There was plenty that went wrong for Notre Dame football on Sunday night, as it fell to host Miami 27-24 on a late field goal.
The Irish didn’t look like last year’s team, and that really shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially in college football. It wasn’t the way Notre Dame wanted to be reminded of this fact, but there is plenty of good that can come out of it. Remember, last year, it was an early season loss to Northern Illinois that sparked the team to get to their full capabilities.
With an off weekend coming up, Notre Dame will have plenty of time to look over the film and break down want went wrong. Here are three areas that I believe are the ones the Irish should be focusing on the most as they prepare to host Texas A&M.
Offensive play-calling
This is the biggest change that Notre Dame needs to make, they need to feed the best player on the team, Jeremiyah Love. The first game of the season should have seen Love get at least 20 carries, as he should have been the focal point of the offense. Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock needs to get creative with his scheme, moving more players around to create confusion to open up holes against defenses for the star back.
Everyone knew that the Irish would try and ease new starting quarterback CJ Carr into the game, but not many envisioned how it played out. Freeman and Denbrock have to figure out a better way to get Love the ball, and to that matter, Jadarian Price.
As for the passing offense, the screens became extremely predictable, and on Carr’s interception, the Miami defense read it like a book. Since they kept running the play, they should have used a fake off it, and taken a deep shot. Setting up a defense and getting them to bite when it looks like some that was run earlier is part of the cat and mouse game, but Notre Dame didn’t play it that way. The coaching staff will need to get back to the drawing board and scheme up plays that suits the talent the best.
Rushing the quarterback
This also was an area of strength that no one questioned prior to the season, but was extremely disappointing performance. Sure, Boubacar Traore had a very good game with 6 tackles and a sack, but the rest of the line was almost non-existent. Jason Onye and Gabriel Rubio had 4 tackles each, so they helped, but none of them were impact plays.
Transfer Jared Dawson played well, but he wasn’t on the field enough to make a bigger impact. Starters Donovan Hinish and Bryce Young combined for just one tackle, which isn’t the production you’d like to see. Miami quarterback Carson Beck struggles under duress, but when he’s got a clean pocket he can pick apart a defense like he did on Sunday night.
Freeman wanted to create pressure by rushing just four, but when that isn’t working, you have to make the adjustment. The Irish did blitz a bit more in the second half, but by that time it was an uphill battle. Like the offense, defensive coordinator Chris Ash has to do a better job with his play-calling to create pressure on the quarterback.
Offensive line
This could have been why the Irish offense looked the way it did, this unit did not play well at all. Rueben Bain and Akeem Mesidor both had huge games, each having a sack, while Bain had the big interception. Aside from center Ashton Craig, the other four starters performed very poorly according to Pro Football Focus’ metrics.
It’s not as if there were multiple new starters on the line, Anthonie Knapp, Billy Schrauth, Aamil Wagner and Craig all played significant minutes last fall. Guerby Lambert was the only “new” starters, but it’s not like he didn’t get some playing time as he waited his turn.
A good amount of credit does have to go to the Hurricanes line, but the Irish have to play better. They are all good players, but didn’t play up to their capabilities. They’ll need to do that going forward, or else we’ll see more results like we did on Sunday.
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This article originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire: Three areas Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame need to fix before it faces Texas A&M
Reporting by Michael Chen , Fighting Irish Wire / Fighting Irish Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
