Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman talked a lot all week about learning from the mistakes of the Northern Illinois debacle two weeks ago. It looked like the Irish hadn’t learned those lessons for a half of football. Notre Dame came out flat, again, as a 4-touchdown favorite over another MAC team before ultimately adding a late score in a contest that didn’t do much to instill confidence in the offense moving forward.
Another flat, unfocused start
A week ago in West Lafayette, the Irish were up 42-0 on the Boilermakers. While they were aided by some gifts from Purdue, they still came out and executed well from the start. Fast-forward to yesterday, when the Irish held just a 14-3 lead at halftime despite being favored by 28 points. The Irish ran ten plays on their first three drives combined – punt, downs, punt.
They were sloppy and undisciplined again at home, with perhaps no more shining example than a costly unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on sophomore Adon Shuler for throwing the ball at the Miami receiver after what should have been a critical 3rd down stop after it looked like Notre Dame had finally seized the momentum. Instead of the Irish getting the ball back with almost a minute remaining and two timeouts, Mami ran out the clock.
It is perplexing how this staff seemingly does not know how to prepare and focus this team when they are playing an inferior opponent at home. They’ve been a different, more focused team on the road this season. What team we see next weekend when the Irish face a ranked opponent, Louisville, at home is anyone’s guess.
Special teams disaster class early
A large part of the early miscues and blunders that marred the first half came from the special teams unit after Notre Dame changed their kicking operation at snapper, without an explanation why, their lone field goal attempt featured a bad snap that turned into Mitch Jeter running for his life and chucking the ball as far as he could.
Before that, Jordan Faison muffed the first punt of the game, setting Miami up in prime field position after traffic from the coverage unit converged on him, making the catch much more complicated than it needed to be. Faison could still have fielded it, but the traffic around him also played a role in the drop.
Things were going so poorly for Marty Biagi’s unit that he dialed up a trick-play reverse on the kickoff following Miami’s lone field of the game. Jeremiyah Love turned it into a nice gain, but it was negated by a block in the back on Junior Tuihalamaka. That one, at least, looks like it was just a bad call as the Miami defender got his cleats caught up with another Notre Dame player and fell. Still, was it the best decision to waste a play like that on Miami of Ohio?
James Rendell had, by far, his best game
The one bright spot on special teams was punter James Rendell. The Aussie import transfer had a rough start to his collegiate career, struggling mightily through three games. Marcus Freeman said earlier in the week they were asking him to do too much and simplified things this week. It appears that simplifying things meant just booming the ball because Rendell had the best game of his career. He entered the game averaging less than 40.0 yards a punt. Yesterday, Rendell averaged 47.3 yards on four punts, including two kicks over 50 yards.
Over the first few weeks, we saw Rendell try a few different kicking styles, including a rugby style. We didn’t see that yesterday. If Notre Dame can get the same type of kicking from him for the rest of the season, the Irish should be in good shape here.
Offense is still sputtering
The most alarming aspect of the game was, once again, the offense. To be fair, there were some signs of life from the passing game, but for the fourth week in a row, the offense was almost solely reliant on Riley Leonard’s running more than anything else. Leonard topped 100 yards for the second week in a row, the first Irish QB to do that since Carlyle Holiday, and ran for two more touchdowns, but the Irish threw for under 200 yards again. In 2024, that kind of offense is fine for a game like yesterday but isn’t necessarily sustainable.
Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price combined for just 17 rushing attempts against a MAC team that struggled to defend the run in their first two games. Devyn Ford and Aeneyas Williams combined for seven rushes to Price’s six. While some of those came on the game’s final drive, it’s still confusing why Price is getting so few carries each week.
The lone bright spot was a beautifully thrown 38-yard touchdown strike to Beaux Collins in the second quarter, along with some other downfield shots that resulted in a couple of pass interferences on Miami. On the day, Notre Dame threw for 158 yards. After four games, Riley Leonard has one touchdown pass and hasn’t thrown for more than 163 yards in a game, with just 587 total passing yards in four games.
If you’re a glass-half-full person, you could squint really hard at this game and see signs of life from the passing game as progress. You just might give yourself a headache.
Defense gave some ground but kept points off the board
Miami only scored 3 points, and other than the one drive that was set up by the Faison muffed punt, it never seriously threatened the rest of the game. Even that drive, the Irish ended with a Tuihalamaka interception. The Irish pass rush registered four sacks on the day, including two from sophomore Boubacar Traore. Christain Gray added a second interception on top of Tuihalamaka’s, and freshman Karson Hobbs nearly added a 3rd in garbage time. All in all, the defense was more than fine.
The one area of concern, however, was Miami’s ability to run the football. The RedHawks were, statistically speaking, the worst rushing offense in college football coming into this one. They had a total of 32 rushing yards on the season before Saturday. They ran it for 110 yards, including all of the yards lost on sacks. That’s concerning since NIU was able to run on the Irish, as was Texas A&M, before they got away from it. Miami was specifically able to run outside on the Irish, with some of the young edge players not sealing the edge like they needed to.
Louisville only ran for 57 yards in its win over Georgia Tech on Saturday, so it will be interesting to see how much it tries to run on the Irish defense next weekend.
Beaux Collins needs more targets
Good things generally happen when Notre Dame throws the ball to Beaux Collins. Mike Denbrock has to find more ways to get the ball in his hands. It appears as though Leonard’s confidence is growing in Collings coming down with 50/50 balls, but the timing between them is still off. Denbrock needs to cook up some easy access throws for Collins, even though Leonard struggled with those early on against Miami, too.
Collins was billed as more of a possession receiver and 50/50 ball receiver, but we’ve seen him get behind a defense a few times now. Leonard finally connected with him on one of those occasions yesterday. Collins and tight end Mitchell Evans need to see the ball more next week against a much better defense than the ones the Irish have faced the last three weeks.
They took care of business at the end of the day. But unfortunately, this isn’t the NFL where a win is a win, doesn’t matter how you got it. Style points still matter in CFB and this is largely seen as a blah game for ND. It really won’t do a lot to help their rankings.
I honestly couldn’t begin to predict how this season plays out. If they can learn to play like they did in weeks 1 and 3 consistently, they can dominate the rest of the schedule. But play like weeks 2 and 4 and we can have another 2 or 3 losses in the schedule.
The only bizarre thing you can really say that’s consistent is they play much better on the road. Hell, maybe we should see if we can play the remainder of our games on the road LOL.
QB needs to play consistently from the first snap and that has not happened. At this level a change would not be a surprise. Enough already. Coach, next man up.
Riley Leonard accounted for 300 yards, NDs D’ gave up 3 points, again showing their elite secondary, Beaux Collins is their best receiver ( Greathouse is MIA?!), and their punter came of age. BUT … a young, injury riddled OL that limits a potentially dynamic RB room while their O’ looks crippled with tentative fear re: making a mistake, plus a D’ vulnerable vs. the run, with a DL, other than Traore and Onye, providing infrequent pressure and inconsistent run D’ from their veterans (excepting X, and Clark) and captains and young LBs, coupled with a coaching staff unable to inspire their team to dominate versus inferior teams (see: MAC opponents).
A young roller coaster team is the 2024 version of ND football, capable of beating any on their schedule, but also capable of losing to Louisville, Georgia Tech, Stanford, $C, and who knows who else? Can ND win more than 5 games in a row? They haven’t the last three years!
Tony Rice 2.0
More like a poor man’s Josh Allen, when he first came out of college to Buffalo.
It was a boring game. So boring that I watch Michigan-SC for most of the second half. Anyways, Notre Dame’s offense needs to focus on what works. The defense will do its job with only giving up 39 total points in 4 games. I mean North Carolina gave up more points in a quarter in a half against James Madison than ND has all season. Leonard needs to be able to release his passes fairly quickly. The running backs need to be given plenty of touches.