense would be, a unit so talented it would allow them to compete with Notre Dame for the right to face Clemson in the ACC title game. 40 minutes into their opener they were still sitting at seven points against a Syracuse team that is supposed to be one of the worst in the ACC. They eventually put on the jets to win 31-6, but it was ugly going for a while.
At least they didn’t lose at home as double-digit favorites, which is what Florida State did in the first game of the Mike Norvell Era. If you’re going to cram a bunch of people into a stadium during a pandemic, you could maybe not fall to a team that was recently running the triple option but is now not. (Notre Dame is supposed to face the Noles and the beginning of October and the Jackets at the end.) Foskey, Daelin Hayes, Ade Ogundeji and the rest of the crew are probably pretty excited to see that Florida State offensive line come to town.
The best thing about Saturday outside of Notre Dame getting to 1-0 was the Sun Belt going 3-0 against the Big 12. Kansas State lost at home to Arkansas State in a game that was at least competitive (although the visitors were missing a bunch of starters) while Iowa State and Kansas were thumped by Louisiana and Coastal Carolina, respectively. (Texas Tech almost lost at home to Houston Baptist, a Southland team whose stadium is wedged next to a CVS.) Matt Campbell’s last three games: Losing by 10 to a Kansas State squad of roughly equivalent talent, getting immolated by a Notre Dame team of much greater talent and losing by 17 at home to a Sun Belt underdog. Still impressive what he built Iowa State into from the low lows they were occupying in Ames but he’s been unable to take that next step after beating the Sooners in 2018 and nearly upsetting them again last year.
(This section is kinda short now, a thing that will be addressed in a somber conclusion to the edition.)
8) Final takeaway from the opener is just be patient and see how things look in a month. It’s not surprising the offense was a bit of a sloppy shop with so much turnover at receiver and this weird-ass offseason that caused gross football across the country but If Book and the overall attack still looks like this in October, we can have some Conversations. Secondly, last year Notre Dame opened against an ACC team they were supposed to destroy, only won by 2.5 touchdowns and everyone freaked out until we realized actually Louisville was pretty good and that was a nice win. Maybe the Blue Devils are solid with Brice under center or maybe they go out and get torched by Phil Jurkovec next week, so let’s at least wait and see. (Eyeballing their talent and schedule, Duke looks like more of a four or five-win team than last year’s breakout Cardinals squad, but I’ve been wrong before.)
9) A bunch of stuff to plug: I didn’t do a preview email because I felt like doing so would jinx the game into a postponement. I did, however, do a bunch of preview pods so you can get insights on all the freshmen, the offense and the defense from very smart people here. At minimum, you should treat yourself to the Frosh O for offense, which begins with Jamie Uyeyama of Irish Sports Daily talking about the sky-high upside of Chris Tyree and Michael Mayer.
This is from last month, but my friend and fellow ’08 Dillonite Mike Laskey was kind enough to ask me to discuss playing college football amid a pandemic for his column at the National Catholic Reporter. My feelings on this change day-by-day if not hour-by-hour but I think it holds up as a fair and respectful conversation.
Finally, I want to let folks know that our friends at Notre Dame Out Blogger are doing a cool thing this fall. They have put their content behind a Patreon paywall (where you can subscribe for two, five or 25 dollars per month with varying perks and benefits), with all the proceeds being matched and donated to organizations in the South Bend area (including the Center for the Homeless in December to sync up with Christmas Giving, which I really appreciate). Read their reasoning here and sign up here.
10) Somber conclusion you can feel free to skip: I had a non-sports-watching friend who is well aware of my favorite thing in the world text me Saturday afternoon to ask “How happy are you right now?!” and my answer was…moderately? I was excited to watch Notre Dame football and honestly having people angrily text and tweet about the Irish performance was as normal as things have felt in months but this is off. A college football Saturday that doesn’t start with watching Illinois and Iowa trade punts for a quarter and conclude with frustration that I don’t get the Pac-12 Network* before calming down with a cozy Mountain West nightcap feels wrong.
* Not that every Pac-12 and Mountain West team would even get to play right now considering how much of the western portion of the country has turned into a charred nightmarescape with hundreds of thousands of wildfire evacuees and dangerous air quality.
Maybe when the SEC is up and running this will feel more natural, but they’re not bringing weeknight MACtion back as comfort when the days grow shorter and temperatures cool. We saw more games postponed over the weekend and if experts are correct about an autumn surge then how long is this going to last? These players have worked so hard and I hope they can continue playing safely for as long as possible, but unfortunately viruses have no interest in whether or not we get to see the season conclude.
If you visualize a horizontal line representing football-related emotions with the midpoint neutral, the left end the sadness you feel after a loss and the right end the joy after a win, I feel like at this moment for me that line is much shorter, with the normal extremities experienced during the season lopped off. I reserve the right to become more emotionally invested if the season looks like it will be able to continue and the Irish are in the hunt, but right now it’s sort of numb, save for individual moments watching where you can forget about the surrounding circumstances and fist pump at big plays or loudly question why Brian Kelly isn’t calling a damn timeout. It’s a return to normalcy, but in fleeting moments.
(If you’re just unequivocally psyched for the season and want to read some football commentary, I don’t want to bring you down, so for Report purposes I’ll keep this type of rambling at the bottom unless things get really dire.)
That’s it for now, so everybody please take care of yourselves and each other and COVID testing willing I will see you in this space next week to discuss the Irish versus the Bulls and any extraterrestrial visitors that swing by to watch. Every fall I say to cherish every Saturday and I really hope you’re doing that now because this ride could end at any time.
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