The other day we revisited our preseason predictions to see how our and your expectations had held up halfway through the year. Today’s we’re going to dig into 2017 by the numbers, and more specifically, by the numbers other than 2016. We tend to get hung up on comparing results to last year, but as even the most rosy-glassed of us said preseason, 2016 shouldn’t really be the benchmark for anything. So let’s take a look at how 2017 stacks up to other seasons in Irish history, both recent and not-so-recent.

The Georgia loss, both in the simple reality of it and the way it happened, was an absolute gut punch. Even in all my natural optimism I still dwell on it a bit from time to time and I’m still frustrated by how close we were in that game. Even so, I think that preseason any of us would’ve signed up without hesitation for a 5-1 start to the year. Right? Many expected us to get blown out by Georgia. Didn’t happen. Some expected us to stumble against Boston College or Michigan State. Most emphatically didn’t happen. Many expected us to play down to our level of competition, as has happened disturbingly often under Brian Kelly. Didn’t happen. As Friar Laurence said, “There art thou happy!”

And yet, with apologies to the good friar, we know that 5-1 didn’t happen just by good fortune. We know that we’ve run the ball much better than in years past, that we’ve defended much better, that we’re better in the red zone on both ends of the field, and so on. Let’s set that against some of the better years we can remember. Opponent adjusted numbers are always preferable, but there are three caveats here:

  • I can only get those numbers back to 2005, which was the first year of S&P+.
  • The guys behind S&P+ and FEI have both tinkered with their algorithms a bit over time.
  • Both metrics for the current year still weight preseason projections at about 14%; the first fully current-season numbers come out in a few days.

So the comparisons here aren’t perfect, but they still have plenty of value

2017 Versus The Recent Past

The oldest year we can get advanced stats for also happens to be Charlie Weis’s first year, and the first of his two good teams. We’ll also look at Brian Kelly’s best Notre Dame teams, the 2012 and 2015 editions.

2005

Record: 9-3, #9 AP, #11 Coaches
Key offensive players: Brady Quinn, Darius Walker, Jeff Samardzjia, Rhema McKnight, Mo Stovall, Anthony Fasano
Key defensive players: Tom Zbikowski, Chinedum Ndukwe, Brandon Hoyte, Corey Mays, Maurice Crum, Victor Abiamiri, Derek Landri, Mike Richardson

Charlie Weis’s first year seemed to augur great things, especially given the epic battle with eventual national champion runner-up USC. Even a Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State did little to dampen enthusiasm.

2006

Record: 10-3, #17 AP, #19 Coaches
Key offensive players: Quinn, Walker, Samardzjia, McKnight, John Carlson, David Grimes
Key defensive players:  Ndukwe, Landri, Abiamiri, Zbikowski, Crum, Richardson, Trevor Laws, Terrail Lambert

Weis’s second year was mostly respectable, but also was a substantial letdown for the AP’s preseason #3 team. This year’s resounding bowl loss, to LSU in the Sugar, did quite a bit to dampen enthusiasm.

2012

Record: 12-1, #4 AP, #3 Coaches
Key offensive players: Everett Golson, Tommy Rees, Cierre Wood, Theo Riddick, Tyler Eifert, TJ Jones, DaVaris Daniels, Zack Martin
Key defensive players: Manti Te’o, Louis Nix, Stephon Tuitt, Kapron Lewis-Moore, Prince Shembo, Dan Fox, Danny Spond

A magical season that saw a generational defense paired with every break going in favor of the Irish – until Baylor upset Kansas State and let Alabama back into the national title game, of course. Alabama’s win left a sour taste, but even so, finishing in the top 5 for the first time since 1993 was a very big deal.

2015

Record: 10-3, #11 AP, #12 Coaches
Key offensive players: Deshone Kizer, Will Fuller, CJ Prosise, Chris Brown, Josh Adams, Torii Hunter, Ronnie Stanley
Key defensive players: Jaylon Smith, Sheldon Day, Joe Schmidt, Max Redfield, Elijah Shumate, Keivarae Russell, Cole Luke, Mathias Farley, Romeo Okwara

Another good season that felt like a bit of a letdown, due largely to the fact that the Irish dropped every big game – to #2 Clemson by two, to #3 Stanford by two, and to #4 Ohio State by 16. Nonetheless, this was far and away the best offensive team of Kelly’s Notre Dame tenure, with future pros Kizer, Fuller, Prosise, Stanley, and Nick Martin.

Advanced Stats Rankings

Year S&P+ Rk S&P+ Off Rk S&P+ Def Rk FEI Rk FEI Off Rk FEI Def Rk
 2005  8th 3rd 38th
 2006 20th 8th 59th
 2012 5th 21st 4th  10th 12th 16th
 2015 7th 11th 34th  7th 8th 57th
 2017  13th  21st 14th  7th

Note that FEI offense/defense stats won’t come out until Tuesday-ish, when the rankings with no preseason projections come out.

Counting Stats Rankings

Year Scoring Rushing Passing Scoring Def Rush Def Pass Def
 2005 8th 55th 4th  53rd  34th  105th
 2006  16th 72nd  13th  67th  61st 60th
 2012  82nd  38th 72nd  2nd  11th  25th
 2015  34th  28th 35th  40th  73rd  27th
 2017 18th  6th 115th  15th  48th  78th

Counting Stats Per-Game Averages

Year Scoring Rushing Passing Scoring Def Rush Def Pass Def
 2005 36.7 147.1 330.3 24.5 132.3 264.6
 2006 31.0 125.7 264.1 23.8 136.8 203.4
 2012 25.8 189.4 222.8 12.8 105.7 199.8
 2015 34.2 208.3 258.5 24.1 174.8 197.8
 2017 40.0 308.0 163.2 16.8 134.5 231.2

The counting stats should be taken with substantial grains of salt, since they don’t account for pace, opponent strength, national trends, etc. Look no further than scoring averages – the 2017 team’s average, which ranks 18th this year, would’ve been 4th in 2005. Does that mean 2017 offenses are better than 2005 offenses? No, they’re just different. And such is the danger of counting stats.

2017 Versus the Less-Recent Past

When we look farther back in the history books, it gets even harder to compare teams and eras – all we have is counting stats, and the landscape gets more different the farther back you go. Nonetheless, if you’re curious about how this edition of the Irish stacks up against known-good past editions, here you go. The national title seasons were an easy choice, but we also took some other great seasons for comparison. We’ll forgo national rankings here as they (a) aren’t so easy to track down as you go farther back and (b) are kind of worthless anyway given how much the context changes.

1964

Record: 9-1, #3 AP, #3 Coaches
Notable for: Ara Parseghian’s first year, John Huarte’s Heisman, 9-0 start

1966

Record: 9-0-1, #1 AP, #1 Coaches
Notable for: Parseghian’s first title, “The Tie” with Michigan State, wins over end-of-season #8 Purdue and #18 USC

1973

Record: 11-0, #1 AP, #4 Coaches (the final Coaches poll still came out before bowl games at the time)
Notable for: Parseghian’s second title, wins over end-of-season #4 Alabama and #8 USC, the first of Parseghian’s three straight wins against Bear Bryant

1977

Record: 11-1, #1 AP, #1 Coaches
Notable for: Dan Devine’s title, unanimous All-Americans Ross Browner and Ken McAfee, wins over end-of-season #4 Texas and #8 Pitt

1988

Record: 12-0, #1 AP, #1 Coaches

Notable for: Lou Holtz’s title, wins over end-of-season #2 Miami, #4 Michigan, #5 West Virginia, and #7 USC

1989

Record: 12-1, #2 AP, #3 Coaches
Notable for: Defeat of #1 Colorado in the Orange Bowl, wins over end-of-season #3 Colorado, #7 USC, and #8 Michigan

1990

Record: 9-3, #6 AP, #6 Coaches
Notable for: The “phantom clip” against #1 Colorado in the Orange Bowl, wins over end-season #3 Miami, #7 Michigan, and #8 Tennessee

1992

Record: 10-1-1, AP #4, Coaches #4
Notable for: Demolition of then-#3 Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, four first-rounders in the following NFL Draft (#2 Rick Mirer, #10 Jerome Bettis, #17 Tom Carter, and #20 Irv Smith)

1993

Record: 11-1, AP #2, Coaches #2
Notable for: Defeat of then-#1 (and end-of-season #1) Florida State in the “Game of the Century”, second straight Cotton Bowl win over a top ten Texas A&M team

 

Year Point Diff Scoring Scoring Def Rushing Passing Rush Def Pass Def
 1964 +210 28.7 7.7 190.9 210.5 68.7 137.6
 1966 +324 36.2 3.8 211.6 180.9 79.3 108.3
 1973 +292 35.8 6.6 350.2 111.2 82.4 118.8
 1977 +253 34.7 11.7 231.9 208.1 89.2 147.8
 1988 +224 32.6 12.3  258.0  130.0 112.4 167.9
 1989 +223 33.8 15.3 287.8 113.8 105.6 190.3
 1990 +101 31.8 22.6  250.3 166.7 123.2 267.1
 1992 +231 37.2 16.2 280.9 189.5 111.1 216.1
 1993 +209  36.6 17.6  260.7 168.8 89.5  227.5
 2017 +139 40.0 16.8 308.0 163.2  134.5 231.2

Note: The 1964 and 1966 teams didn’t play in a bowl game, and the 1973-1993 numbers do NOT include bowl games, which was standard at the time.

With the toughest part of the schedule ahead – as we’ll touch on in the final installment of this series – it’s certainly reasonable to believe that the 2017 numbers will become less favorable towards the end of the year. Performance to this point is still notable, though; there are plenty of times since 1993 that Notre Dame has had a first-half slate of similar quality, and they haven’t consistently squashed inferior teams like this year’s group has. If the Irish can achieve a second-half differential of +71, which is within reason, they’ll have their best differential since 1989. If they can get to +76, it’ll be the best since 1977.

I’m not arguing that greatness is predestined for the 2017 team. Just pointing out that the team has done some impressive work to this point, and that there are some very notable milestones still on the table for them. Eleven months ago, it was very hard to imagine us sitting at this point. Enjoy the ride, folks.