Frankie V’s Prediction: Can Notre Dame Overcome Aggie Defense, Atmosphere?

Notre Dame opens its 2024 season in a little over 24 hours on the road in Kyle Field against the 20th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies. The Irish enter the game as underdogs, with most in the media picking A&M to win the game and few giving the Irish a chance to pull off the “upset” of a team they are ranked 13 spots higher than. Marcus Freeman, entering his critical third year as head coach, brings his squad to College Station looking to change the narrative of the Irish on the road in big games under his tenure. To do so, the Irish must handle an elite Aggie defensive line with a young offensive line in one of the loudest environments in sports. Will they?

What Worries Me

Notre Dame’s offensive line, especially early

This one goes without saying, but the young Notre Dame offensive line, even with parallels to the 1988 national championship team, is the biggest concern for Notre Dame in this game by far. Texas A&M has elite talent on its defensive line, and even though they are learning a new defense (just one player on the Aggie’s defense remains from Mike Elko’s time as DC), they can wreck this game for Notre Dame if the line plays poorly.

Notre Dame’s coaching staff is well aware of the talent the A&M defense line possesses. They wouldn’t have made the decisions they’ve made with Anthonie Knapp and Sam Pendleton unless they were confident they could handle it, but it is still very far from ideal for them both to be making their first career starts against the Aggie defensive line. With the raucous crowd and electric environment, procedure and false start penalties become an even bigger worry—especially early in the game when the adrenaline is pumping.

If Notre Dame came into this game with a more experienced offensive line, I would be a heck of a lot more confident overall in their chances of not just winning but perhaps winning relatively easily.

Notre Dame not overcoming last year’s road woes

Notre Dame struggled on the road last year. Their two worst performances were against Louisville and Clemson—both road games. The Irish offense was more dysfunctional than other weeks in both games, while the defense gave up uncharacteristically high point totals. Granted, many of the points they surrendered could be attributed to the offense putting them in bad spots in those games, but the defense still surrendered 30+ in both games when they were downright dominant at home.

Marcus Freeman and his staff looked into those struggles in the off-season and changed how they approach their road game routine. We don’t know what those changes are exactly, we don’t know, but given how bad the Irish looked in both games, seeing the Irish flat is still a concern.

What Doesn’t Worry Me

Notre Dame’s defense giving up a lot of points

While the defense struggled in those two road games a year ago, I feel good that they won’t give up many points to a Texas A&M offense that will probably take some time to find itself this year under Colin Klien. The Aggies also have some talent on offense, but their receivers group is just ok, and injuries have left them thin at running back. Everyone seems to forget that that Aggie offensive line was terrible last year and might not be much better this year, either, just because Notre Dame’s offensive line is so young.

Notre Dame is entering year three of the Al Golden defense and has a veteran group with stars at every level. I will be shocked if A&M puts up a lot of points in this game. In fact, seeing some other Notre Dame publications predict the Aggies to score 30+ points doesn’t make any sense to me.

This is one of the fastest and deepest defenses Notre Dame has had in a long time. I don’t see any of the offenses on the Irish schedule this year putting up a lot of points on them, and the A&M offense is far from the best one it will face all year.

Mike Denbrock cooking up a gameplan that gives Notre Dame a chance

New OC Mike Denbrock is a veteran coach who has always adapted his offenses to his talent – or around its weaknesses. He’s had all off-season to cook up a game plan for just this game, and I think we’ll see him use some things this weekend that we might not see much of during the rest of the year. Similar to what Notre Dame did against Michigan in 2018 to start the year, I think the Irish will run an offense explicitly designed to attack A&M and then work on the offense they want to run starting next week. That doesn’t mean we’ll see a repeat of 2007 when Charlie Weis installed the spread option over the summer, but I’ll be shocked if this isn’t Riley Leonard’s highest rushing attempt game of the season.

Denbrock’s offense at LSU put 42 points on the Aggies last year and 23 the year before, when A&M still had a lot of defensive talent. Mike Elko didn’t coach those defenses, but they were still very talented.

Look for Elko to use more quarterback runs to give Notre Dame numbers advantages against that stout Aggie defensive line and mix in plenty of RPO looks where the Irish actually throw the ball, unlike a year ago.

Now, the question will be whether or not the offensive line holds up enough for that game plan to be successful enough to score enough points to win the game.

Players to Watch

• Anthonie Knapp—The true freshman starting LT is obviously the most critical player to watch. If he holds his own in this one, Notre Dame will be in great shape.
• Jeremiyah Love—Speed can kill in a game like this, and Love has speed to burn. If Notre Dame can get Love out in space, he could make a game-changing play. Notre Dame likely won’t have many long, sustained drives, so if they can get a chunk play or two from Love, it will go a long way.
• Jaden Greathouse and Jadarian Price – The Texas natives on offense returning home will be looking to put on a show. In the case of Price, he’ll be looking to make A&M regret not recruiting him, we learned in the new Notre Dame docuseries Here Come the Irish.
• Riley Leonard – This feels like a game that Leonard might be asked to win more with his legs than his arm. That won’t be a formula the Irish can go to often this year if they want Leonard to make it through the season, but I won’t be shocked if Leonard is Notre Dame’s leading rusher.
• Jaylen Sneed – Sneed as a pass rusher against a weak A&M offensive line feels like an excellent mismatch for the Irish to exploit. Year three will be a coming-out party for Sneed, and like Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah against Georgia on the road in 2019, I think Sneed has a big game.
• Xavier Watts – The reigning defensive player of the year was overlooked a lot this summer by the national media. Watts plays big in big games and likely has his hands involved in at least one turnover in some capacity in this one.

Prediction Time

It is surprising how little of a chance most national media give Notre Dame in this game. Sure, the Irish have an inexperienced offensive line, but outside of that matchup, is there another area where the Aggies have a significant edge? A&M is coming off a season so bad they ate a $76m buyout of Jimbo Fisher. They have a new offense, a new defense, and an offensive line that might be a bit more experienced but could still be worse than Notre Dame’s. The environment will be loud and crazy, but A&M isn’t unbeatable in their home field. Everyone also seems to be forgetting how good Notre Dame’s defense is.

I don’t think this will look pretty at times for Notre Dame. There will be a few three-and-outs, a turnover or two, and downright frustration at times. All that said, I think Notre Dame pulls this one out by taking advantage of A&M playing its first game in Elko’s system (again, it’s new to almost the entire roster) with an early score or two and then riding its own stout defense to an opening-week victory.

Notre Dame 24, Texas A&M 16