When Notre Dame takes the field for the first round of the College Football Playoffs, its opponent will be one of the potential Cinderella teams in the tournament. The Indiana Hoosiers are 11-1 after entering the season with low expectations from pundits, expecting five or six wins at best. That modest projection stems from Indiana’s miserable 9-27 record the previous three years.
This marks the first time since 1991 that the two schools have met, with the Irish winning that otherwise nondescript season opener, 49-27. That victory marked the start of Notre Dame’s link to NBC broadcasts that continues to this day. It also added some lore to the Irish legacy by way of Irv Smith dragging multiple Hoosiers into the end zone for a touchdown.
A combination of home-field advantage, big-game experience and overall talent likely help explain why the Irish are being given the edge. Another could be the fact that Indiana’s path to the postseason has been paved by a soft schedule, a verbal slap that the Irish also have heard periodically this season.
However, clear differences in the perception of the respective teams’ schedule strength exist. These include:
Quality Over Quantity
Indiana’s offense averaged the second-most points among FBS teams during the regular season at 43.5 per game and gave up the sixth-fewest at 14.7 per contest. Yet only two of the 12 teams that the Hoosiers faced had winning records. In those matchups, Indiana averaged only 17.5 points and allowed 26.5, splitting the two games against Michigan and Ohio State, respectively.
The Hoosiers did defeat a pair of teams who finished the regular season at 6-6 in Nebraska and Washington but the other eight wins came against a sea of mediocrity. These included four 4-8 teams, a trio of 5-7 squads and the horrible 1-11 Purdue Boilermakers.
Indiana destroyed Purdue, 66-0, in its regular-season finale, following in the footsteps of Notre Dame’s 66-7 slaughter of the Boilermakers on Sept. 14. Purdue was the only common opponent this year between the Hoosiers and Irish, so trying to glean some insight from those contests is a likely waste of time.
For Notre Dame, its 2024 national championship dreams were jolted after just two weeks after a stunning loss to Northern Illinois, which finished 7-5 on the year. Unlike Indiana’s one victory over a winning team, six of the Irish’s 11 wins have come against teams over .500.
Notre Dame faced both Navy and Army earlier this year and each academy entered its game undefeated. Yet, when they walked off the field against the Irish, they’d been drilled by a combined score of 100 to 28. Three other victories by Notre Dame over eight-win teams, the 31-13 win over 7-5 Georgia Tech and the aforementioned beatdown of Purdue were the other components of this successful run.
Offensive Maneuvers
Indiana’s offense was able to breeze when matched up against teams that finished with .500 or below records, averaging 486.8 yards per game. In their two contests against winning teams, it was a much different story, with the Hoosiers averaging just 198.5 yards during the game.
Yet, both Michigan and Ohio State managed to shut down Indiana’s running game, with the Hoosiers averaging just 1.78 yards per carry. That’s in stark contrast to the 4.96 yards that Indiana runners averaged in games against teams at .500 or under. The Hoosiers would be very happy to come near the average from the previously noted 1991 matchup, when they averaged 4.80 yards per carry.
For Notre Dame, facing winning or losing schools didn’t matter on the offensive side of the ball. During the regular season, the Irish averaged 421.3 yards, with the number only dipping to 396.2 yards against winning teams, That narrow difference also played out for the potent Notre Dame ground game. The 6.17 rushing average in the six games against winning teams nearly matched the season average of 6.30.
Passing Protection Contrasts
At least a portion of the credit for Indiana’s meager running totals against winning teams belongs to the pass rushes of Michigan and Ohio State, which sacked the Hoosiers a combined nine times. That total matches the nine sacks that Indiana allowed in the other 10 contests.
In Notre Dame’s lone loss, it allowed two sacks while the five schools at .500 or below collected nine takedowns against the Irish. The remaining four opponent sacks came in the six victories against winning teams. To be fair, three of the nine sacks allowed against losing teams came in the Purdue rout when two key injuries caused havoc on the front line.
When it comes to defensive sacks, Notre Dame and Indiana each averaged 2.5 per game. However, Indiana collected a single sack in its two matchups against winners. Meanwhile, the Irish were closer to that overall season average by bringing down 11 quarterbacks in the six victories over winning teams. One caveat regarding Notre Dame’s numbers is that two of those wins came against the run-dominant offenses of Navy and Army.
