For a program as old and storied as Notre Dame, the word "unprecedented" doesn't get thrown around very often. If there's anyone who's seen it all, it's the Irish. But this is 2022, and the unprecedented has become routine in college football. Notre Dame is no exception.
It's been a long time since Navy faced a Notre Dame team not coached by Brian Kelly; 13 years to be exact. Only Knute Rockne himself had a longer tenure in South Bend. Last year, though, Kelly made a sudden and surprising decision to leave Notre Dame for LSU. It shocked most of the college football world; coaches don't voluntarily leave Notre Dame for other schools. That wasn't all, though. Kelly's departure was revealed at the end of the regular season in November. Notre Dame was 11-1 and still had an outside shot at the College Football Playoff. That didn't matter. In the end, preserving the recruiting class at his new school ahead of the early signing period took precedence over the chance, however remote, of a national championship. It's hard to fault someone for taking a $95 million contract, but the timing was eye-opening.
The times are indeed a-changin'.
That goes for the program Kelly left behind, too. The only thing as swift as his departure was the speed with which Notre Dame named his replacement. If you follow college football at all, you've heard countless times how Notre Dame is the dream job of coach after coach. Rather than conduct a drawn-out "national search" for one of these coaches, though, the Irish made a bold and unusual move of their own, promoting defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman to lead the program.
On the one hand, it was a logical move. Notre Dame had the same concerns about preserving their recruiting class as LSU, and Freeman would offer those recruits continuity. He was also popular in the locker room and was seen as an up-and-coming coach by just about everyone in the game. With Freeman calling the plays, Notre Dame only gave up 19.7 points per game. Besides, all it would have taken for the Irish to make the Playoff was the right team losing in a conference championship game, and the Irish wanted to be ready to roll if the opportunity arose. On the other hand, Notre Dame's modus operandi isn't hiring up-and-coming coaches; it's having their pick of coaches already at the top. Hiring a head coach only one year removed from being a Group of Five coordinator is, on paper, the most out-of-the-box Notre Dame hire since Gerry Faust.
Nobody seemed to mind, though. On the contrary; hiring a 35-year-old coordinator brought Notre Dame praise and excitement, turning them from the Evil Empire into a team to root for. Freeman even converted to Catholicism; something that had nothing to do with football, obviously, but endearing him to the Notre Dame community nonetheless. It all set the stage for an exciting future.
The present, though, got off to a rocky start. The Irish lost their season opener to Ohio State, 21-10. While that was disappointing, it wasn't surprising. Losing to Marshall the next week, however, was. To complicate matters, starting quarterback Tyler Buchner was lost for the season after suffering a fourth-quarter injury to his shoulder. The Irish went from being ranked in the top ten to falling out of the polls completely, bringing whatever honeymoon period there was to an abrupt halt.
Slowly but surely, Notre Dame has worked their way back into the rankings, winning six of their last seven games to come into Saturday ranked 20th in the AP poll. Besides an inexplicably lousy performance against a hapless Stanford squad, the Irish have gotten progressively better each game, culminating in a dominating 35-14 win a week ago against then-#5 Clemson. Whatever problems they might have had at the beginning of the season, Notre Dame is still Notre Dame.
So how have they done it? As one might expect from a Freeman-coached team, it starts with the defense. Notre Dame is 25th in the country in total defense, giving up only 328.6 yards per game. Considering the schedule they've played, that's impressive. Five times in the last seven games, the Irish have surrendered fewer than 300 total yards, including 286 against Syracuse and 281 against Clemson. They gave up less than 100 yards on the ground in four of those games.
Like most good defenses, it starts up front for Notre Dame. Junior defensive end Isaiah Foskey leads the way, a 6'5”, 265-lb. powerhouse who is one sack away from becoming the school's career leader in that category. He already has 8.5 on the year, setting the pace for a unit that averages more than three per game, one of the best in the country. Linebacker JD Bertrand is back after leading the team with 101 tackles last year. His 60 tackles lead the team again, and he had nine against the Mids in 2021. In the secondary, the Irish have Northwestern transfer Brandon Joseph, a consensus All-American in 2020. If Joseph can't go (he's questionable with an ankle injury), Notre Dame can rely on graduate senior DJ Brown to fill in.
The most significant difference for the Irish over the last seven games, though, has been on offense. I’m not sure if it was due to the loss of Buchner or if it was a change of approach that would've happened anyway, but the Irish have dedicated themselves to running the ball, and it has paid huge dividends. After running for a combined 206 yards during their 0-2 start, the Irish have exploded for 220+ yards in five of their last six games. They ran for 287 yards against North Carolina, 246 at Syracuse, and 263 against Clemson, who had been giving up only 87.9 ypg on the ground up to that point. Audric Estimé leads the team with 662 rushing yards, while Logan Diggs has averaged nearly 110 yards per game over the last three weeks. Those two, plus junior Chris Tyree, rotate throughout the game, ensuring that the Irish always have fresh legs even as the defense wears down.
One thing that makes the Notre Dame run game so effective is how offensive coordinator Tommy Rees uses formation shifts and motion before the snap. The defense gets aligned to one look, then has to adjust to another after the shift, then another if a player goes in motion. If a defender doesn't align itself correctly, it can create a numbers advantage for the offense. It’s also a lot of eye candy for individual defenders that can lead to missed gap assignments. The more a defense has to think, the slower they play.
That goes both ways, though. The more the offense is shifting and motioning before the snap, the slower they play, too. Notre Dame isn't one of those mile-a-minute offenses we see every week in the American. They are much more methodical. In theory, that would seem to favor Navy, wouldn’t it? The Mids want a slower, limited-possession game. Navy has the country's seventh-ranked run defense but has given up far too many big plays through the air. Navy wants Notre Dame to run the ball. Will the Irish oblige?
Maybe. In the past, Notre Dame has treated Navy as a “get right” game. Struggling to run the ball? Pound the rock 40 times against Navy. Need to get your quarterback on track? Air it out against Navy. Along those lines, there are a few things the Irish would probably like to get right. They have the best tight end in the country, Michael Mayer. The wide receivers, though, have been silent for most of the season. Quarterback Drew Pyne drew praise for his efficiency in his first few starts, but over the last four, he’s completed only 49.5 percent of his passes. What better opportunity to get them all on track than against the country's 115th-ranked passing defense? Notre Dame is 108th in the country in throws of 10 or more yards. If they want to flex their muscles a little bit, now is the time. Last week, we saw Cincinnati use play action out of the gate, counting on Navy to be focused on stopping the run first. There is a chance we could see that tomorrow as well, although with Notre Dame trying to establish an identity under a new coach, it’s more likely they will try to assert themselves in the run game.
Defensively, Freeman was the architect of the same defense that the Mids saw against Cincinnati last week. When he took over as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator, though, he inherited a game plan from his predecessor, Clark Lea, that Brian Kelly apparently liked. Last year, the Irish combined Lea’s plan with Freeman's. The result was that Notre Dame gave Navy a different look on almost every play.
They lined up in a five-man front:
They lined up in a six-man front:
They also lined up in an eight-man front, which is what Freeman did at Cincinnati.
No matter how they lined up, the safeties always played man defense on the slotbacks.
For an experienced option team, none of these changes would matter. Changing fronts from play to play isn’t a big deal if you know what your job is for each. But Navy wasn’t an experienced option team last year, particularly regarding the quarterbacks. There is a triple option answer for each of these alignments, but Navy couldn’t use them because they had a hard time running it.
It’s hard to say whether that is the case this year. So far, Xavier Arline has done a pretty good job running the option, but he hasn’t faced a team that gave him so much to think about the way Notre Dame will. This game will test how far Arline’s development has come.
Adding another wrinkle to Notre Dame’s defense is that Freeman hired Al Golden to be his defensive coordinator. Few active coaches have faced the option as much as Golden, having played against Navy while coaching Temple and facing Georgia Tech as the head coach of Miami. The obvious question is how much of the Notre Dame game plan will look like last year and how much will look like a typical Golden option defense. That isn’t really the right question to ask, though. Navy will see both at the same time because the two approaches complement each other.
Last year, Notre Dame took a macro approach, with big, obvious changes in alignment designed to get Navy players thinking about who to read and who to block. Golden has always looked at option football from more of a micro level. He’s always lined up in a 4-3, but the alignment was never the important thing for him. Golden focuses more on the tendencies and mechanics of the option.
One thing he likes to do is slant the defensive line; both defensive tackles release in the same direction at the snap. The purpose of this is to mess with the fullback’s reads. When the fullback reads one defensive tackle releasing outside, he’ll cut back inside, where the other defensive tackle meets him.
There’s plenty that can be done against this. The most obvious answer is the QB/FB midline. If the defense is stunting the defensive tackles, then just read one of them.
You can also use misdirection, especially when the safeties are following the slotbacks. In their last meeting against Golden’s Temple team, Navy ran a reverse:
Georgia Tech had a similar answer in their last game against Golden, but instead of a reverse with the wide receiver, they ran a faster-hitting end-around with a slotback:
The problem is that the defense won’t do this on every play, so it becomes a guessing game. If the offense catches the defense stunting, then everything is great. If they try to run a play designed to beat the stunt when the defense isn’t using it, then they risk getting stopped for a loss and being knocked off schedule.
Golden also likes to confuse the quarterback by using the cross-charge stunt. The cross charge is when the dive key and the pitch key exchange responsibilities. In a 4-3, the linebacker stunts inside to take the fullback while the defensive end steps outside. The idea is for the quarterback to see the defensive end playing outside, think it’s a give read, then hand it to the fullback who is met by the unblocked linebacker.
Again, this is something that the defense won’t do every time. The obvious solution to this stunt is to just make the right read, but that can be difficult for an inexperienced quarterback. The toss sweep is also a good play to use when linebackers stunt inside, but it’s not nearly as effective now that players can no longer cut block on the perimeter.
The other problem when it comes to Notre Dame is that they are on a different level physically compared to most teams that Navy faces. Here’s a triple option play from last year where Navy seemingly did everything right. The quarterback made the right read. The fullback read the defensive tackle correctly. The play still went nowhere, because the backside defenders won their individual matchups.
That shows what kind of challenge Navy faces this week. On a macro level, they need to be confident in their ability to run the option against different fronts. On a micro level, they will have to deal with stunts designed to take advantage of the offense’s own rules. And that’s all before dealing with the physical ability of a typical Notre Dame team.
If Arline can direct traffic and the Mids can run the option, they have a shot to hang around in a low-possession game. If it’s close in the fourth quarter, anything can happen. That’s a lot to ask from a team that hasn’t run well all year, though. We’ll see.
