It was the Navy game so as is custom and tradition there was a required period of angst and concern about a thorough victory. In the end, the Fighting Irish largely controlled the game after jumping out to a big lead and cruised to their 8th straight win on a perfect season so far.
Let’s recap Notre Dame’s win over the Middies in San Diego.
Stat Package
| STAT | IRISH | NAVY |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 44 | 22 |
| Yards | 584 | 344 |
| Passing | 330 | 52 |
| Rushing | 254 | 292 |
| 1st Downs | 28 | 14 |
| 3rd/4th Conversions | 10/18 | 4/15 |
| Yards Per Play | 7.7 | 5.7 |
| Turnovers | 2 | 2 |
PASSING OFFENSE
As expected, this was a bit too easy for Ian Book against a bad pass defense. He was barely harassed in the pocket (Navy goes down officially with no sacks and just 1 pressure) and bounced back nicely from a very skittish performance against Pittsburgh. Aside from a couple plays where he panicked, lost his base, and missed a throw down the seam it was another cool performance featuring just 6 incompletions, including 1 ugly interception. That was Book’s 4th pick on 170 passes this season which statistically is just fine but I bet if you asked most fans this would feel like an emerging issue.
This seems weird to say with a 330-yard performance but I thought Book was just okay in the sense of him not really completing many tough throws. Did he complete any tough throws? The back-shoulder touchdowns were well placed and he was accurate as usual on the short stuff. Otherwise, it was a pretty ho-hum day for Book which is actually a good sign for the future, I think. This would’ve been an explosive career-day for Notre Dame’s current backup. Instead, we’re like, “Yeah, good game Ian” which shows how far the quarterbacking has come over the last 6 weeks.
I did want to point out something else, as well. Notre Dame dominated this game on 3rd and 4th down. Although Book’s interception came on 3rd down he was still 8 of 11 for 105 yards with 4 first downs and both of touchdowns on these important downs. The Irish were kind of bad against Pitt with these moments and turned it around nicely against Navy. Book also converted a nice 4th down sneak and added a 21-yard run on 3rd down, as well.
If this game was any indication, you may want to buy stock in Jafar Armstrong yards from scrimmage for the next 3+ years. Despite running just okay (more below) coming back from his knee infection he was basically used as the 4th wide receiver on a lot of snaps before finishing with a game-high 64 receiving yards.
RUSHING OFFENSE
I promise not too harp on the offensive imbalance too much. Going up against a bad pass defense while running the ball 56.5% of the time is fine. While nursing a healthy lead for most of the game I’d think that could’ve been a little higher but it’s fine. Ian Book is Doing Good Things with his arm.
That said, certainly not a great performance for the run game. It probably felt a little better because there were 4 touchdowns on the ground and 254 yards at 5.9 per rush. It was a classic case of decent efficiency with timely explosive runs.
Irish Running Success
Williams – 13 of 23 (56.5%)
Armstrong – 4 of 9 (44.4%)
Book – 4 of 6 (66.6%)
Jones – 2 of 3 (66.6%)
TOTAL – 23 of 41 (56.0%)
Good news in that we saw a strong albeit limited Book rushing performance after a couple lackluster efforts in this department in previous weeks. As mentioned above, he had 2 crucial rushes on 3rd and 4th down.
I thought Jafar looked a bit sluggish with the ball which was to be expected. He did have one carry where he broke into the secondary while dragging a defender and laid down a strong physical finish which is becoming an early hallmark of his style of play.
Count me in the group as someone who would’ve gone with a traditional (non-RPO) run on the 3rd & 3 to start the 4th quarter that led to Book’s interception. The ball was at the Navy 45-yard line with a 37-14 lead. You know you’re going to go for it on 4th down at that point and a possible 44-15 lead would have likely sealed this game as a feel-good blowout win. Instead, Navy took the ball and scored 2 plays later and converted the two-points to give the game a bit of a different feel.
PASSING DEFENSE
Navy attempted 12 passes which was the most in the rivalry since 2014. That’s almost always a win for Notre Dame. It seemed like Coach Ken N. got a little panicky early however his offense was shut down on the ground in the first half so I can’t blame him too much.
RUSHING DEFENSE
I have no words for Troy Pride’s attempted “tackle” on Malcolm Perry to begin the second half.
Not the best. pic.twitter.com/EBt02SZz4P
— 18 Stripes (@18stripes) October 28, 2018
Okay, I have some words. Did he think a nice friendly push would drop the admittedly slight 185-pound (generously listed perhaps) Perry? I’ve watched this 30 times and I almost see a complete genius move of pushing Perry into a Te’von Coney freight train. Perry may have died. Instead, Pride just pushes Perry along for a game-long 58 yard rushing play. Navy gained 63 yards on 24 plays (2.62 YPP) in the first half and this long rushing play set the tone for a disappointing second half.
Midshipmen Running Success
Perry – 8 of 11 (72.7%)
Martin – 2 of 10 (20.0%)
Maloy – 2 of 3 (66.6%)
Gargiulo – 1 of 2 (50.0%)
Walker – 2 of 2 (100.0%)
Lewis – 2 of 10 (20.0%)
Smith – 1 of 2 (50.0%)
Williams – 1 of 1 (100.0%)
Abey – 2 of 4 (50.0%)
TOTAL – 21 of 45 (46.6%)
I wouldn’t get too discouraged by the second half but it was a pretty poor effort. Navy only had 5 successful runs in the first half (25.0% success rate) but turned it around in the last 2 quarters with 16 successful runs on 25 attempts for 65.0%. There should be a ton of praise for the defense in the first half because they utterly dominated. However, if Navy doesn’t fumble or throw an interception (101 yards to those points on these 2 drives) in the second half we may all be in a different mood today.
For whatever reason, Navy didn’t force the ball to Malcom Perry in the first half. He finished the first 2 quarters just 1 of 3 on successful runs but by the end of the game he had 133 rushing yards, 3 catches for 18 yards, while finishing with 8 successful carries on 11 attempts. The Irish had a heck of a time trying to wrap him up, beyond Pride’s attempt above.
One tough area for Navy was quarterback Garrett Lewis who was super ineffective running the ball which can be difficult to overcome for a triple option team.
SPECIAL TEAMS
It was strange to see Navy fair-catching kickoffs when that’s been a struggle for Irish coverage units and it burns a few extra seconds off the clock.
This will be the game we’ll remember Jonathan Doerer’s first extended action and hopefully a turning point in his career. With Yoon resting a groin injury, we saw Doerer place his kickoffs well and handle his business there. Although he missed his first extra point he did rebound to hit all of the rest plus a perfectly placed 30-yard field goal. Notre Dame really needs him to develop into a dependable kicker for 2019 and this was a good start.
TURNING POINT
Forgive me, I targeted 3 turning points in favor of Notre Dame.
The first was immediately after Boykin’s lost fumble on the opening play from scrimmage. That impending sense of doom so familiar in the Navy rivalry was sitting there from the very beginning. Then, the Irish forced 3 straight unsuccessful runs–including a 4th down stop–to get the ball right back without damage on the scoreboard.
The second came while Notre Dame was leading 13-0 following a Navy punt* at the Irish 46-yard line. A handful of plays later they were facing a 4th & 2 from the Navy 45-yard line and Book delivered a 14-yard completion to Claypool to keep the (eventual) touchdown drive alive.
The third came in the early parts of the 4th quarter with Notre Dame winning 37-22 in a second half moment when it was still unclear if Navy was going to come back and make a serious challenge. However, on 3rd & 10 we saw Book scramble around and find Armstrong for a 27-yard gain (okay, this was probably the best and toughest throw of the game) leading eventually to the game’s final touchdown.
*Even though it was 4th & 9 I was surprised Navy punted here. They took a delay of game attempting to draw Notre Dame offside then uncorked an 18-yard punt. When they got the ball back they were down 3 scores.
3 STARS
QB Ian Book – Now the 7th-best passer in the nation according to quarterback rating.
S Alohi Gilman – Set the tempo on defense and single-handily forced Navy to adjust their gameplan in the second half.
LB Te’von Coney – A game-high 14 tackles, tying his season best mark.
FINAL NOTES
This game seemed like it would be memorable in a bad way with the injury to Drue Tranquill. All reports suggest he has a high ankle sprain which is definitely better than what it looked like. I still expect him to miss a couple games, though.
I was absolutely floored that redshirt freshman Drew White was inserted into the game in place of Tranquill. I joked during August that I’ve never seen someone be on campus this long without hearing a peep out of their progress. I think up until Saturday he’d played maybe 3 career snaps. White was one of the dark horse commits from the 2017 class (88.5 grade from 18 Stripes which is healthy) so maybe he has a future on this defense.
I was re-reading above and I think it feels a little too harsh on the offense. Putting up almost 600 yards of offense at nearly 8 yards per play is really good. Even if Navy’s defense is trash this year. Both the total yardage and YPP were season highs for the Irish.
The second half defense was bad enough for Navy to finish with 5.73 yards per play, the second worst mark allowed by Notre Dame this season. However, the season-long streak of keeping opponents under 30 points continues with the Irish only giving up 19.1 points per game in 2018.
Aaron Taylor is better suited as a studio analyst instead of a color commentator.
Malcolm Perry could be a serious problem next year if Navy can figure out their quarterback situation and rekindle their fullback productivity. When your fullback is only successful 2 out of 10 carries the triple option will have major problems. It’s really impressive to have 151 yards from scrimmage from the junior when not a whole lot was going well for the Navy offense outside of Perry’s play-making.
I thought Navy’s PI penalty that kept our drive alive after they cut the lead to 15 was a turning point.
Good call.
Hmm, reading your early comments about Book, the run game, and our overall offense, I thought you and I had watched different games. Book was 82% with over 300 yards and two tds and you kinda damn him with faint praise , eg “no tough throws”. Truth is he makes things look easy that other qbs make look hard, including our own DW. I just want Kelly to stay out of his face.
Run game looked fine to me.
Glad you saw the error in your ways re Book and the offense in your later comments. Nice to see your second half of the article adjustments.
Now time to stave off Northwestern. I have hangover nightmares from 2014 about them still.
He does make things look easy. He makes the easy things look very easy.
Run game was fine, no doubt. Fine isn’t great though against a really bad defense.
Best way I could put it is if we played this Navy team 10 times this is probably an average offensive performance. There might be 3 or 4 better performances in this team.
So what your saying Kiwi is that you jumped to a conclusion before you had finished Eric’s piece and then you realized that he was correct when you had.
Not really, but there you go jumping to a conclusion.
“There might be 3 or 4 better performances in this team.”
Is there though? I don’t think so in a non-Bars world up front where they’re still shuffling Ruhland from left to right, Banks first start. Hopefully this combination works out but given lack of experience (talent?) up the middle I’m not sure this offense is going to hit anything close to it’s best/ideal performance. Getting about the 5th out of 10th best thing to happen might be the best to hope for.
That said, I wasn’t too down on the offense. It wasn’t a glorious night but almost 600 yards and 44 points? Will take it any day of the week.
Is Kraemer injured and that’s why Banks and Ruhland started or was that just a coaches decision?
From all that I’ve read/seen, looks like a coach decision made in conjunction with the bye week to re-stack the line and try to get better. They’re spinning it publicly as being impressed with Banks and trying to get him on the field. The flip side, of course, is that Ruhland and Kraemer haven’t been great.
Add that to the tackles also having their moments and this really isn’t a tremendous o-line. Which I think we’re seeing in the run game consistency troubles. Sometimes they do an awesome job and make huge holes. Sometimes it collapses on the QB/RB behind the line. Guess that’s all o-lines to an extent but it’s more obvious now in comparison to missing out on McGlinchey, Nelson and Bars from last year.
Kraemer isn’t 100% – he rolled his ankle against Virginia Tech I think and was scuffling a bit. The staff was stuck with the Bars injury; they wanted a more physical presence on the left side, but it’s tough to just thrown Banks in there cold. I think they were trying to get by with Ruhland and Kraemer until the bye week, when they could ramp Banks up.
He looked pretty decent in his first start, even going against an admittedly overmatched defensive line. He has the potential to be an absolute bull, and he showed some of that on some run plays. He’s a dude, as they say.
I think from a physicality standpoint the staff would prefer Kraemer over Ruhland, but he just isn’t moving well laterally right now and that’s a killer in Long’s pulling schemes. Maybe a little extra rest will help him get right and get back in the unquestioned starter’s role.
From what we saw of Banks (unless Burger breaks down some plays where he whiffed) it seemed like he did pretty well. Hopefully the bye plus some weeks off will help Tommy get healthy.
Yeah, I think this offense could get 55 to 60 points a couple times out of 10 against one of the country’s worst defenses.
I agree with most of that.
Re making things look easy, we’ve had plenty of qbs that dont make anything look easy. About the only thing Book hasn’t shown is consistent long ball accuracy. And I doubt we’d be 8-0 without him starting. With him in, I do think we are no worse than the 3rd best team at this point.
The picture at the top of the article is great. ND Twitter seems to have had a good time with it, seen some pretty funny pics out there.
Also seemed like book was intentionally not keeping on the read options until there was a little game pressure in the second half and it was open to him. I do think he needs to put a little more on his legs this last month to keep the running game diverse
-I have no words for Troy Pride’s attempted “tackle” on Malcolm Perry to begin the second half-
“THANK YOU Hinish!”
RE: Pride’s tackle. It’s hard having only that one angle, but it actually looks like to me that Pride made a grab at the ball with both hands. Perry turns as he goes past as if he’s trying to hold on at full speed and pulling the ball through Pride’s grasp. The end result is Pride’s arms extend as he tries to keep his grip on the ball as Perry runs away and it looks like a push. – I’m not sure this is the case, but it looks plausible. Don’t know if that makes it a “good idea” by Pride, but it at least makes it explainable.
Imagine a booth of Pam Ward, Doug Flutie, and Aaron Taylor.
I didn’t think anyone belonged in a sentence with Flutie. But some Googling later:
https://awfulannouncing.com/2012-articles/a-pam-ward-chronicles-tribute-pam-wards-greatest-hits.html
Maybe.
Taylor was not great last night. I can’t hate a ND guy. Maybe his other announcing performances are better.
Taylor was awful Saturday. Flutie-esque. No reason to cut a guy slack because he went to ND; really we should expect better from our own.
Why won’t anybody hire Mayock?
He’s probably happy working for the NFL Network – no travel, gets to just be a film nerd, etc.
Mayock for Flutie might be the worst announcing tradeoff in TV history. I’d take 3 hours of awkward Dennis Miller jokes over Flutie in a heartbeat.
I don’t know if they’ll ever go for it due to the optics but I would love to see NBC hire Brady Quinn away from Fox. He’s a tremendous analyst.
What’s wrong with the optics? Every NBA/MLB/NHL team has dedicated, biased announcers (as do NFL/CFB radio), who are often former players. I have never met anyone who prefers a national, less informed, unbiased commentator over one of their local announcers.
People who root for a team are immediately more invested in it, and do a better job learning about the team. Despite Flutie covering 6-7 ND games a year, he still comes off as not having any idea about the program, because he clearly doesn’t care about ND.
For some reason football fans have convinced themselves that unbiased announcers are somehow better. I don’t understand this. Sure if you don’t have a team specific network, then that network shouldn’t be biased towards one of their teams (i.e. clients) over another. But NBC is a dedicated network. There is no reason for them not to hire BQ, or any ND homer.
The announcers do not influence the play, they are simply there to make the watching experience more enjoyable. When you only air games for one team, the vast majority of your viewers will have a better experience with an announcer that actually cares about the team.
I think the ND/NBC relationship is moving in this direction. NBC is airing a mini-series titled “Onward Notre Dame” and the most recent one on the ladies’ basketball team was both awesome and a total puff piece for how the university and program do things right.
Woo hoo. I would love this.
After growing up with Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy (Red Sox guys), who are some of the best announcers, especially as a team, I have been dying for this for ND. Those guys just know soooo much about the team (probably also because there are 162 games). They also are clearly rooting for the Sox, but are very fair about actual calls (unlike Tommy Heinsohn for the Celtics).
If someone goes out of their way to make it seem like ND got screwed when things went poorly, that is just as bad as Flutie. But if someone is happy when ND does well, but very accurate in play-by-play then it would be wonderful. I think BK or DWalk would be perfect there.
All we need is a clone of Tony Roberts and you’ll have your wish!
“There is no reason for them not to hire BQ, or any ND homer.”
Tirico has talked in length about the broadcast team wanting to take a tone of objectivity and NBC is very sensitive to avoiding the perception of being pro-Notre Dame simply because they have the contract to broadcast the home games.
I don’t disagree with you, just saying it very much matters to them. And I don’t think Quinn would be a homer, just a good analyst that ideally they would hire because of his talents and not omit simply because of his past or some perception. If they wanted a bad broadcaster/homer there is Joe Theismann. I don’t know if anyone’s heard him broadcast Redskins games but he’s about unsufferable as a pro-home team guy. I’m glad it doesn’t go that far but it wouldn’t be bad to your point to cater a bit to the majority of the audience.
There’s a difference between “objectivity” and actively hiring people who went to/played at schools that hate ND. I make an exception for Mayock, as though he went to BC he was a complete professional. But going back to Pat Freaking Haden, we’ve had USC and BC guys as color commentators and a Miami guy (Jonathan Vilma, who also to be fair seemed pretty good) as a studio analyst. I guess Chris Simms doesn’t fit as a Texas guy, but he shouts everything. I like Quinn and would be happy with him, but really I just want people who are objective either way, and don’t suck. That seems to be too much to ask of NBC.
Haden was okay to good. Mayock was great. Flutie is truly awful. All three from ND rival schools.
Point is: I’m fine with not having an ND guy; I just want a guy who isn’t terrible at his job.
Mike Mayock a weird football robot though. Just zero personality.
I think that’s why people on this site liked him. I loved him. All I want is correct information, which is surprisingly hard to get. I think he was so good at it because of his scouting type job for NFL. He knew so much about the actual players because of that.
I also liked Vilma to KG’s comment. I haven’t seen him since, but think he could be good wherever he ends up.
I’ve heard Brady and think he’s awful. Lots of words, mostly cliches, not much substance. Taylor is much better, although not great.
You think Brady Quinn is awful? He might be the best under-40 color guy in the business.
Just read the article Orlok linked and i have to say i’d take Pam Ward over The Great Big Giant Head any game. Luckily we don’t have to suffer through either. However, it’s difficult to take comfort in that since we still have Flutie.
I thought Neuheisel was pretty good. Listening to him speculating about play calls was interesting even if he turned out to be incorrect.
Meh, I wasn’t impressed by Neuheisel — I would actually take Flutie over him. What I really would like is to have Mayock back!
Whaaaaaaa!?? Neuheisel has been sneaky good as an analyst since he got out of coaching.
That’s a war crime.