Coming out of the bye, Notre Dame’s big question was whether the Irish offense could improve enough over the second half of the season to be considered a legit threat in the playoffs. In Saturday’s 49-7 blowout of Stanford, the Irish took a step forward in building an offense that might just be able to make some noise in December. The defense, meanwhile, continued to make life miserable for an inferior opponent.
Riley Leonard’s best passing day
The best news of the day for Notre Dame was the play of Riley Leonard, who had his best passing game in a Notre Dame uniform. Yes, it wasn’t perfect and yes, it was Stanford, but it was still progress, nonetheless. Leonard finished the day with 229 yards on an efficient 16 of 22 passing with 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions before sitting out the entire fourth quarter. It was the first time he’s topped 200 yards this season and the first time he’s had a 3 passing TD performance since 2022. Riley also ran for his 8th rushing touchdown on the season, giving him a rushing score in five straight games.
Leonard only missed on six pass attempts, but his day could have been even better as a couple of those he missed and his one deep pass to Beaux Collins, a 53-yarder, could have been a walk-in score, but it was underthrown. Still, Leonard looked more comfortable than he has all season long as the Irish passing game finally looked capable of more than dinking and dunking its way down a field. There is still more work to be done on offense, but with more suspect defenses on the schedule, they will have a chance to build on this.
It’s also worth mentioning that since that horrible interception that essentially ended the NIU game, Leonard hasn’t thrown another one, although he did come close on Saturday.
Running back rotations shines
While the passing game stepped forward, the rushing game continued to show its dominance after a slow start. Stanford was determined to stop the run, so Mike Denbrock countered with a ton of RPOs early before the running game finally got going in the second half. Jeremiyah Love flashed his speed on a 39-yard touchdown run. Jadarian Price, out of fumble jail from the Louisville game, showed his elite vision and cutback ability on his 16-yard score. Freshman Aneyas Williams scored his first career touchdown in garbage time on a 19-yard run. Fellow freshman Kreden Young got into the game for the second time this season.
Even with Stanford keeping the running game in check for the first half, Notre Dame still ran for 229 yards with a 5.9 yards per carry average on the day.
Mills and Howard reemerging
Stanford has a bad interior offensive line, so if there was a game for Rylie Mills and Howard Cross to get going, this was it, and boy, did they ever. All summer, there were murmurs that Cross wasn’t quite 100%, but he never missed a game, and Marcus Freeman never said Cross was injured. Still, Cross was not the same player we saw last year over the season’s first month. He started to look himself again against Louisville and then had himself an afternoon yesterday. Cross had two huge sacks and was a disruptive force all afternoon.
There were no rumors of a Mills injury earlier this year, but he also started the season very slowly and had some low moments. Saturday certainly wasn’t one of them. Mills had a sack on Saturday as well on a play where he would not be denied. Mills reminds me a bit of Jerry Tillery this season in that there are times, like Saturday, when he looks nearly unblockable, but then there are other times when he will go for long stretches without being heard. Getting more consistency from him down the stretch is vital for the Irish.
Cross led Notre Dame in “stops” with 4, while Mills was right behind him with 3. Both had great days, which should give Irish fans a lot of optimism. For this team to reach its ceiling, Mills and Cross need to be disrupters, and they were on Saturday.
Josh Burnham’s return to action was impactful
With all of the injuries at the VYPER position, any contributions from Josh Burnham in his game fully back – he played briefly against Louisville – would have been significant. He did more than take snaps, though. Burnham had the play of the game defensively when he picked off an Ashton Daniels option pitch and nearly returned it for a touchdown. He played 26 snaps and graded out as Notre Dame’s best defensive player on PFF with an 80.5 rating. With Jordan Botelho and Boubacar Traore out for the season, Notre Dame will need more play like this from Burnham for the rest of the season.
ACC officiating is a joke
Officiating across all levels of football seems to be questionable these days, but the ACC might just be the worst of the worst. Luckily it didn’t matter for Notre Dame since this was a blowout, the officials were pretty terrible from start to finish. In the first half, they flagged Anthonie Knapp for a hold on Notre Dame’s first drive, which was not a hold. At the end of the first half, they also flagged Benjamin Morrison for a hold that also was not a hold.
In the second half, somehow, the ACC messed up the spot on a Notre Dame kickoff that they ruled was Stanford ball at the three, even though the returnman wisely had his foot out of bounds, so they should have gotten it at the 35. Even after review, they got the call wrong.
The officiating crew also picked up two flags against Stanford and waved them off when both were the actual right call, including a blatant pass interference on Stanford. Again, they were brutal both ways, and there simply is no reason for the officiating to be as bad as it is from the ACC.
Up and down day for Beaux Collins
Collins was the recipient of Notre Dame’s longest pass play of the season, the 53-yard pass from Leonard that should have been a score, but the Clemson transfer still had an up-and-down day. Collins dropped a pass that would have been a good gain on Notre Dame’s first drive and then fumbled the ball away in the second quarter after another good pickup.
The drops are a bit of a concern since it’s been an issue in back-to-back games now. Collins was credited with two drops against Louisville and then another yesterday. He still ended the day with 85 yards on 4 catches, but he had the potential for an even bigger day. Collins has flashed a lot this year, but he’ll need to be more consistent the rest of the season for both the offense to continue to click and for his own draft stock purposes.
