Note the 2:30 eastern start time this week, friends.
A little bit of the SEC is coming to South Bend this weekend. I do stress a little bit. The Vanderbilt Commodores return to Notre Dame for the first time since 1995 when the Irish won 41-0 while opening the following season in Nashville in a much tighter 14-7 victory.
Meeting number three takes place this Saturday afternoon as Notre Dame continues its 2018 home stand.
Vanderbilt (+14) at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, September 15, 2018
Time: 2:30 PM ET
TV: NBC
Series: 2-0-0 Notre Dame
Vanderbilt arrives feeling pretty good out-scoring Middle Tennessee State and Nevada by a combined 76-17 scoreline to open their season 2-0 while moving up to 67th in the F/+ rankings, 24 spots better than where they finished the 2017 season.
3 Pre-Game Topics
The Derek Mason Project
This is now Mason’s 5th season with Vanderbilt despite spending most of his tenure on the hot seat. Thus far, his teams are an abysmal 6-26 within SEC play with only one additional Power 5 victory thrown in there, a 14-7 win over Kansas State last year.
It’s been a tough act to follow James Franklin’s pair of 9-4 teams that each finished ranked before Mason arrived from Stanford. There’s some hope that the highly respect defensive mind Mason will improve upon last year’s 34.1 points surrendered against FBS teams and a really poor 43.2 points allowed within conference play. In combination, the Commodores are looking to senior quarterback Kyle Shurmur lifting all boats on offense.
Can the Irish O-Line Re-focus?
We should see Brandon Wimbush more comfortable running the football and God willing learning from the mistakes made last week. Whatever gameplan was used last week let’s hope it’s been scrapped for the rest of the eternity. The questions up front on the offensive line are a little more complicated.
Quite simply, the line needs a good performance after spending the last 6 quarters really struggling at executing basic blocking assignments. If they put the first 2 games behind them it eases plenty of concerns in hopes the line is beginning to gel under new coaching. If they struggle again, there may not be many answers for this offense in 2018.
Will Irish Fans Break the Internet?
You know how message board forums get flooded with inane posts after watching a couple series from a game? You know how some people thought it ludicrous that PJ Fleck’s teams sport a paddle on their helmet? I present to you Vanderbilt’s massive helmet anchor!
Talk about distracting, I feel like this will take up 40% of the internet bandwidth through the first quarter of this weekend’s game. You can’t play poorly against a team with a gaudy anchor* on their helmet.
*It’s actually pretty cool but should replace their standard helmet logo.
2 Key Opponents
QB Kyle Shurmur
The son of current New York Giants head coach Mike Shurmur he was a low 4-star recruit and one of the top prospects hauled in by Derek Mason. He’s slowly improved as he begins his senior season, raising his YPA by a yard last year, improving his accuracy slightly, while throwing 16 more touchdowns (26) as his interceptions (10) stayed the same from 2016.
In the small sample size of 2018, Shurmur’s season has been very strong putting him just inside the Top 30 nationally in passer rating. At minimum, he’s developed in to a solid college quarterback. The Irish could find out if he’s taken his game to the next level this Saturday.
WR Kalija Lipscomb
Last year, the Alabama defense was able to shut down Lipscomb and hold him to zero catches. In his other 13 games since the beginning of 2017 he’s been a major big-play threat for the Commodores with 51 receptions, 755 yards, and 11 touchdowns.
Lipscomb is a solid 6’1″ and 200 pounds and should offer a challenge to the Irish secondary.
1 Prediction
How much are we liking the bounce back factor from the Ball State game that felt, at least emotionally, like a loss? For the most part, the answer to question should guide any score prediction. If the Irish are locked in and ready to roll this should be a comfortable game in the second half and a likely cover.
Staying on the emotional side of things, I’d actually prefer if this game was in Nashville. Although the recent success of road games isn’t great I’d much rather this team get a little more uncomfortable and off campus for this game after witnessing them completely overlooking Ball State and complacent to a worrisome degree.
To move off the emotional side of the game, there’s a case to be made Notre Dame’s quarterback and offensive line will be so disheveled that even being locked in won’t make things appreciably better. That’s pretty much the nightmare scenario. If that happens, even if this is a close victory, I couldn’t think of another way of being 3-0 and feeling less enthusiastic after how we all felt beating Michigan.
Derek Mason also brought back Jason Tarver to be his defensive coordinator. Tarver was his co-DC at Stanford in 2011 and has been bouncing around the NFL before and after prior to arriving in Nashville. The Commodores are likely pretty poor on defense anyway but they’ve limited MTSU and Nevada to just 3.97 yards per play, one spot worse than Notre Dame in the national rankings. I don’t really agree with the Vanderbilt upset picks but you have to admit if it happens the recipe is kind of right there staring us in the face: Senior quarterback becoming a lot better mixed with a new coordinator making the defense improved without Notre Dame having much scouting on their scheme changes.
I’m expecting a close game. If we don’t see Wimbush running early and often I’ll be shocked. There should be a hard overreaction to saving his legs and body last week, for sure. For the rest of the offense I don’t really know how things will click although I err on the side of not great and won’t be predicting 30+ points any time soon until I see more improvement. Luckily, the Irish defense has been pretty awesome and should be the best unit on the field by far to help gain another win.
The possibility of the offense not playing any better is too depressing to contemplate, so I’m going to assume they bounce back and improve. Defense is again solid, though Vandy is feisty.
ND 38
Vandy 20
ND scores 4 TDs, and Yoon kicks 3 FGs.
“But wait, KG–that would be 37–are you predicting a made 2 Pt conversion?”
No, my friend. I’m predicting that when Justin Yoon sets the NCAA record with a nice 69-yard kick, the refs will award him 4 points instead of 3.
Saw where Kirk Herbstreit put Notre Dame on upset alert. Of course he also picked us to lose to Michigan. I think we are going to see a much better showing from Brandon this week running and throwing. The coaches will actually put him position to succeed and truly unleash him. He will run for over a 100 yards for the first time this season. Two rushing TD plus two more throwing it. I say Irish win 34-20.
Kirk blew it, the trendy upset alert for ND would be next week @Wake.
Feldman and Mandel picked comfortable Notre Dame wins but Vandy covering, and I think I will too. 27-14, game never truly in doubt again but ND also not throttling a lesser team. We’ll all have the same concerns and thoughts we do now.
Oh noes, another 3-4 defense!
The bar on the offense has been appropriately lowered.
Gotta be ND 24 – 15 Vandy right?
62-6, guys. Mark it!
Irish come out and get the job done and cover 33 to 16.
I do like that Eric and MD have both predicted the Irish to win by 9 so we’re planning to get one point better than our opponents each week.
ND 37
Alabama 17
Not a big deaaaal
Heh… Doesn’t fit with your score, but I just said I’m down for Ball State being our 2016 Clemson-Troy, especially if it means Chris Finke scores the title-winning touchdown against Alabama on a pick play. Karmic retribution, indeed.
It’s “aweigh”, Eric!
When Navy says “anchors aweigh” they mean that the anchors are raised and ready to sail. Vandy wants the anchors to be down, so “anchors away” actually makes more sense here.
I understand that aweigh means the anchors are raised. Anchors away isn’t a thing though. It’s just a misunderstanding of “aweigh”. Vandy says “anchor down.” Idk, maybe I’m missing a clever play on words here, but I don’t really get why you’d make the title “Anchors Away.”
It’s an away game for them.
All this talk about anchors, and no one noting that the Commodores play in a land-locked state. They and Stanford should play and the winner gets renamed the RobberBarons.
To be fair, I believe boats and ships have been known to navigate the interior rivers and lakes of this fine continent. Some undoubtedly are equipped with anchors.
True, but outside the Great Lakes, that ain’t exactly enough to justify a navy and commodores. And they ain’t B1G!
Yeah that makes sense now. My only defense is that this is a home game for us, so I wasn’t thinking about “away” in that context. Sorry!
Oh yeah Murtaugh, act like you meant it as a pun. Nice recovery.
“…the Commodores are looking to senior quarterback Kyle Shurmur lifting all boats on offense.”
How has nobody called this out yet? Very well done, E. Very well done.
Some perhaps relevant remarks from Julian Love, and none from me:
“Our mindset as a whole program wasn’t in the right frame. Let’s be honest, we overlooked Ball State and what they could do. They were a solid team and played with great fight… I had to calm myself down and realize we won the game. My family and girlfriend had to help calm me down. We realize what we have to do. We’ve been intentional this week and getting back to our roots. We’re not taking a day for granted.”
ND 38, Vandy 13
I don’t see us getting 38 unless Love is catching passes. But I’d love to be pleasantly surprised.
27-13 Irish.
Sadly, you might be onto something. Career touchdown catches:
Finke, Boykin: 3
Weishar, Claypool, LOVE: 2
Mack: 1
Everyone else: Zippy
Speaking of Boykin… From Pete Sampson’s article today:
“After the game we felt terrible. We felt we lost the game, honestly,” receiver Miles Boykin said. “Just being able to get back to square one and get back to going full speed and turning up the volume a little bit in practice, turning up the intensity, it’s gonna show on Saturday.”
I’ll hold my position. 🙂
Also from Pete’s article (which every bettor knows): Kelly teams at home favored by 10-20 points are 3-13 against the spread. I hope you’re right that there’s an offensive explosion but I don’t know if that’s in these guys DNA, so though I was tongue in cheek unless the defense gets a few turnovers I have a tough time seeing 38 points on the board. Willing to be proven wrong though!
Guys, this is a hot take, but I’m going to say it: it’d be good if AJ Dillon were on the team.
We’d be guaranteed to beat Wake, for sure.
Definitely. For those who don’t follow recruiting as obsessively as we do… He wanted to play RB. We offered him as a LB, then said we would give him a shot at RB first. Michigan told him they were recruiting him as a RB but Michigan mods said they understood the staff was looking at him as a LB. For some reason, he believed them over us and he committed to them. Later in the cycle they said, you know what, we really want you at LB, and he decommitted.
I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t give us another look at that point, but he didn’t. Denson and Booker were his lead recruiters; they’re hardly espresso-worthy, but mostly I think Dillon didn’t like even the specter of a potential switch to LB down the road. He committed to BC, which was both the local school and recruiting him solely as a RB.
I was just looking through 247’s list of visits so far this season, and noticed that Kyle Hamilton has made a huge jump from #644 overall when he commited, to just inside the top 300 and got a 4th star. Glad to see he’s looking good and getting some recognition.
Also, looks like OL Enokk Vimahi is predicted about 50% to ND. Do people in the know think he is likely? I love getting kids from HI. He would also be our second highest rated recruit.
He was a monster at the Opening. I’m not surprised to see him jump. He’s a real friendly kid, too. He was chatting up with my 8 year old after the championship game and was a lot of fun to be around
247 gave Hamilton a huge bump after the Opening; I’m not sure if ESPN or Rivals did. Rivals has been so dumb about restricting access to their camps to their own people that they don’t get invited to other camps now – so for the last few years, they haven’t had anyone at the Opening to evaluate any of these guys in person. One more reason why their rankings mean less than they used to.
I don’t know about his Composite ranking, given the other two services, but I’m willing to bet his base 247 ranking will be inside the top 100 (currently #158) before the season is over.
I’m not sure on Vimahi. I’ll believe it when I see continued interest. He loved his ND visit for sure, but we’re fighting the usual distance/West Coast school attraction problem there.
I tend towards nightmare scenario on offense 75% of the time, with big plays by Wimbush and WRs the other half the time. I agree Murtaugh–based on what the OL and wimbush have shown us, I find it real hard predicting a 30 point game any time this season.
Just noticed that our game is at 2:30 Eastern time…
…why? They did away with the whole Indiana not knowing which time zone it belonged to a few years ago. What’s the point of playing at 2:30?
Just watched Indiana totally dominate Ball State in the first half. Doesn’t help my confidence level.
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