Recently our friend and former contributor Jamie Uyeyama wrote a piece for Irish Sports Daily on the Irish running game regression during the final quarter of the 2017 season. It’s highly recommended reading for any Notre Dame fan.

Jamie describes how it was a “mixture of technical precision, schematic deception, and high-level execution” that led to Notre Dame’s prolific rushing offense through the first 75% of the games but a lack of respect of certain offensive capabilities by opponents through scouting tendencies which led to a drop-off late in the season.

This triggered a topic for me that I’ve been interested in covering recently on 18 Stripes. Namely, how much importance should Notre Dame put on the quarterback position? Jamie’s article was linked on Rock’s House–and while the usual empty platitudes and knee-jerk reactions are present as always–I was interested in these two comments especially:

“Having an offense based on passing (with its resulting dependency on high-quality QB play at all times) is anathema to many on this board.”

“The offense should not need a Heisman candidate and potential top draft pick to be able to function against good, well coached defenses.”

The first thing that jumps out to me is how (or if you really want to go deep, why) there’s disagreement over certain definitions involved with these sentences. For example, is Notre Dame’s offense “based” on passing? Was it so during 2017? Does throwing some RPO screen passes to open up the rest of the offense, and particularly the run game, mean the offense is “based” on passing?

How do we define “dependency on high-quality QB play?” How do we define Heisman-level play? Were the shortcomings of Wimbush in 2017 because he couldn’t execute Heisman-level plays? And who do we call “good” defenses?

These are all really important definitions that need to be agreed upon, and as many well know, Rock’s House isn’t known to do this in any unbiased way. One glance through that thread and you’ll see a lot of excuses for why an offense that rushed for 3,500 yards and 35 touchdowns actually sucked (surprise!). I guess the Irish have to rush for 6,000 yards in a season to get some compliments?

At any rate, there’s a massive Grand Canyon-like difference in the passing emphasis between a school like Texas Tech and Notre Dame. When the latter is treated as the former it’s difficult to have an honest discussion about how much to use the quarterback’s throwing abilities. Seventy-two other qualifying quarterbacks threw the ball more than Brandon Wimbush in 2017 and yet things are STILL too quarterback-centric?

Nevertheless, I think the importance and use of the quarterback is a worthy topic and for me it really gets down to a philosophical discussion on how you think Notre Dame can best use its talent.

For me, if you’re not going to rely on good/great/outstanding quarterback play you’re putting a lot more of an emphasis (or is it stress?) on teamwork, recruiting, and defense. Those things sound good!

These things 100% worked back in 1993 when, as I love to remind people, Irish quarterback Kevin McDougal accounted for a paltry 1,626 total yards and 11 touchdowns for an entire season of college football. The ’93 team was the epitome of team > quarterback, even slaying the 325 passing yards per game Florida State Seminoles, and it seems a lot of people have had a hard time moving on from that position as The Recipe™ for success in the quarter century since.

The mythical Kevin McDougal in 1993.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether Notre Dame can recruit well enough to sustain less emphasis on the quarterback position. Or alternately, if there are current examples of programs doing this at a high level and how they are recruiting. Notre Dame had an astonishing 7 players picked with the first 92 selections (including 3 in the first round) in the 1994 draft–that team was loaded with talent.

The Catch-22 is that even the top programs can struggle to recruit to this type of system, in fact, Notre Dame learned that fate in 1995 when the Cerrato-era recruiting classes cycled out and 5 losses quickly ushered in the end of the Lou Holtz dominance. The other curious aspect is that if you’re setting the bar at elite recruiting why not sign elite quarterbacks and let them play like one, too?

If we are to take our cue from the best, Alabama’s recruiting and system has been evolving to welcome more dynamic quarterbacks as the years have passed instead of sticking with game-managers. There’s a really good argument to be had that a game-manager QB with a run-heavy offense at Notre Dame is a little bit more consistent and sustainable over the long-term but that also seems like an uphill battle to beat the Tide and not a surrender to excellence.

I honestly don’t think anyone truly wants to have a mediocre quarterback to play offense with one hand tied behind the back but rather it’s in response to a fondness for a bygone era, a fetish with chest-pounding fan toughness, and currently an allergic reaction to Brian Kelly. More precisely, some people think an offense should still be potent and productive on the ground even with average quarterbacking and/or less production from the quarterback.

That’s really difficult to pull off with any consistency at this level. Even Jim Harbaugh is having a bit of a problem with this with S&P+ ranked offenses of 85th, 40th, and 38th since he arrived in Ann Arbor. He’s going backwards!

Florida State ’93

As Jamie wrote, “No one is going to be able to run the ball well when they are outnumbered in the box.” The key word in that sentence is well. It’s rare to see an offense with average quarterback play really humming along against good defenses. Urban Meyer is the best offensive head coach in the country in my mind and he’s had stretches throughout his career with a struggling passing offense where everything comes grinding to a halt against good teams–it’s not just some magical Brian Kelly phenomenon. We could go through several big game under Lou Holtz where the offense stalled, too. This is the nature of football.

I brought up the 1993 Florida State game above and was interested in looking at things from perhaps the best Irish victory over the last 3 decades. Notre Dame played the vast majority of the game in I-formation alternating between 2 and 3-receiver sets as the offense continued its move away from the triple option reliance of the late 1980’s. On the first offensive series the numbers are even in the box and the Seminoles eat things up led by linebacker Derrick Brooks.* Runs of 0, 2, and -1 yards predict a mighty struggle on the ground to come.

*Brooks was injured early in the game and missed the rest of the first half which was a huge stroke of luck for Notre Dame. The future ACC Defensive Player of the Year and College and NFL Hall of Famer was  a tremendous athlete and could’ve tilted the balance of the game if healthy. 

As Lou Holtz was want to do, the Irish opened the second series with 4 straight successful runs (39 total yards) all against even numbers in the box–he was always so good at adjustments. Florida State then adjusted themselves for the first time adding an extra defender in the box, Notre Dame flexed out tight end Oscar McBride, and McDougal (gasp!) checks to a pass play!

On the very next play, Florida State’s defense goes +1 in the box again and McDougal misses a wide open Lake Dawson on a seam route down the left side. Despite the incompletion the standard is being set by Notre Dame–if the Seminoles want to add an extra defender the Irish will make them pay for it through the air.

For the third consecutive snap FSU goes +1 in the box and this time the Irish make them pay with some trickery.

That’s 5th-year senior Adrian Jarrell who hadn’t taken a rushing attempt since his freshman season. Classic Lou Holtz! A constraint play at this point to a receiver Florida State likely ignored as soon as he stepped on the field was a stroke of pure genius.

Notre Dame began the third series with even numbers in the box and had 2 successful runs for 18 yards–again the Seminoles respond and bring another defender into the box. To gain an edge, the Irish go with an option and a nice individual effort by Lee Becton gains 6 yards.

The Notre Dame offense faced 10 snaps in the first half of this game where Florida State added an extra defender to the box, throwing 4 times and running 6 times for 42 yards and a 50% success rate. That’s actually not terrible production but it’s still mostly tough sledding (5 carries for 10 yards with the reverse TD removed) for a talented offense like Notre Dame.

Later in the same series from above the Irish were faced with a 3rd & 3 situation and elected for a I-formation double tight end set. The Seminoles respond with 9 defenders in the box to Notre Dame’s 8 blockers. This time, the Irish elect to play things straight up with a run in between the tackles but can’t convert.

Notre Dame would run a quarterback sneak on 4th down on the next snap and fail against another situation where Florida State had an extra tackler in the box.

The Irish tried to go smash mouth football on 3 carries with -1 blockers in the box and didn’t get anything worthwhile which isn’t surprising, it’s really hard!

Lack of Respect

Notre Dame rushed for 165 yards in the first half against Florida State–69% of its total game rushing and 47.5% of the total game yardage. Things got a lot tougher in the second half when Derrick Brooks returned–FSU more than doubled up the Irish in yardage 252 to 118 and the Seminoles top-ranked offense started to get going. Be that as it may, when the Seminoles added an extra man in the box on defense the Irish weren’t afraid to pass and needed constraint plays to make some hay on the ground.

But what of McDougal?

Even though his numbers were never impressive they belie his importance. As a folk hero to this day many remember his calmness and ability to run the offense. During the 1st half against FSU he was on the nuggets and played one of his cleanest games of the season. He ran the option perfectly (including a couple early successful runs) and although his 6 of 11 for 64 yards first half passing doesn’t seem like much to modern sensibilities, he opened the game crisply and was 2 really awful drops from starting 8 of 9 for close to 100 yards. He also converted a pair of 3rd and long situations with his arm, too.

As good as the first half against Florida State was the following week’s first half against Boston College was the opposite. The Eagles put an extra defender in the box on 17 plays during the first half and the Irish passed the ball 9 times for 85 yards, including a fake-reverse 39-yard touchdown pass to fullback Ray Zellers.

When Notre Dame ran the ball with an extra defender in the box against BC they gained 29 yards on 8 carries, for a 28.5% success rate. The week prior the defense played outstanding against a high-flying passing offense and a tough Notre Dame offense did enough to always keep Florida State chasing. Against Boston College, the Irish defense couldn’t contain a high-flying passing offense and a banged-up offense was far less productive totaling 84 rushing yards while trailing by 10 at the half, ultimately blowing a possible National Title.

Football is largely a game about respect and talent. With great talent, Lou Holtz was a tremendous coach. With less than great talent he was 35-21-1 over 5 seasons. Times change, but the blueprint for success in the game isn’t radically different today. You can run the ball against +1 defenders in the box but you better be prepared to have great players performing at a high level to have a lot of success. Sometimes the Holtz teams could do it, sometimes they couldn’t do it.

Often, Brian Kelly gets criticized for never running against +1 in the box (not true) but it’s not exactly a huge indictment anyway. If aliens descended on earth and culturally valued circus catches (wait, is this the NFL?) while throwing into double coverage all the time we’d think that’s pretty silly. Sure, do it once in a while but preferably to an elite talented wideout with the capabilities to make that play. Work smart not hard.

Running against +1 defenders in the box isn’t smart, it’s only really necessary to keep the opponent honest. It’s just many have fetishized “playing smash mouth football” to overcome this deficit , when in reality, so much of football is a tango to try and get that extra defender out of the box with different programs finding different ways to achieve those results, with varying levels of success.

As Jamie noted in his article linked above, the Irish offense struggled running late in the season when the jet sweep wasn’t taken seriously and Wimbush was scouted to not read the option or quick screen game well enough–and unable to always be accurate enough to complete the screen when he did throw.

The Irish could run Power-I Counter but A) that’s not part of their offense and B) that play isn’t necessarily better, easier, or more successful than Wimbush optioning off a defender on the edge. The same people criticizing Kelly for never running against +1 defenders in the box are the same people who think a RPO isn’t a legitimate way of dealing with that extra defender.

I think there’s something to be said for Power-I Counter being easier on a quarterback, but at the same time, there’s also something to be said for an option read putting the success of the offense on fewer individuals and that it’s really not too much to ask a quarterback to read that correctly on a consistent basis. If he can’t do that regularly it’s a problem with coaching.

Bottom line, I’d want to recruit the best quarterback possible and let him use his array of skills–Deshaun Watson, has to be the model. A 420-yard passing and 43-yard rushing performance with 4 touchdowns in the National Title Game defeated Alabama. I don’t believe Notre Dame can consistently recruit at a high enough level on defense (Alabama ripped apart the best Irish defense in a quarter century after all) where through talent or scheme you wouldn’t want the opportunity for your quarterback to be this potent. Even if you can recruit an elite defense I still want the highest ceiling for a quarterback.

If Brian Kelly has struggled to develop an elite quarterback that doesn’t mean he or any future Irish coach should scrap trying to get the position to reach the highest level of the game. In certain situations you’ll want to play to your quarterback’s strengths, but if you’re limiting the quarterback, then you’re ultimately back at being criticized for recruiting and player development. It’s funny, quarterback is the only position on the field where, despite mountains of evidence to its importance, there’s a segment who prefer it to be devalued and that’s based on personal preference and tradition more than anything else.