Despite blitzing with great frequency this year, the Notre Dame under has just one sack so far this season. With our relative lack of depth and playmaking ability along the defensive line I am not too surprised that we’ve struggled in this department. I am, however, surprised that we do have just one sack four games into the season. There could be some good news in this department for us this weekend though. A look at the stats from the past five seasons shows that when the Irish play the Cardinal, we usually get the quarterback a lot more than we normally do.
Notre Dame Yearly Sack Total |
||||
| Year | Total Sacks | Per Game | vs. Stanford | % |
| 2003 | 37 | 2.7 | 7 | 19% |
| 2004 | 30 | 2.6 | 1 | 3% |
| 2005 | 30.5 | 2.1 | 7 | 23% |
| 2006 | 31 | 2.2 | 5 | 16% |
| 2007 | 18 | 1.2 | 5 | 28% |
Note: the “Per Game” stat is how many sacks the Irish averaged in games against everyone except Stanford.
In every year except 2004, Notre Dame has gotten to the quarterback significantly more against Stanford than any other team on the schedule. Even last year when the Irish tallied just 18 sacks on the entire season, five of them came in the season finale against Stanford.
Granted most of these games came when Stanford employeed coaches who had very short tenures on the farm. Still, these stats suggest that maybe a game against Stanford could be exactly the cure for what ailes our pass rush this year.
Last year Raeshon McNeil (1.0), Trevor Laws (1.0), Brian Smith (0.5), Kerry Neal (1.0), Joe Brockington (1.0), Justin Brown (0.5) supplied the five sacks for the Irish. Hopefully Smith and Neal came add a couple more this year and get the Irish pass rush back on track.
I think your right Frankie, and here’s why: last week was the offensive break out, this week should be positive and conducive to defensive progress.
Especially with the prima donna comments by a Stanford player.