On an overcast afternoon the Fighting Irish offense sputtered for large stretches and the passing defense found itself unable to contain the pin-point passes of Virginia quarterback Bryce Perkins. After trailing at halftime, the Notre Dame defensive line put together one of the best performances in modern school history to completely turn the tide in favor of the home team. What was once a tense game (and looked like a complete let down special after the loss to Georgia) turned into a fairly comfortable win and cover for the Irish.
Let’s review Notre Dame’s 15-point win over the Cavaliers.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | CAVS |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 20 |
| Plays | 60 | 72 |
| Total Yards | 343 | 338 |
| Yards Per Play | 5.71 | 4.69 |
| Conversions | 8/17 | 5/17 |
| Completions | 17 | 30 |
| Yards Per Attempt | 6.60 | 7.76 |
| Rushes | 35 | 29 |
| Rushing Success | 48.4% | 28.5% |
| 10+ Yds Rushing | 5 | 2 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 27.7% | 10.0% |
Offense
QB: D
RB: B+
TE: B
OL: B
WR: C+
Let’s start with the bad because despite 35 points scored this was far from a good performance. The large middle portion of this game was a pure abomination for the Irish offense featuring 6 drives, 16 plays, and 20 yards.
From the 2:30 mark of the 2nd quarter until Alohi Gilman’s interception with 12:32 remaining in the 4th quarter we only witnessed 20 yards gained by the Irish offense. Twenty yards!
A week after looking pretty strong in a tough Georgia environment, inconsistent Ian Book showed up again. The redshirt junior quarterback started the game 8 for 8 with 67 passing yards as the offense scored touchdowns on their first two drives. However, Book would finish just 9 for 17 with 98 passing yards and for only the second time in his career (Clemson in the playoffs being the other) he finished without a touchdown pass.
I’m sympathetic to Book and the lack of weapons at his disposal–now including a gimpy Claypool, still banged up Finke, and no viable third receiving option yet–and truly believe this affects a lot of the play-calling and consistency. It’s a tough group that plays physically (especially including Kmet here), but no one is really scaring opposing defenses with the ball in their hands. That’s not good news with an offense trying to make a living with a short-passing game.
However, Book has to keep things on schedule and minimize the mental mistakes. With only 2 interceptions on 119 attempts this year he’s protecting the ball in that sense, yet he continues to waste too many snaps with poor pocket presence and decisions like against Virginia where he mindlessly loses 5 yards because he wouldn’t throw it away.
It may be time to lean a little bit more on the run game.
Until the Irish defense made it abundantly clear Virginia was going to lose the game, Notre Dame threw the ball on 11 of their first 16 first down opportunities* then finished with runs on the final 9 first down snaps of the game. I know we thought this should be an offense passing to set up the run but it may be time to grind things out a little more and hope the run game makes Book more effective off play-action and in general he could use a little less pressure on his shoulders.
*On those 11 passes, Book had 6 completions for 57 yards (28 yards coming on one completion to Finke), one sack, and one intentional grounding. Only a pair of first down throws and a 36.3% success rate on these throws isn’t going to cut it. Even an average run game should get Notre Dame 40% success conservatively on first down and I have to think that would be a good switch for the offense.
Run Success
Jones – 11 of 18 (61.1%)
Book – 2 of 5 (40.0%)
Flemister – 2 of 6 (33.3%)
Smith – 1 of 3 (33.3%)
Young – 0 of 1 (0.0%)
Early on, it looked like it was going to be a long day for that Irish ground game but with the help of a tremendous day from Tony Jones, Jr. they came through with a nice day overall and a particularly strong finish. The success rate overall fell below 50% for the day but Jones picked up 11 successful runs, including a couple nice long runs, and 3 touchdowns.
Additionally, Notre Dame converted 4 out of their 5 opportunities on 3rd/4th and short, all 4 coming on Tony Jones, Jr. runs. This doesn’t include Jones’ 5-yard touchdown run which was also a goal line power running opportunity. The lone miss was Book’s panicked run for no gain on 3rd & 3 late in the first half deep in Irish territory.
It was a good shift overall for the offensive line who are still prone to a few mistakes (two more false starts by Eichenberg get it together man) which feel worse than they are in the big picture when there are these long stretches of little productivity.
Against an aggressive defense that came into Saturday tied for the national lead in sacks and third in tackles for loss it was a huge win for the offense to limit the Hoos to just 2 and 3 overall in those categories. Virginia’s insanely low 10.0% stuff rate also meant they couldn’t really get the Irish off schedule too much and that’s a credit to the offensive line as much as anything.
Defense
DL: A+
LB: A
DB: D
Bryce Perkins was supposed to be a modest passer and strong runner, so they said. Inside Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday afternoon the script was definitely flipped.
The senior quarterback was in absolute NBA Jam “on fire” mode in the first half completing 18 of 22 passes for 235 yards. At times, there were some beautifully thrown balls, perfectly timed and perfectly placed. Other times, it looked like Perkins was riding some luck with off-balance throws, a couple blown assignments in the Irish secondary, and a general lack of play-making by Notre Dame.
In the second half, the wheels came completely off for Perkins.
He would drop back to pass 26 times during the final 2 quarters while completing 12 passes for 99 yards, throwing 2 interceptions, being sacked 5 times, and losing 2 fumbles. He also over-shot a crucial 4th down pass in the later stages of the third quarter which was a big momentum change in favor of Notre Dame following Chris Finke’s fumbled punt return.
Notre Dame notched 8 sacks which rightfully should get all the headlines in the game.
Stuffs vs. Virginia
(season stuffs in parentheses)
White – 3 (10.5)
Okwara – 3 (4)
Kareem – 2.5 (6.5)
Hinish – 2 (3.5)
Jones – 2 (2)
Lacey – 1.5 (1.5)
JOK – 1 (7)
Gilman – 1 (6)
Hamilton – 1 (1)
Ademilola, Jay – 1 (4.5)
Ogundeji – 0.5 (3.5)
Bracy – 0.5 (0.5)
Oghoufo – 0.5 (0.5)
Even still, Virginia’s ground game was basically left behind in Charlottesville as the Hoos only picked up 6 successful runs all afternoon with an anemic 28.5% success rate overall. This is one of the best defensive performance at stopping the run in the Kelly era.
This felt like a game where the the percentages for the Irish defense would win out as long as Ian Book & Co. didn’t blow it on the other side of the ball. It turned out to be true as Virginia had 14 completions of at least 10 yards (9 coming in the first half, the other 5 coming late in the 4th quarter) and a whole lot of nothing else during the game.
72.7% of Virginia’s offense came on those 14 pass completions which isn’t super sustainable, particularly when the Irish sack machine was unleashed. In the Cavaliers other 58 plays they managed just 92 yards, or 1.58 yards per play!
Final Thoughts
This win extends Notre Dame’s third-longest home winning streak to 13 games. The Irish should be favored in the final 5 home games this year and if victorious would push the program within one of the modern school-record. Looking at next year’s schedule getting up to 20 straight is conceivable, although a visit from Clemson lingers next November.
All indications are that Shaun Crawford suffered a pretty serious arm injury and is likely lost for the season. There are no words to describe his horrible injury luck. That’s likely it for his Irish career as he’s already announced he will not apply for a 6th season of eligibility. It’s now time for Tariq Bracy to step up and keep developing at corner.
Michael Young’s return didn’t really do much for the passing game (3 catches for 19 yards, 1 carry for 2 yards) and I’m not holding my breath that he’s anywhere near a game-changer this offense is begging for right now.
It feels like a disappointment following last week’s breakout performance but 65 receiving yards by tight end Cole Kmet is still very good. He did lead all players in yards again for the second straight game.
The NBC Sideline SkyCam is still trash.
OH MY GOD @NDonNBC YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE WHO HE’S THROWING TO HERE pic.twitter.com/3P66etwJYH
— Boba Bettis (@CBusIrish) September 28, 2019
Our Slack chat this week was discussing the situation with true freshman running back Kyren Williams who now has only 1 game out of the first 4 with snaps on offense. However, he was out there on kick return again and all signs point to him not saving a year of eligibility. It is kind of weird that he is still last on the depth chart and probably won’t get many carries this year.
The amount of rotating on defense was shocking, as was the ability for backups to be productive. Four non-starters picked up their first stuffs of the season, including Jamir Jones who looked super effective while Daelin Hayes sat our with a shoulder injury.
Kyle Hamilton now leads the team with 2 interceptions. Will anyone take that crown away from him by the end of the season? The Irish finished +4 in turnover margin against Virginia and should be among the national leaders with a +9 margin on the season after week 5.
The Irish went 6 for 15 on third down on Saturday which is a small step in the right direction for an offense only converting 28.5% coming into the Virginia game. This mark was 3rd worse among Power 5 teams before taking the field against the Hoos.
Only 4 rushing yards by Virginia is a hell of a stat. Even with sacks removed they finished with only 55 yards on the ground.
I don’t think I’ve ever had such a swing of emotions about another player quite like Bryce Perkins. In the first half I couldn’t believe the throws he was making. I wasn’t mad, but impressed. By the end of the 3rd quarter I truly felt bad for him. He took a lot of shots and was lucky to escape injury.
It was a rough day for special teams including the Finke fumbled punt return, a perfectly placed onside kick by Virginia, and a Doerer missed field goal.
Notre Dame has run 251 plays on offense through 4 games, 40 fewer plays than the first 4 games in 2018.
I think D for the secondary is a bit rough. Perkins looked like Andrew Luck in the first half and I thought the coverage was at least decent on most of those throws.
Was Lenzy healthy? I don’t understand why he doesn’t play! We need speed!
Strong disagree, Perkins didn’t look like he retired until well into the 2nd half.
Secondary seemed like a C, solid in parts but UVA floated a lot of balls out there that should have been broken up and picked.
Very tired of Books lack of throwing it away and also on Jafar watch. Love Tony’s effort but guy has no breakaway ability and is average elusiveness at best.
Shaun Crawford I’m so sorry
Here’s hoping Hayes isn’t injured badly. He’s been playing great. Weren’t his shoulder(s) an injury problem in high school ?
I can’t properly put into words how bad I feel for Crawford. The kid just can’t catch a break. With him out I worry about playing that trio of WR that USC has in a couple of weeks. That will be a very dangerous game for us regardless of their record.
Book and Finke both need to get their shit together. Thats the only way I know how to put it. The fumble by Finke was surprising given how dependable he has been catching punts but the running short of the 3rd down sticks (again) is flat inexcusable.
I just don’t know what to say about Book besides maybe he just isn’t as good as I thought. I understand that he only has 13 or 14 starts but he isn’t developing like he should. I expected better play from him and so far he has been average at best if not a little worse than average. Entering this season I argued that he was one of the ten best QB in the country but now I am seriously questioning his ability.
I know that Phil isn’t ready to start but I honestly thought there were times today where we could have used him. With him defenses will have to defend the entire field where with Book defenses don’t have to worry about the offense stretching the field.
Book was never going to be a top-10 QB nationally, and him at his peak I think could not get there. I think he was too hyped up in the offseason by the Irish Illustrateds of the world, so folks were kind of assuming at least 6-10 and secretly hoping for a big leap. Realistically, his ceiling just isn’t there; he *maybe* could contend to be one of the 10 best QBs if he comes back next year, but he’d probably be passed by other folks even then.
Did Okwara get the game ball?
Okwara and Kareem both got it. Kinda as a symbol for the whole d line stepping up. Really, I would have given it to Jamir Jones. His first big play really changed the course of the game.
I wonder what they would do if Daelin Hayes’ shoulder is wonky for the rest of the year. Do they still redshirt Jones in hopes he’ll come back and start next year? Or burn it and use him as an important depth rotational guy.
Big picture I’d think they really need him next year and have enough decent other guys to use this year but I think he’s already on 2 games played and Jones probably offers more than the rest of the non-starters at DE if Hayes’ status is unknown. Gotta be tempting
Yeah, BK was conflicted when asked in the presser.
If Hayes’s injury would keep him out past USC, they should just flip Hayes and Jones and have Hayes redshirt. Hayes+Ogundeji at starting DEs next year would be quite formidable.
Sounds like Hayes out for the year and Crawford out 3-4 weeks (which is miraculous considering how it looked).
The weird and frustrating thing about Book is he’ll throw the ball away when he can’t (he’s got like 3-4 intentional groundings in the last 2 games) but then won’t throw it away when he’s about to run out of bounds for a 5 yard loss when you’d think he could.
Thank goodness the defense wasn’t going to let them lose. Defense is clearly a team strength and the offense is a work in progress along for the ride. Just like we all thought in preseason right?
I think you make a great argument. Our fourth quarter offense looked so much better, even with UVA anticipating the run. I think play action with two tight ends sets may play to Book’s strengths. Give him 1 or 2 reads in the short to moderate distances with the field cut in half, and I think he’ll be effective.
TJJ is a mystery to me. At times, it almost looks like he’s cautious or not running that hard. I forgot which play it was, but I assumed until the replay that one of his explosive runs in the 4th was a different back. It seems like he has another gear that he rarely uses.
By the way, I don’t mean to imply a lack of effort by TJJ. It sometimes looks like indecesivenes or a hesitancy to commit to a gap
Given book doesn’t have incredible natural arm talent or speed for him to be great he has to be perfect and he is so far from it. They need to be hyper efficient under him and they are not staying on track at all. Even with the talent, or lack thereof, they gave away a lot of easy yards. The two missed screens, an easy slant to McKinley, the Intentional groundings, and maybe the most frustrating one was when Michael young was moving out wide, book is staring at him waiting to get set, young is clearly not set and he snaps it anyways and gets a 5 yard penalty. I’m just not sure where he’s at at all.
This game did kind of remind me of BC 2 years ago, sluggish hangover first half with BC hanging around and Wimbush airmailing everything and the second half the OL just took over and dominated leaving nothing to chance. Except the d line, after the jones and MTS fumble I knew this game was won.
Last vent, the sequence before half was absolutely atrocious from the coaches. Once it’s 2 and 26 and scoring is gone, kneel it twice, instead they throw it, run it, have to punt. Just so much room for a game changing mistake with absolutely zero benefit. It was horrendous
I was confident Book was going to make great strides this season……Wrong again. After 7-8 games last year we were complimenting him on his awareness and accuracy. Where has that gone.
I think the lack of great strides by Book is not wholly dependent on Book.
First, Book was a 3* recruit. He was supposed to be bridge between Wimbush and the better of Jurkovec or Davis (both 4*). He is playing to the level, probably above, the level we would expect for that role.
Second, our WRs, including Claypool, are at best mediocre. We all thought Claypool was ready to have his breakout year. if you exclude NM, he just does not get great separation. Finke is having an awful year. Part of that is playing out of position away from the slot, and part is a mind boggling series of errors. he needs to be reminded on 3rd and 5, you run a six yard hook, not a 4 yard hook.
Third, we have three fast WRs, Young, Lenzy and Keys. Book and Lenzy (unless I am wrong) have not taken a snap together. Young has been in one game, but they ran no routes for him that would be considered speed routes. Kmet and Claypool can go deep, nobody else. That is an incredible waste. Even making one of them run deep on every play would force the safety deeper and open up things for FInke and Claypool underneath.
Fourth, the injury to Jafar Armstrong hurts. A lot.
Fifth, Kelly has always favored older experienced players over the youngsters. Thus, we don’t see a Kyren Williams at all. Finke makes a mistake, he is back in. Keys returns a kick he shouldn’t have, and doesn’t see the field the rest of the game.
It is not all Book, it is the cast of characters and it looks like Book.
Best, most factual analysis of the day by far, DC Irish. I’d add, hard to throw a screen pass when the line forgets to at least chip block against very tall guys, one of which was a 6’7” defensive player of the week last week. Or misses badly on blocks when the screen is complete, whiffing badly.
Book is not able to totally carry an offense, especially when we have (partly due to injuries) a mostly mediocre receiving corps vs the really elite teams this year, Kmet being the exception. Plus an average to below average (more the latter IMO) running back group. Maybe it’s better when Armstrong is back, but we really have no solid proof that he’s a big time back. Throw in an underperforming Oline, and Book has a lot on his shoulders. That said, he’s by my count 11-2 as a starter, with the losses being to last year’s national champion (true phenom Tua got hosed by them as well and he ain’t shabby), and this year’s thus far number 3 ranked team that will definitely compete for the NC.
Meanwhile, injuries are piling up as fast as we get guys back. Bummer.
No disrespect here but in what world is Chase Claypool “mediocre”? He is tremendously talented. He has homerun ability but he is playing with a QB who lacks the ability to consistently stretch the field due to lack of arm strength. He is playing with a QB who leaves the pocket when he doesn’t have to and it’s starting to hurt this team offensively. Book is struggling because defenses are sitting on all of our underneath routes because they know he can’t beat them over the top consistently. I think you should look a little closer at Book because blaming his struggles on the WR is reaching.
I agree Claypool is a pretty good receiver but would not start at Bama, Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, tOSU etc. Given there are no others able to get consistently free with Young out, Fink out of position, Armstrong’s receiving out of the backfield missing and Kmet hurt until recently, there hasn’t been a serious receiving threat to complement him like he had last year in Boykin. Thus the overall effect of this receiving corps is below average IMO.
Book hasn’t shown anything like deep throw consistency, but we’re also pretty short on deep threat receivers.
What would life be like for Book (and us fans) if we had a receiving corps like Bama or Clemson? Not to mention running backs.
I’d take a number of QBs over Book, but they won’t come here and we’ve won 12-2 with him starting ( I missed one win in an earlier post). I like that better than throwing him aside and hoping we don’t go backwards
One thing we heard about Claypool all summer and through camp was how much of a beast he was on “50/50” balls. It seems as though that might have been mirages in the summer heat as the couple they’ve tried have come no where near being completed.
IMO it’s because Troy Pride isn’t all that great. He’s obviously the best ND has, but I feel like Pride has allowed a lot this year, even so far. The gap compared to what Julian Love did as an All American last year to Pride now is noticeable. And it seems like Pride had a lot of hype from ND media types, I don’t really think he’s living up to it. Thus Claypool’s perception is probably a bit inflated.
That said, Claypool is still very good. I don’t think he’s the problem at all. If anything it’s the cast around him — which aside from Kmet is very subpar for a top 5-10ish type of team.
Claypool is talented, but I really don’t think he scares defenses. He certainly won’t get All-American notices, and I agree with kiwi, below, that he wouldn’t start at some of those schools. Thus, my comment about mediocre. That may be too harsh of a word.
With Austin out, he is the best of our WR group, at least the ones that get to see the field.
He too may be out of position. He may be better on the wide side of the field with a Boykin type on the boundary. He may need more space to take advantage of his talents.
Excluding NM, and presumably BG, we just don’t have that dynamic of an offense. It is not any one thing, but the sum of the whole.
My point was not to disrespect Claypool, but to recognize that it is not all Book.
Lawrence Keys was the guy who wasn’t set on the play you describe in the first paragraph. That was right in front of my seat and I couldn’t believe how dense Book was on that play. You’re literally looking at him. Don’t snap the freakin’ ball.
I’ve been super critical of Book. But I just checked some data.
His rating last year – 154.0 His rating this year – 151.9
So far he’s thrown for 1000 yds, 8 TDs, 2 INTs. He’s rushed for over 100 yards at 4.7 yds per carry. Only TJJ has rushed for more.
The reality is, this is a weak offense. But looking at the production (or lack thereof) of our running game, we can see why every mistake he makes is magnified.
Exactly, Orlok.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/27727611/sp+-rankings-week-5-ou-ohio-state-keep-climbing
#22 in SP+, behind Michigan State(!) and Missouri and well behind Michigan. That’s… interesting and concerning.
Related to that low SP+ ranking: it seems much more unlikely than a week ago that we’re going to run the table, notwithstanding that we just won one of the harder games on the schedule remaining.
There’s not a lot of separation yet, so I’m not sure how much the actual ranking matters. If you use the rating scores, it’s a one-score game between us and any team ranked 8 (Oregon) – 21 (Michigan State). I’d buy that.
Huh? How did we lose 3.5 points after a two score win over the team SP+ had as 37th? Even adding 3 for home field advantage the actual margin was slightly higher than the predicted.
I’m guessing it’s that SP+ does not like wins with a lot of fumble recoveries or a high ratio of interceptions to passes defended (i.e., I bet our turnover luck was really high yesterday). Our expected victory percentage yesterday is probably closer (maybe a lot closer) to 50% than 100%.
Mmmm we’re vibing
I didn’t think our turnovers were lucky. The fumbles were forced and the INTs were legit.
That’s not what turnover luck means. Turnover luck means recovering more than half of the fumbles you force and getting more than ~20% of the passes you defense intercepted. So we were 3/4 on fumbles on defense and 0/1 on fumbles on offense, which is only a little bit of turnover luck (3/5 overall). But I suspect the ratio of passes intercepted per passes defensed is very high. I can’t find that stat to confirmed, but it feels like we didn’t have many balls knocked down on D.
3 PBU’s so the 2 interceptions were 40% of passes defended.
So, yeah, that’s 2x what is expected. We definitely had some turnover luck and it gave us good field position. I dunno if it was 15 points worth of turnover luck, but it was definitely something.
According to Bill C., it was 10.5 points of turnover luck: https://twitter.com/ESPN_BillC/status/1178716652575346689/photo/1
Not being an SP scholar, I would guess because the win seemed flukey in the sense we forced 5 turnovers with pretty good fumble recovery luck and scored 28 points off those. Not an easy feat to repeat over the season. Add in Virginia outgainign us and that doesn’t feel quite so dominant.
SP+ is a per play measure of efficiency. We had long stretches where we got about ~1 yard per play. So probably that hurt us…
Thought I’d provide the first down runs in comparison to the passes.
15 carries for 86 yards (5.73 average)
53.3% success rate
Seems much better than the passing game on 1st down. However, the run game started only with success on 1 of the first 5 attempts and only 2 out of the first 6 attempts. Plus, two of the TD runs accounted for 41 of the yards and the other 6 successful carries only totaled 35 yards. In other words, the successful carries were barely successful.
They did finish with success on 6 out of the last 8 attempts, though.
IMO, they must have analytics that say the offense is more efficient throwing more on first down. We’ll see if they change things moving forward.
Interesting.
I did think the line run blocked much better yesterday and that helped TJJ finally. C’Bo had a couple hard runs out of mostly forgettable ones.