Rakes Report #241: Soon as I was better, I was movin' on. Gettin' it together, gettin' good and gone (The Bye Week Review)

Notre Dame picked a good weekend to sit it out as a wave of carnage hit the sport.

~optional musical accompaniment~

I was not planning on doing a newsletter this week. Initially, there was an idea of putting together some thoughts on the Notre Dame football season after five games, how excited I am to have Olivia Miles back and an incredible recruiting haul for Micah Shrewsberry. But then on Saturday I woke up very early to go to Happy Valley and watch a classic Big Ten matchup with UCLA coming to town. After the lack of sleep, abundance of sun and a few beverages I figured I’d take Sunday off.

That plan became untenable as Saturday turned into one of the most Winning Is Hard days we’ve ever had, so here we are. For new readers who haven’t heard this spiel yet or old ones who have forgotten, the entire point of Winning Is Hard is not whataboutism to make excuses for Notre Dame when they fall short of our expectations. It’s to remind everyone that this is an incredibly stupid sport where incredibly stupid things happen every week and that each victory should be savored because you don’t know when the next one is going to come. 

If you’re busy on a Saturday and only watch Notre Dame games, you might see something disappointing or boneheaded and think “Wow, only the Irish, we’re so cursed.” False. That’s how college football works. This is also meant as a corrective when Notre Dame wins but folks believe it’s maybe not by enough points so they spend the week sullen and whiny anyway. Well, you only get twelve of these every fall, it was a successful game by the only metric that matters and you still don’t seem to be enjoying it. Might be time to reconsider how you approach your hobbies.

This term sometimes makes people really mad but I don’t get that because what’s the argument against it. Do you think this is easy? How could you think this is easy?! I know some credit its origins to Brian Kelly, but I don’t recall him using it regularly when I dropped it in one of the earliest editions of this newsletter. I vividly remember being at a bar in Charlottesville following Notre Dame’s escape in a game they should have dominated when the backup quarterback (who came in after the starter who’d been perfect in Week One broke his leg) threw a last-second bomb to Will Fuller. The general mood was glum despite the 2-0 start -- oh, woe is us.

If there was a single game most responsible for inspiring this belief system and therefore being most representative of it, it’s the one that was on that night that put Notre Dame winning in dramatic fashion — but still winning — in perspective. Butch Jones’ Tennessee Volunteers, Offseason Champions™, hosting Oklahoma in a Top 25 matchup. They were up 17-0 in the second quarter and ready to ascend to another level as a program with a breakthrough win but they instead blew that lead and lost a heartbreaker on Rocky Top in double overtime. Jones would coach for a couple more seasons in Knoxville, but I think the loss to the Sooners was a key turning point.

The karmic bill for kicking back and enjoying the misfortune of others to such a degree may come due as soon as Saturday, but let’s take a stroll through what transpired.

No. 1 Alabama: 24-point favorite at Vanderbilt and allowed the Commodores to secure the first Top 5 win in program history via an early pick six and being unable to get Diego Pavia and his offense off the field. What a monster game for Clark Lea, whose tenure was looking a little staid going into Year Four, and what a disastrous hangover for the Tide after their win last week. The Tide dominated this game statistically except for EPA per dropback (Pavia was in the incredible 99th percentile) and 3rd down success rate, which led to a massive time of possession edge. Postgame Win Expectancy for the Commodores? 1.8%. That’s approaching 2011 South Florida levels. Tough loss for Kalen DeBoer, who still has road games in Knoxville, Baton Rouge and Norman.

No. 3 Ohio State: Only led Iowa 7-0 at the half, but then scored touchdowns on their next four drives to win comfortably. Feels weird to even include them in this company but Buckeye fans seem to be feeling iffy about Will Howard at this point – will see how he fares in Autzen. 

No. 4 Tennessee: When Notre Dame fans complain about transfer quarterbacks, the kind of guy they’re imagining instead is Nico Iamaleava, a 6’6” sophomore who was a top-three recruit in his class. Well, sometimes even that doesn’t work, as the Volunteers scored only 14 points at Arkansas and the game ended with Iamaleava running out of bounds at the Hogs’ 16-yard line. He’s an insanely talented quarterback who could absolutely end up winning the SEC (still in play for this year!) and going at the top of the draft but imagine how you would feel if the final play didn’t even involve a try to the end zone. Arkansas did this with their backup quarterback after an injury to the starter at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

No. 7 Penn State: Started real slow against UCLA and never kicked it into any kind of gear. Curious how Drew Allar looks on the road against the Trojans on Saturday because he was missing open guys. Also they somehow don’t have enough signal boosters in the area for the crowd nor wifi at Beaver Stadium so it was tough to track other games in the noon slot. Beautiful day in State College, though, and a lot of fun. If you’ve never been to a game there, the scale lives up to the hype, particularly with surrounding fields full of RVs and massive tailgating spreads. (My friend bought a parking pass that got us a nice spot next to a farm equipment shed.) I will note for 110,000 people, there was a lot of sitting and relative quiet as a four-touchdown home favorite in a day game, but they did crank it up at times. Probably the biggest advantage Penn State has over Notre Dame is you can stop at Sheetz on your way into town.

No. 8 Miami: Needed a 25-point rally and some more grace from ACC officials to survive their trip to Berkeley. Maybe they’re just charmed and this will continue all season or maybe the tab is going to get called in bloody fashion at some point but rather have two skin-of-your-teeth-and-also-sketchy wins than any kind of loss.  

No. 9 Missouri: Got absolutely maimed by Texas A&M in their first road game of the season. This team was looking a little sweaty against Boston College and Vanderbilt but this was a disaster. Very Sad Field Goal at the end of this, kicking from the six-yard line on fourth and goal to get to double digits and only lose by 31.

Due to the nature of their schedule, the Tigers could still pile up some wins, but it might take winning in Tuscaloosa to get a playoff bid. Oh and in a weird twist, Conner Weigman looked a lot better when he wasn’t going against a Mike Mickens secondary. Also worth noting the Aggies had six sacks, five more than they had the previous time a ranked team visited them this season.

No. 10 Michigan: Fell down 14-0 early at Washington but came roaring (mmm, actually, what’s a really slow-paced version of roaring?) to take a 17-14 lead into the fourth quarter. Didn’t score after that and lost by 10, trotting out their third quarterback of the season. Wolverine passing game was a combined 13 of 25 for 113 yards, one score and a killer pick late. Surviving the last two weeks at home prevent a calamitous season here but still plenty of potential losses out there.

No. 11 USC: This was a really interesting game in that I learned my distaste for P.J. Fleck is such that even when it seemed like he was about to get screwed over to the benefit of the Trojans I was still just smiling serenely. However, the Gophers prevailed on a replay review and Miller Moss for the second time in as many Big Ten road starts could not come through with a final-minute touchdown drive. This was a single-digit spread but effectively kills any hope of Southern Cal slipping into the Big Ten title game. Here’s a fun fact: Lincoln Riley is 22-10 through 32 games as the USC head coach. Clay Helton was 23-9. 5-7 in the last dozen for Riley, going to be a lot of pressure on Notre Dame to not lose the finale.

No. 22 Louisville: In theory, Irish fans should have been rooting for the Cardinals and I would have appreciated a win here but I didn’t love some of the tone out of last week that if not for a couple bad breaks the team that was gifted two fumbles and had a bunch of insane catches would have definitely won. Louisville rallied to tie it from a 24-13 halftime deficit but couldn't score late down 34-27, a sack on first down from the Mustang 12 eventually leading to a 4th and 17 interception. Their next four games are at Virginia, Miami, at Boston College and at Clemson, none of which seem particularly fun.

No. 25 UNLV: The Running Rebels got ranked for the first time in school history and got a feature Friday game on FS1 to show off their undefeated squad. As a touchdown favorite against Syracuse and holding onto a late lead, they neglected to pull in multiple Kyle McCord interceptions thrown their way (imagine) and eventually lost in overtime.

The chaos didn’t stop with the numbers. Let’s dive into Also Receiving Votes because honestly this entire damn poll got cleared out from top to bottom despite a number of Top 25 teams also being on a bye.

No. 26 Arizona: The Wildcats pulled off a rare feat and won in Utah last week, giving them a huge early bump in the Big 12 race. They gave that right back on Saturday night at home to Texas Tech. To be fair, the Red Raiders are 5-1 and 3-0 in league play, but that’s a huge win squandered.

No. 29 Boston College: The Eagles had a 14-6 lead going into the fourth quarter in Charlottesville but were outscored 18-0 to close. They only need two more wins to make a bowl but there’s nothing in the way of gimmes remaining on their schedule [home: Louisville, Syracuse, UNC (this is approaching “gimme” status, to be fair), Pitt, road: Va Tech, SMU] so could prove costly.

No. 30 Iowa: Scored 7 points at Ohio State.

No. 31 James Madison: The undefeated Sun Belt darling and potential 12 seed was a 16-point favorite at Louisiana-Monroe and was cruising at 10-0 after a quarter but the WarHawks stormed back.

No. 32 South Carolina: Non-competitive at home against Ole Miss. Unless Shane Beamer pulls off two wins against the group of Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Clemson they will go without a bowl for the second straight year. That doesn’t seem impossible, but won’t be easy.

No. 33 Oklahoma State: If the Cowboys weren’t here they were still going to get their own section because losing two straight games and responding by trailing 31-7 at home against a struggling West Virginia team is a disaster. Missing a bowl in play after ten wins last year. This might be the single worst performance of a chaotic day?

No. 34 Rutgers: Suffered first loss of season 14-7 in Lincoln. Nothing shameful about this, sometimes you lose an ugly football game on the road but now have a little bit of pressure at home against Wisconsin on Saturday to not let this spin out.

Florida State lost at home to Clemson by 16 points to fall to 1-5. They were not receiving votes and could be out of bowl contention by the time they come to South Bend (at Duke, at Miami, home against North Carolina before the trip). Undefeated Duke lost at Georgia Tech. This happened in UConn/Temple. Tulane put 71 on Trent Dilfer and UAB. What a day.

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The schadenfreude and rubbernecking is fun on its own, but this level of bloodletting is also relevant to the rest of this Notre Dame season. My assumption prior to this weekend was that a Fighting Irish team finishing 11-1 would be in the playoff but hosting was going to be a little dicey at best. Now? Things are clearing out and up. The teams in front of Notre Dame are going to lose a bunch, both because they have so many games against each other and because there are a lot of flaws that will allow for more upsets. Combine that with the A&M win looking like it’ll carry a lot of weight (next big game in College Station: LSU on Oct. 26) and things are looking up.

Speaking of “a lot of flaws that will allow for more upsets,” we are far from guaranteed that Notre Dame will win its next seven but it remains a possibility. To hit on a couple brief positives and negatives before we go, I’m going to quote a large chunk from Jamie Uyeyama’s 6 Thoughts column from last week. This is discussing the Irish offense being 39th in Havoc Rate¹ allowed despite starting a true freshman at left tackle and rotating linemen elsewhere. Emphasis is mine:

Leonard deserves a lot of credit for his ability to avoid pressure and avoiding turnover worthy plays. Out of all the dropbacks Leonard has been pressured, he’s only been responsible for 2.9% of those pressures. That’s tied for the eighth lowest percentage in the country. He’s also tough to tackle as are Notre Dame’s backs, who gain a lot of yards after contact.

Leonard’s turnover-worthy play percentage is also only 2.0% according to PFF. The bad pick against Northern Illinois sticks out like a sore thumb, but it wasn’t foreshadowing what we’d see from him in the future.

The players deserve credit and the coaches deserve credit too. Everyone wants to run their system and have players adapt to it. Notre Dame isn’t in a position to do that on offense, though. Maybe they’ll be ready to do more of what Mike Denbrock envisioned during the rest of the season, but he’s doing his best to give his players a chance to succeed now.

In Notre Dame’s loss to NIU, they dropped back to protect on true pass sets (no play-action, no quick game, no moving the pocket, no screens) 25 times. That was the only game Leonard had multiple turnover-worthy plays as a passer. In the four other games, they protected on true pass sets 12, 10, 11, and eight times in their most recent game against Louisville.

Two major things:

1) Sometimes it’s difficult to appreciate the absence of something as a positive. There have been plenty of criticisms of Riley Leonard, but the fact he is doing such a great job avoiding negative plays like sacks and turnovers allows this offense to skirt getting in too big of holes. It’s glaring when a quarterback isn’t getting rid of the ball or getting rid of it to the wrong players, but when they’re avoiding that you can get lulled into thinking that’s the natural state of things instead of a real skill that’s helpful for winning. If Leonard’s deal the rest of the way is mixing an avoidance of bad plays with a sprinkling of big plays with his legs and arm, that’ll go a long way toward successful football.

2) The stupid Northern Illinois game. What a failure from all corners. At least it underscored for Mike Denbrock how he has to call these games the rest of the way to be successful, but would have loved for that lesson to have been taught in a win.

It’s a big spread against the Cardinal on Saturday but it was a large one for their previous October visit and that didn’t end well for the home team. Notre Dame just needs to win games the rest of the way but it would be nice to string a fourth straight quality performance together, especially with tricky trips to play Georgia Tech and Navy looming before the next bye week. There are marquee matchups all over the slate so the best case for Notre Dame is a gaudy point total casual viewers notice scrolling across the screen but I’ll happily settle for a low-stress and injury-free improvement to 5-1 we all forget about in a few weeks.

This ran long so the full Doctor Odyssey review is going to have to wait. (Capsule: Aggressively procedural in a throwback way and a fine enough time through two episodes but could be a little wackier.) Thanks for reading and look forward to joining together to discuss a Fighting Irish game this time next week. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other.

1. Havoc Rate is defined as cool stuff on defense - tackles for loss, deflections, forced fumbles, interceptions. Havoc Rate allowed is how well you avoid the opposing defense doing cool stuff to you.