Notre Dame found itself amidst a frenzied Labor Day crowd on Monday night cheering on a rejuvenated Louisville program shaking off the shackles of the Petrino/VanGorder 2018 season. After the 1st quarter in a tight contest it looked like the Irish defense was lost which then bled over to the offense. The Irish did settle down–especially defensively–and eventually put away the Cardinals for a less-than-inspired road victory to open the season.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | CARDS |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 17 |
| Total Yards | 423 | 375 |
| Yards Per Play | 6.50 | 5.06 |
| Conversions | 5/13 | 6/16 |
| Completions | 14 | 12 |
| Yards Per Attempt | 8.4 | 4.8 |
| Rushes | 42 | 46 |
| Rushing Success | 53.8% | 38.4% |
| 10+ Yds Rushing | 9 | 10 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 24.0% | 21.5% |
Offense
QB: D
RB: B
TE: B
OL: B
WR: B
Let me join the chorus in criticizing Ian Book for a really poor performance in a spot where the Irish offense needed a calm, steady influence from the quarterback position. Luckily, enough plays were made that the offense as a whole wasn’t downright awful and likely we can attribute the success to Louisville still being a really poor defense. My biggest concerns are a lot of season-long worries presented themselves in this game:
1 Book’s Skittishness
To put it simply, Book needs to be able to stand in the pocket and deliver the ball accurately when his first read isn’t open. Going back to the Pitt game last year and in his last start against Clemson his lack of patience has really hurt the offense from operating efficiently. It would seem like opponents are beginning to gameplan around Book being skittish and against Louisville they kept him largely off-balance and afraid to stand his ground.
It’s tough to rate the offensive line when Book gives himself 0.8 seconds before he’s back-pedaling or running out of the pocket. There were way too many wasted snaps that resulted in zero or little yardage primarily because Book couldn’t stay patient in the pocket. I thought the blocking was more than fine–certainly good enough for a quarterback with Book’s resume be very productive–and it’s really unfair to the linemen to watch their quarterback unable to stand tall.
It’s strange because Book is actually a little too aggressive when he takes off and doesn’t shy away from contact when he’s on the run. Theoretically, he shouldn’t be scared at all to stand in the pocket when the bullets are flying. I honestly believe his lack of height and a lot of shorter pass-catchers is bothering his ability to process things on the fly.
2 Opponents Playing Downhill
The run game ground to a halt after the first quarter and it looked an awful lot like some of the poorer performances in the past where defenses freely key on the Irish running backs without fear of being burned in the passing game. If the Louisville defense was able to pull this off it won’t look pretty against the tougher opponents.
Notre Dame opened the game with successful runs on 9 of their first 10 carries and 11 of their first 13 carries. One of the best starts to the Kelly era! The bulk of a very solid 230 yards on the ground came early in the game, though. From the 14th carry of the game until the end the Irish finished with an abysmal 38.4% rushing success rate.
3 Mediocre Talent
If Book isn’t going to be really good, poised, and able to carry the offense for large stretches this season won’t be very successful. To be sure, 283 total yards from Book can be completely acceptable but only if he’s surrounded by a lot of talent that can make plays if he’s a quality distributor of the football. I’m not sure I see that right now for Notre Dame. Yes, a healthy Jafar Armstrong, Cole Kmet, and Michael Young will help but I’m not sure to a large degree.
Further, this offense looks like it’s set up to rely on Book. Throughout the Louisville game Book dropped back to pass 37 times for 56.9% of all offensive snaps and only managed a 51.3% overall success rate. This is set against 28 carries for the running backs.
Run Success
Jones: 8 of 15 (53.3%)
Book: 6 of 11 (54.5%)
Smith: 4 of 8 (50%)
Flemister: 1 of 3 (33.3%)
Armstrong: 2 of 2 (100%)
Notre Dame’s overall rushing success wasn’t much better but we’re certain this offense is going to live and die with Ian Book and feature a lot of passing on first down. If Book isn’t playing well things are going to crumble quickly.
To point towards some of the positives the third down conversion throws to Tremble and Keys were bright spots, plus Tremble’s first career touchdown on a beautiful seam route. Claypool’s 94 receiving yards looks nice but a lot of that was tremendous YAC which won’t be super sustainable all season against better competition.
I feel bad for Tony Jones because he should be praised for basically having a career night. He started hot but finished the game with only 3 successful runs on his final 10 carries, including a pair of failed 3rd and short opportunities. His game just doesn’t mesh well with the defense keying on the run and forcing him to make people miss near the line of scrimmage.
Defense
DL: C+
LB: C
DB: A-
To me, the story of the defense was that the linebackers were inexperienced, Satterfield’s play-calling adeptly took advantage of this, plus the fact that the Irish played very aggressively for most of the contest. This enabled Louisville to rip off 6 runs of at least 10 yards in the 1st quarter alone, accounting for 113 of their 249 rushing yards in a blink of an eye. Clearly, the defense wasn’t quite prepared fully for what was thrown at them and there were a few too many missed tackles and lack of sound gap play, to be expected in the first game with some inexperienced players.
Once again, Clark Lea adjusted masterfully and the Irish shut down Louisville for the better part of 3 quarters. The Cardinals totaled 45.3% of their yardage on their first 2 drives and went the rest of the way averaging 3.71 yards across 57 plays.
Of course, some of that success was due to Louisville’s fluky fumbles, dropped passes, and general inability to throw the ball very well. Still, given a terrible opening quarter I liked what I saw from the defense once they settled down and looked to figure out the Cardinals’ gameplan.
Stuffs (Tackles of 2 Yards or Fewer):
Gilman – 3.5
White – 3
Ogundeji – 2
Ademilola, Jay – 1.5
Owusu-Koramoah – 1.5
Kareem – 1.5
Crawford – 1
Hayes – 1
Hinish – 1
Okwara – 1
Tagovailoa-Amosa – 1
Bilal – 0.5
It jumped out to me that Notre Dame was playing super aggressive, especially with the linebackers. They got burned badly early on with that style. Part of me wonders if it would have been better to sit back, let the defensive line hold things up, and ease the new linebackers into the game. I’d imagine Lea believed it should be full speed ahead getting the linebackers as much work possible at full tilt.
Both Drew White and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah were microcosms of the struggles in that they missed some big plays and were responsible for Louisville having some success but at the same time they both made some of the best plays of the game for the Irish defense. Coming away from their performance I get the sense both will be used liberally as blitzing weapons and it’ll come down to how well they can clean up the fundamentals that good linebackers have down on nearly every snap.
Final Thoughts
I mentioned this late in fall camp when Young went down with injury that not having a viable “X” receiver seemed like a huge problem. I have to assume Book doesn’t feel super comfortable throwing to Finke (1 catch for 2 yards for goodness sake!) that far outside and again the lack of height and physicality has to hamper the offense when he’s dropping back to pass. Even if Claypool is covered he’s sometimes open, but does Book feel that way about the 5’9″ Finke?
I’ll patiently wait and see what Armstrong can offer the offense when he’s healthy. Can he stay healthy? For all the hand-wringing with the offense they still did average 6.5 yards per play. Given the Louisville defense isn’t likely to be very good that’s still a below average effort. But can Armstrong change the equation on offense?
The early returns on Asmar Bilal at linebacker are not positive. There was a lot of rotation among White, Simon, Lamb, and Bilal in the middle and it’s not a good sign for the most senior member of that group to be so ineffective out of the gate.
Kyle Hamilton almost grabbed an interception but still ended up with 2 pass break-ups while playing a lot at safety. The coaching staff was not kidding around when they said Hamilton would be rotated in freely throughout games.
Special teams looked solid which was a bright spot. Doerer hooked one of his PAT’s through the uprights but otherwise performed well both there and on kickoffs. The punting from Jay Bramblett looked pretty good, as well.
I’m on board with this offensive gameplan looking a bit too vanilla which isn’t uncommon when one team thinks it has an upper hand prior to kickoff. A lack of screens seemed quite strange, especially given how accurate Book is with those throws and how well the receivers have done gaining yardage in that area last year. Not one screen to someone like Keys?
The situation at corner looks like it is Pride, Crawford, then Bracy. I thought everyone did some nice things overall against a quarterback who didn’t look very comfortable throwing that far down field. Speaking of which, Louisville’s receiver Atwell seemed like he had a 100-yard day at times but only finished with 47 yards.
An interesting uniform note as Notre Dame apparently won’t be wearing the 150th college football anniversary patches on their jerseys.
Book was definitely not solid. He tended to make one read, and one read only it seemed. Even Herbie pointed out on a sack play that he was looking at Claypool pre-snap, and never looked right to see that nobody had covered Keys in the slot. Given how bad their defense was last year, I can’t believe they had multiple reads covered at all times. GIven how open Claypool or Tremble were on the two more downfield passes, I also can’t believe they had multiple reads covered at all times.
Young was not exactly tall as the ‘X’ receiver. I don’t think it is a height issue with Finke, I don’t think the wide side plays to his strengths. He is a slot/possession guy. I think Keys needs to be outside to run deep. That said, if Book is not going to give a play time to develop, it wouldn’t matter if the receivers were Ismail, Floyd and Boykin.
I have always worried that Book was too worried about making a mistake with the ball that he wouldn’t trust himself or his receviers with a less than wide open pass. He definitely seemed more skittish after the tipped pass than before. He actually seemed more inclined to pull the ball and run than Wimbush.
I thought the line did a credible job, but the failures on the third and shorts to impose their will was a big disappointment. I would lower their grade for that alone. I am also not sure they did a particularly good job at forming a consistent pocket. That said, I think Book was inclined to run if he ever saw an angle for it. Perhaps that first run was not a good thing in the greater scheme of things. It may have made him more inclined to take off.
Does Jones have a carries limit? Given how well we was doing and Arsmtrong being out, I would have thought more carries were in order.
It did seem that all the RBs were decent to good in blitz pick-up.
The announcers mentioned the loss of Coney and Tranquill more than any LB in the game except White. Bilal’s picture is probably on a milk carton somewhere. As the most experienced LB, he should have been better. It can’t be the position, that is the one Tranquill played and he was always around the ball.
Hamilton seemed as good as advertised.
We have a week off, a scrimmage and then Georgia. Neither Georgia or UM run an offense like Louisville’s, but both of them have a QB who can successfully throw to WRs and talented ones who can catch the ball. Louisville had neither. If not for the speed option and misdirection, they had nothing.
There is a lot to work on, as you would expect, but I am not as pessimistic as the people on NDNation.
It’s not like Louisville’s receivers had a ton of drops. I can maybe remember two. Our DBs looked really good after the opening drive. Hamilton had at least 2 pass breakups, Pride had 1, Bracy had 1, Crawford had 1, I think Gilman had 1. Across the board, the coverage was pretty good on the receivers, at least from what I could tell.
Also, against Vandy, those Georgia receivers looked like the young, inexperienced players that they are. They only had 156 passing yards in that game. Meanwihle, Shea Patterson actually completed a lower percentage of his passes against MTSU than Book did against Louisville.
Slowing down those offenses will be centered on stopping the run game (which, ok we might have something to be worried about there!)
Book certainly was disappointing. There were a handful of plays that I thought he just made “rookie type” mistakes, which he isn’t. Loaded box on 3rd and short, call a time out if you can’t get out of the run play. Don’t throw it into a guys feet on 3rd and 4 two yds down the field. I expected better.
I’d give both Book and the Oline C grades. I definitely expected better from Book, but I think the line contributes to what we saw last night, especially at center, but not only there. On that 3rd and 4, I need to rewatch the game, but it looked to me that Book had to throw it under a defender’s arm who got past the right side of the line, so threw it low. I also wonder why Fink ran a 2 yard route with 4 to go.
Our run game is just serviceable vs our elite aspirations. We don’t have a back who can break it to the house, even with Armstrong. No way we are a playoff team with that issue. So I think Eric’s comment about the passing game hurting the run game may be backwards. As he said, our run game sucked after the early part of the game. Not just on 3rd or 4th and short, and against a much less talented defense, which I attribute to our line mostly, with a couple obvious calls where everybody in the stadium knew where the ball was going.
Louisville seemed to cover our depleted receiver group pretty well most of the night. Claypool got extra attention, IMO, as Fink wouldn’t start/play at WR at any other strong program, Wright seems unable to be a factor in the pass game, and Keys is a steep drop from Fink in the slot. Until Kmet and Young are back, I’d start Tremble, move Fink back to slot where he’s very good, and stick somebody fast at WR.
I was surprised how often we lost the outside contain on defense given the hype and talent in Kareem and Okwara. I’m also unimpressed with our interior defenders, they looked mostly slow and outmuscled. Tackling was also an issue much of the night especially by the LBs. Absent the fumble recoveries, life could have been very different.
I wonder if Gilman could be moved to one of the rover or LB positions and Hamilton stay in at safety. Not sure he’s big enough, but he makes plenty of hits as is and Hamilton looks like he can be the real deal fast.
Hopefully New Mexico lets us play around a bit to try things out. I’m not as worried about Book as many of you are, but think our ceiling as a team is NY Day bowl at best.
Last thought, I’ve always been puzzled why so much opinion is based on our opponents’ record LAST year in a first game like this, especially when many of the players are gone and a whole coaching staff is new.
Tremble is a truly terrible blocker right now if yesterday is any indication, so he cannot be the main/full-time guy at TE.
Put Tremble in the slot as an extra WR. You’re absolutely right, his blocking was…interesting.
Book’s lack of accuracy was a concern not mentioned above, imo. He was very skittish and off target on several short passes. That was one of the things that led to Wimbush sitting down last year. Was disconcerting to see that awkward pass to Finke that caused an easy first down to be missed, along with a few others. Hopefully just a one game thing. We will see. One more easy game to straighten this stuff out, hopefully.
I thought there were at least 3 that were uncharacteristically inaccurate from Book. That’s probably way at the bottom of the list of my concerns but definitely weird to see it from Book. I think it proves he wasn’t very comfortable.
I’m not excusing Book’s performance, but I do think he will be just fine in the long run. Now whether “just fine” means better than 2018 is up for debate, but that was about as bad as we’ve ever seen him play and the offense still put up 35 points. Granted, Louisville’s defense was atrocious last year but I think the loss of Kmet and Young was downplayed a little too much. Those guys were supposed to be key players and it was the first game of the year on the road, so I’m willing to give Book some more leash.
I’m just mystified that short-yardage situations always seem to be a problem, even with the best offensive lines in the country in 2015 and 2017 we were never great at converting those 3rd and twos. I don’t know if there’s data to support my theory that ND is bad in those spots, but they certainly were last night against a clearly over-matched d-line.
Juwan Pass played annoyingly well in the first half, but UL was running a ton of misdirection and you just knew ND’s defense was gonna have some rough moments against an unfamiliar offense. Better to have those moments early I guess, but they pretty much shut down the passing game and I think 17 points was a perfectly reasonably number to expect the defense to give up. They better iron out those tackling issues though, some of those were inexcusable.
I agree in the sense that this was the lower end Book. Let’s just hope it’s not trending toward Regular Book.
We’re surprisingly strong in power success rate in year’s past. I’ve long said those short-yardage snaps are among the most misunderstood and over-hyped in the game. But, yeah it wasn’t good against Louisville.
So it was a Book end.
I think the problem is that we went so predictable with the third and short runs, just handoffs out of the shotgun while the defense loaded the box and waited for it. I was shocked Long didn’t call any play action passes, since I remember those having some pretty memorable successes last year.
I remember at least one screen to Keys. It went for a modest gain.
You’re right, just re-watched and forgot. That was an awkward one all the way across the field, super dangerous.
I strongly support not having the CFB 150 patches.
So do I. In general, I think there are too many patches on uniforms. We all know it’s the 150th anniversary of CFB, no one is going to forget if you don’t put the patch on every single uniform.
When they unveiled the 1980s throwbacks, those did have the patch on them. I wonder if they will wear the patch just for that one game.
“In general, I think there are too many patches on uniforms.”
When I read this I heard 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney in my head.
Not worried at all about Book. He will bounce back. My biggest concern is the play of Bilal. He had quite a few missed tackles and I question whether or not he should be in the two deep.
And not only the missed tackles, but the constant hesitation. It was like he was a half second behind where he needed to be on every single play. Maybe that was simply a lack of understanding how this option offense was going to work. But if he plays like that against any regular offenses, there’s no way we can afford to keep him on the field. That was extremely disappointing.
On Bilal….making no decision is as bad as making the wrong one. He simply looked like he wasn’t recognizing what he was seeing.
What this game showed (to me at least) is that this Notre Dame program is in such a stronger place than it has been for most of my lifetime. Nearly every single thing that I was worried about for this team went wrong at some point, and we still won this game:
Book unable to keep calm under pressure (or even without pressure)
Book and/or the WRs unable to get anything going downfield
The RBs not having top end, breakaway speed for when the WRs aren’t stretching the field
The O Line not quite functioning as one cohesive unit across the board (they were still much better than I had expected, though)
Bilal (and really all of the LBs) looking lost – (this is my biggest concern going forward; Bilal looked like a deer in headlights, there’s almost no chance he’s getting any snaps when we play the Navy triple option)
The DL not being stout against the run
The DEs being unable to finish plays, even when they generate pressure
Hamilton looking like a freshman and giving up a big play (he was fantastic after that first missed tackle though)
Really, the only unit I was worried about that didn’t end up really struggling at any point was special teams, although punt return will be a wasteland again this year.
Despite all of that, we won by 18 (against a P5 program. Starting a QB we recruited strongly. In front of its biggest crowd ever. On national TV, as the only game of the day). This was a game that we would have lost, without a doubt, up until very recently. I really really prefer being annoyed by an 18 point win rather than a close loss.
You forgot the missed arm tackles!
But, yes, full agreement – this had the hallmarks of mid-to-late-aughts ND teams, and in the end we dominated a P5 opponent at a night game on the road. That level sustained over the course of the season probably won’t get us a top-10 finish, but also we’re in the position to be disappointed in not getting a top-10 finish. So pretty good!
Ha I guess that must not have been one of my concerns coming into this season. With all of the solid tackling last year, I definitely didn’t expect to see a million missed tackles early on.
I forgot to mention, I loved the 3rd and long package with Gilman at LB. One of the things that I’ve constantly been annoyed by for as long as I can remember is that we seem to never have had a guy who can time his blitz disguises well. Even back when we had Te’o, I remember being able to predict before every 3rd and long if he was going to blitz or if he was faking it. With Gilman yesterday, he was really good at disguising whether he was going to bring pressure or drop into coverage. Maybe he will be too small to hold up against better teams, but I doubt it. That package is going to be lots of fun this year.
Really liked the stat about stuffs. As a suggestion/idea if you could find or track the snaps on defense (particularly the linebackers but also the line and Hamilton as well) that would be really interesting data to report and track as well. Not sure if an official participation report is accessible or if that would be something that would need manually tracking but for an intrepid 18S writer that would make for some great content to put out there.
The snap numbers are done in a few places, usually the pay sites. Saw the front seven already:
53 71% DE Julian Okwara
52 69% DE Khalid Kareem
34 45% DE Daelin Hayes
26 35% DE Ade Ogundeji
48 64% DT Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa
35 47% DT Kurt Hinish
28 37% DT Jayson Ademilola
28 37% DT Jacob Lacey
61 81% LB J. Owusu-Koramoah
53 71% LB Drew White
41 55% LB Asmar Bilal
22 29% LB Shayne Simon
13 17% LB Jack Lamb
10 13% LB Jordan Genmark Heath
Gotcha, thanks! Looking at that I’m surprised to see Simon played that much (probably not a good sign for him) and would have guessed Lamb had a few more. I suspect over time he will.
Our LB situation makes me wonder why we aren’t recruiting another LB or two.
Have Hamilton spend the entire next two weeks lifting weights, no playing football at all, and then have him play LB against Georgia. Problem solved.
It seemed to me that they rotated players more than I can remember. Every change of downs the defense had new players out there. Like they said they would do.
Preseason, Lea talked about reducing the mental load on the young linebackers by having them fire downhill on runs with the intent of clogging lanes inside and forcing runs out, where (in theory) your more experienced ends and safeties can clean up. That’s exactly what he did early, but unfortunately Louisville did a good job of optioning the ends (probably wasn’t something they did at Appy last year, and Pass didn’t run much last year) and the safeties/older LBs (sorry 22) did a pretty crummy job of filling. As Larz said in the gameday chat, our perimeter D was supposed to be our strength and they attacked it early and often to great effect.
That was a little concerning, but clearly things picked up dramatically after those first two Louisville possessions. Linebacker play in particular was much better, and on a related note, I think we’ll see less of Bilal in the very near future. Loved the dime package with Hamilton and Elliott deep and Gilman running around the middle. DTs were actually more disruptive than the DEs, which is a sentence I did not expect to be typing today. Second-half pass rush was much stronger overall. Lots of positives to take away for the defense after a rocky start.
The offense… Yeesh. Book improved his patience dramatically in camp according to, well, everyone and then threw it out the window immediately. Jamie at ISD noted that on 30+ called passes, Book took off and/or was sacked on 12. I mean, holy crap Ian, try to hang in there a bit. We need Armstrong to be healthy, we need Kmet back, and we especially need Young back (also something I didn’t expect to type), but none of that will matter if Book can’t pull his head out of his posterior in the pocket. Fingers crossed.
Also, more of a nit, I would argue that Louisville had one fluky fumble, the botched snap. There was nothing fluky about Gilman and Ogundeji stripping the ball – the exact way they forced those turnovers is something Lea has the defense practice. Recovering fumbles is of course a bit fluky, oblate spheroid and all that, but they were forced legitimately.
On the fumbles. A fumble can both be forced and sloppy handling of the football. This would apply to the two you mention. IIRC.
IMO the line was not blameless, nor the receivers in Book’s below par performance. After the two early scores, our line was no better than ordinary, and I didn’t see receivers getting open much.
All that said, Book put up almost 300 yards passing and running and was 60+% passing.
Armstrong out that long is a real blow. We may be snake bitten on offense this year,like the defense was in 2014. Hope not.
Book was as inaccurate as I can remember seeing him.
I just rewatched the first half. Book had several obvious bad throws, unusual on other than deep balls which he hasn’t proven he can throw, but definitely was under pressure most of the time. An example of overly critical commentary on Book in early H1, Herbstreit said Book never looked right to see a blitzer coming that sacked him, ignoring that 34 was right there in the path of the rush and neither ran a route nor blocked the blitzer. Just a body that did nothing. So Book is supposed to trust these guys? And IMO our receivers, with the exception of Claypool occasionally, and to a lesser extent Tremble, weren’t getting separation in time.
Also, Book led Williams perfectly in the first quarter for what would have been at least a 10 yard gain in the second drive of Q1. Williams muffed it and was yanked, never appeared on offense again. Drive sputtered out.
If he catches that, Book is 15 for 23, 65%, over 200 yards passing plus 91 yards running.
I’m not worried about Book. Would like to see a deep threat receiver and Book have the time and be able to hit him consistently to be happy, but I encourage folks to rewatch in a less emotional state and recalibrate. I felt much worse watching it live than I did knowing what the outcome would be. I often wait til the game is over to skip commercials and watch the recording. WAY less stressful. I should have done that this week.
Ok, I’m a wimp.
Jafar Armstrong out 5-8 weeks, according to Pete Sampson, with the “groin area” injury he had in the first quarter.
https://twitter.com/PeteSampson_/status/1169324145588543489?s=20
Worth noting that he had a sports hernia in high school – perhaps this is of that nature. Really sucks.
Irish fans: “We don’t have enough playmakers!”
2019 summer camp and week 1: “lol, wanna see that?”
Really bad shame, seems like there’s no way to switch it up at this point either. Just gotta hope Smith and Williams can give more than expected but it’s still a downgrade.
🙁 🙁
Seems like our explosiveness is going to have to come from Claypool or Tremble/Kmet. Can Tyree skip his senior year?
Maybe the freshman WR who was a tailback in HS can move back.