~optional musical accompaniment~
1) One of the great things about college football is the variety of challenges you face over the course of the season. Sometimes you get drawn into a shootout or have to survive a hostile environment or win with your backup quarterback and other times you’re playing in the rain against a team that embodies its coach even though it’s only his third game there (tough, try hard, very annoying) and is happy to brawl with you and hope the talent advantage doesn’t end up dooming them. In the end, Notre Dame hurt itself a couple times, took a couple punches from Sparty and won comfortably after never trailing.
It was ugly at times and there are a couple concerns we’ll address below but my primary takeaway is to be pleased we got continued elite play by the quarterback and defense plus breakout 100-yard performances by two different skill players who hadn’t hit those marks previously. I understand some frustration but it should be limited unless you talked yourself into thinking this group of college students and their human coaches had solved an entire sport. Any time you play Sparty and it’s not a stupid loss nor a miracle comeback we check the box and happily move onto the next week.
We’re already a quarter of the way through the season so I hope you’re savoring these Saturdays. 15 straight wins by double-digit margins, a school record. Pretty good stretch of football. If you want to hear this game discussed in audio form, Jess and I podded on Sunday morning, and if you didn’t listen to last week’s Sparty rivalry retrospective I recommend it as some elite Remembering Some Games (Spotify) (Apple).
2) First, the good on offense, starting with how you could have said after the Micah Gilbert* 61-yard reception to open the game that it was now three straight good performances from him. Little did we know he had seven more catches (one on a fourth down on the first Irish touchdown drive) and 109 more yards in the tank. The final Notre Dame touchdown drive which took all of four plays featured a pair of perfect connections between C.J. Carr and Gilbert. Knowing that it’s not just Jordan Faison (five catches on the night for only 38 yards, but one was on fourth down and there was a flag drawn to convert a third down) threatening defenses deep should make life so much easier on the offense overall as long as the plan is to take more shots.
* The staff has always spoken very highly of Gilbert, but his reps were limited last year because 1) He got hurt at the very beginning of spring practice 2) He was playing in a run-heavy offense behind Malachi Fields, a great college receiver turned third-round pick who’s starting in the NFL as a rookie. No. 14’s success is not coming out of nowhere.
Is there a third option to come? The heavy lean on pre-snap checks cost the offense on the first drive of the second half, as a should-have-been touchdown to Jaden Greathouse was wiped away due to a delay of game. 17 plays, 77 yards and nearly 10 minutes is quite the feat, though. Nothing from Greathouse, two steps back after the nice first half against Rice. Mylan Graham got wrecked on Carr’s wizardry (see above; a beautiful Jeremiyah Love vs. Navy tribute) but held on for eight yards and otherwise the passing game was four catches for 18 yards from the tailbacks. No targets to the tight ends or any other receivers than the aforementioned three.
Carr was great, again, and I don’t think “We’ll stack the box and force Carr to beat us deep” is going to work as a consistent defensive game plan if he stays this accurate on downfield throws. He even got a rushing touchdown, a fun goal-to-go wrinkle teams will have to keep in mind in those situations. For as clunky as the running game was early (we’ll get to that in the very next paragraph), Nolan James Jr. again looked good, with 121 yards on the ground and nearly five yards per carry. And pop the bottles because we have a new season-high rush: 17 yards from James, eclipsing the previous record of 16 from Aneyas Williams against Wisconsin.
The running game failures early felt like a mix of Williams not seeing it well again, errors from the offensive line and playcalling that didn’t play to the strengths of the offense (seemed like a lot of east-west). Ja’Juan Seider said last week that Williams was pressing and that certainly seems to still be the case, plus the junior tailback threw in a very dumb penalty that infuriated his head coach. A bad night overall when you combine it with how good James looked but I don’t think they’re going to give up on a guy they’ve spoken so highly of and seen produce in prior seasons.
Even though the rushing attack had struggled in the first two games, they had avoided negative plays, but even that mark disintegrated in the early going with a lot of zero- or negative-yard plays. Williams’ first two runs went for zero yards and zero yards. James’ first two runs on the second drive went for zero yards and zero yards. If you weren’t feeling great about the run game early, that’s understandable.
The path forward on the ground is improvement from the offensive line, improvement from the tailbacks, Carr continuing to work pre-snap magic and defenses becoming so concerned for the deep passing game it results in light boxes for the hypothetically improving offensive line to work against. None of those things are heavy lifts but also can’t make too many guarantees. Three more games to ramp up before what should be an absolute slugfest in Provo.
3) We spent all offseason talking about the absurd depth on the Notre Dame defense and that depth manifests itself in a couple of ways. The first is that when you lose a starter to injury, it’s not ideal but also not the end of the world. Down goes Tae Johnson, in comes Luke Talich, who had a sack (first of his career) and interception. Down goes Jason Onye, in steps a number of very large men capable of filling his shoes (feels like Oregon could use Tionne Gray, who’s been great).
The other way the depth manifests is over the course of the game, as you wear down an opponent with waves of violence. Boubacar Traore and Bryce Young were again sensational, as were the interior guys, and then you have Loghan Thomas coming in for a sack and Rodney Dunham getting in the mix on one of his two (!) snaps. Overall, Alessio Milivojevic was pressured on over half of his dropbacks, was sacked four times and put up four turnover-worthy throws. It’s to the credit of Milivojevic and coordinator Nick Sheridan they were able to stave off the darkness for so long, but the nightmare foreseen in the advanced stats eventually came for him.
The defense had one bad sequence where they gave up a deep pass immediately followed by a series of yakety sax tackle attempts on Sparty’s lone touchdown. Not ideal, but the visitor’s long run was 15 yards (the touchdown by Cam Fancher, the change-of-pace quarterback) (no other carry cracked double digits) and outside of the 53-yard catch to set up that touchdown, no Sparty reception was over 18 yards. They had 167 yards on the night, with only 40 coming after the break -- complete and total destruction.
A great Drayk Bowen night, leading the team in tackles (eight) and “stops” (five), the PFF metric for a tackle that constitutes a failure by the offense. Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa had a highlight reel block destruction/quarterback pressure (great coverage by Talich on the throw). Adon Shuler with a pick and some violence. Leonard Moore with some acrobatics on a tipped ball. Very sturdy from both Christan Gray and Jaylen Sneed. I mean, again, Sparty didn’t even get close to 200 yards of offense and had three fewer yards of offense than Gilbert in the contest. Everyone was great.
4) I really did not enjoy the game management on Saturday night. Overall, it was inconsistent, a mix of aggressive and conservative, which puts your coordinators and players in odd positions of not knowing how to approach each drive. For example, on Notre Dame’s first two drives, they faced 4th and three from the Sparty seven and 4th and two from the Sparty six and did different things (kicked on the first, went for it and subsequently scored on the second). You could make the case they wanted to get points on the board to start, but why not try for seven instead of three? If you fail, Sparty is backed up against one of the best defenses in the country. They also called timeout before kicking in a position where a delay of game wouldn’t have hurt. That timeout would have come in really handy at the end of the first half when Michigan State was able to run out most of the clock knowing they were getting it after the break.
Even worse was the decision to try for the field goal in the fourth. You’re up 27-10, Shuler gets you great field position with an awesome pick, you have just scored a touchdown on a four-play drive the last time you had the ball, it’s fourth and four from the Sparty 21 and you kick? Even if the kick was made — it wasn’t — you are pushing the margin from 17 to 20, making a three-score game a three-score game.
Credit to going for it on 4th and three from the Sparty 34 on the first touchdown drive. That was almost the exact same situation the Irish kicked a long field goal from in the first quarter at Lambeau. Very different kicking conditions so it makes sense to a degree.
I know I obsess about this stuff but I am like a character in a horror movie keeping a close eye on my companions to make sure they aren’t showing early signs of turning, but instead of a zombie or vampire I am worried about someone who is very important to my mental and emotional health developing Defensive Coordinator Brain.
No complaints on the fake punt call. Wasn’t executed properly by Brayden Robinson (not Lenny – seeing the 15 and thinking “wait, please do not even think about risking his health in this situation” before realizing what was happening) but it was there. Jasper Scaife’s punt that was wiped out by the KVA hold was a really nice one and his other was solid. Kudos to Matt Jeffery for getting in there on the punt block. Credit to Spencer Porath for the two makes in icky conditions.
If we found out that the Noah Eagle and Todd Blackledge booth was sponsored by “The Friends of Pat Fitzgerald” or some similar super PAC I would not be surprised because holy crap were they hyping him up. Got a kick out of coming back from break and Blackledge saying “I think Michigan State might switch up quarterbacks here…” when Fancher was clearly already in the huddle. The broadcast never clarified it was Robinson and not Moore in on the fake.
Who knows what the sport will look like by 2032 but Notre Dame-Nebraska games on Halloween weekend sounds fun to me. Didn’t know Big Ten teams were allowed to travel to South Bend in October.
5) Winning is Hard Round Up: NC State lost in one of the worst ways I’ve ever seen. They led 24-7 in the third quarter and nearly frittered all of that away to a valiant charge by Vanderbilt but they picked off five-star freshman Jared Curtis and seemed to have things secure. No. C.J. Bailey was more focused on running off every second versus ball security and instead of just taking the safety he lost the ball in the end zone and the Commodores won. I don’t know how you recover from something like that but Bailey and Dave Doeren will have to figure it out because an Appalachian State team that’s clawed its way to 3-0 is next.
Ole Miss jumped all over Lane Kiffin and LSU to start the game but the Tigers came all the way back and it looked like they were going to ruin everyone’s night in Oxford. However, Trinidad Chambliss is that good and the Rebels got a measure of revenge in some great theater in the final moments and aftermath. LSU was not the only top ten SEC team to lose because Kenny Minchey went into College Station and did the damn thing, outplaying Marcel Reed and delivering what ended up being a pretty comfortable win for the Wildcats. And guess what? Texas A&M travels to Baton Rouge on Saturday night! Wonderful.
Texas Tech escaped Houston by an inch. Southern Cal was a three-touchdown favorite at Rutgers and barely survived a team that was pushed around by UMass two weeks ago. Miami looked like they were going to cruise against Wake Forest but their offense stalled out for long stretches of the second half and made them work. Alabama fell behind Florida State early but unlike last year they didn’t lose. Auburn lost at home to Florida. South Carolina was leading Mississippi State at home but gave up 24 straight points on their way to a loss. Bulldogs good, Beamer toast?
SMU was right there at Louisville but a couple turnovers and a couple big runs by the Cardinals doomed them. Michigan was close to trailing UTEP at the half but ended up winning comfortably. Oklahoma seems pretty broken on offense but at least they didn’t lose to New Mexico. Missouri had a heckuva time with Gerad Parker and Troy but survived. Virginia had a heckuva time with Rich Rodriguez’s revved up and renewed Mountaineer offense and lost. Indiana and Western Kentucky were both scoreless after one quarter but the Hoosiers were fine. Chuck Martin’s RedHawks blew a heartbreaker to Cincinnati after a big lead as a big underdog. Colorado was destroyed at Northwestern and the same thing happened to Stanford at Duke.
North Carolina was leading at Clemson 14-3 but lost (all three Tigers games have had weather delays -- the heavens sending a message to Dabo?). Maryland (Mike Locksley’s eighth season there) got handled pretty comfortably by Virginia Tech (James Franklin’s third game there) and it seems like we’re heading toward a new coach. Wisconsin started real slow against Eastern Michigan and was more than fine, and it was the same situation for Arizona against Northern Illinois. Texas State won an incredible shootout against North Texas. Temple led by two touchdowns at the two-minute warning at Toledo and lost in overtime. Central Florida was trailing Georgia State as a three-score favorite at the half but came back.
6) Book Excerpt Corner: I finished reading Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland last week and loved it. It recounts the Ku Klux Klan’s resurgence in the 1920s with a focus on Indiana. (Similar ground is covered in Todd Tucker’s Notre Dame vs. The Klan, which I read years ago and enjoyed.) Notre Dame comes up often in Egan’s book — I had forgotten that the Klan was close to straight-up buying Valparaiso to try and turn it into basically a Wario Notre Dame — and I could read about the Klan trying to hold a rally in South Bend and a bunch of students just beating the shit out of them a thousand different ways and never get tired of it.
I recommend Egan’s entire book (turns out you can stand up to evil even if it’s pervasive and it would be easier to just go along with it) but here’s a relevant portion:
At midafternoon, about 2,000 wet men in white milled through the streets of downtown South Bend, passing by the memorial to those in St. Joseph County who’d been killed by the Confederacy in the Civil War. Before the Klansmen could get much farther, a flying wedge of Notre Dame students sliced into them, causing panic and knocking dozens to the ground. Guns were fired in the air. Fistfights broke out. The students tore off Klan robes and waved them high as trophies. They took the hoods and put them on their own heads—dunce caps, they said, chiding the Klansmen. One student was knocked to the ground by a baseball bat. The panicked Klansmen dashed to their headquarters in the city, a turreted building at the corner of Michigan and Wayne.
They bolted the doors and rushed upstairs to the third floor, behind an electric cross lit with red bulbs. By this time, Steve had fled, making a beeline back to Indianapolis in his touring car. At the base of the building was a small grocery store. The students purchased two bushels of potatoes as weapons. They hurled the spuds at the windows, trying to break the glass, or to put out the lights of the Klan’s symbol. Irish American boys rioting with the iconic food of their tribe—it was enough to make some laugh at the image. Catholics had put up with years of abuse; they’d been called un-American and told they didn’t belong in this country, and certainly not in the state of Indiana. They’d been shunned as dupes of a Roman plot, and slaves of the pope. Now they had their tormentors surrounded, hiding and fearful.
The Klan had planned to force Notre Dame into submission, to let these Catholics know that even here, in the safety of their campus, they had much to fear and nowhere to hide. The opposite had happened. It was said by those in the crowd that Notre Dame’s star quarterback, Harry Stuhldreher, one of the vaunted Four Horsemen, lobbed a perfect strike upward, his potato scoring a direct hit on one of the bulbs lighting the Klan cross. A roar followed. A group of Notre Dame men broke through the door of the building and charged upstairs. Only when met by a Klansman with a drawn gun did the students retreat. By dusk, the police had made eight arrests and were able to disperse most of the crowd. The Sunday edition of the Chicago Herald and Examiner carried the news in a front-page banner, as if touting an upset win by Rockne’s footballers:
STUDENTS ROUT KLANSMEN
7) If you play Sparty, you never trail, you give up zero points after the half, you get out with good health and it’s a game no one will remember for something crazy happening, that’s a successful night. Still plenty to work on for this team but I think every contender has stuff to work on, hasn’t played anybody legit or has stuff to work on despite not playing anybody legit. Notre Dame has to keep getting better but if you believe in this staff and you believe in the talent on the roster then it’s a reasonable assumption to believe they will.
I’m curious to see how Sparty ends up. They don’t have a ton of depth with year one of the new regime so it’s possible they just can’t sustain for 60 minutes/nine more games but that defense made the Irish work for it (Gilbert had a great night, but those weren’t easy throws nor catches). They host 3-0 Nebraska (who played no power opponents in non-con) on Saturday and the line is only Huskers by 5.5 so that’s mild respect for Michigan State, real skepticism about Big Red or a combination of both.
Next up is Purdue, who is much improved from when the Irish last visited West Lafayette. They almost defeated the Wake Forest team that gave Miami fits and put up a really game effort in Pasadena against Bob Chesney’s 3-0 Bruins late into Saturday. Barry Odom is doing a good job, taking what was the worst Power Four team in 2024, getting them slightly more respectable in his first season there and showing continued improvement in year two despite the wins still eluding him.
First true road game of the season with a funky 2:00 p.m. ET kickoff (on Peacock) against a team that’s playing with some confidence is another fun challenge. (Remember what Ryan Browne did to the Irish defense for a half last year.) Notre Dame has so much more talent than the Boilermakers that there is no reason their hosts should be able to hang for four quarters but you still have to go out there and execute. Incredible slate of games on Saturday so my preference would be the Irish win by many points so we can enjoy them all. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.