Blah first half muddles Notre Dame's potential but doesn't extinguish it
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — It’s probably not a good sign when the biggest cheers wafting out of your home stadium on a given Saturday are coaxed by images on the main video board of a young man dancing in the student section with his shirt off.
And consequently the most voracious booing occurred when anything other than that appeared on the JumboTron in the latter stages of ninth-ranked and host Notre Dame’s eventual 41-17 dismissal of five-touchdown underdog Central Michigan on Saturday.
“What is there still to learn about our team?” second-year Irish head coach Marcus Freeman chewed on the postgame question after his 4-0 squad finished off the 10th Mid-American team to ever appear on an Irish football schedule (without a loss) after leading just 21-14 at halftime.
“I don't know. We'll see. We're going to play a heck of an opponent next Saturday. So, we'll see how good this football team really is.”
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That team would be sixth-ranked Ohio State, Freeman’s alma mater, but more relevantly only the sixth Top 10 opponent to venture into Notre Dame Stadium since the “Bush Push” game in 2005. That was a 34-31 Irish loss to a top-ranked USC team in Charlie Weis’ first season as ND’s head coach.
ESPN’s College GameDay show’s presence on the Notre Dame campus earlier in the day for the 7:30 p.m. EDT kick time on NBC/Peacock unofficially marks the meeting between bitter recruiting rivals as the epicenter of the college football universe in a week teeming with national showdowns.
The Buckeyes (3-0) have had their moments of underwhelm this season as well, but few in their most recent triumph, a 63-10 waxing of Western Kentucky on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.
Actually, there were plenty of Irish players who had a better afternoon than the student named Obi, who rocked his impromptu in-house/in-game post-dance interview, starting with quarterback Sam Hartman.
The 24-year-old completed 16 of 26 passes for 330 yards and three TDs, and concocted his fourth straight start in which he surpassed a 200 pass-efficiency rating since swapping out his Wake Forest jersey for his current Notre Dame threads.
To put that in perspective, Brady Quinn (2003-06), who played in the Bush Push game and is the career record-holder at Notre Dame in almost every significant passing stat, had four such games in his career, never in two games consecutively.
Same for Jimmy Clausen (2007-09), the last Irish quarterback to finish a season in the top 10 in pass efficiency. Ian Book (2016-20), Notre Dame’s career leader in QB wins, hit the 200-mark in three of his starts.
More context: The two former Irish quarterbacks who Saturday started games for their respective new teams, junior Tyler Buchner for Alabama and sixth-year grad Phil Jurkovec for Pitt, combined to complete 38% of their passes for 115 yards.
Buchner was benched for redshirt freshman Ty Simpson after going 5-for-14 for 34 yards in Alabama’s 17-3 survival at South Florida. Jurkovec probably should have been demoted after completing 8 of 20 passes for 81 yards with three interceptions in a 17-6 loss at West Virginia.
And then there's senior Drew Pyne, who started 10 games for the Irish last season. He came off the bench for Arizona State on Saturday night in a 29-0 home loss to Fresno State, in large part due to injuries. He ended up back on the bench to finish the game after fumbling twice, throwing two interceptions and completing 5 of 12 passes for 52 yards.
“The beautiful thing about this — I don't know if Sam is coming in here [for an interview] — but he'll tell you he's got to be better,” Freeman said. “He made some mistakes today that he can improve on. And the thing that I think about this game for Sam is that the moment won't be too big.”
After last weekend’s 45-24 pull-away from NC State on the road, it looked like the same could be said for Hartman’s surrounding cast. But Saturday’s — admittedly, mostly temporary — struggles were most concerning when it came to pass rush and penalties (eight for 72 yards), and sometimes those two things were actually intertwined.
With Central Michigan starting QB Bert Emanuel Jr. a late scratch because of an illness, redshirt sophomore Jase Bauer took over and really never looked rattled when the Irish brought pressure.
The nation’s 103rd-ranked team nationally in sacks eventually got two of them —one each from linebacker Jack Kiser, who also had a game-high 10 tackles, and nickel Thomas Harper. But that matched the number of roughing-the-passer penalties charged to ND defensive linemen and didn’t exceed the times Bauer and the Chippewas (1-2) were able to produce big plays when the pressures didn’t get home.
“The one long pass in the second half, we're blitzing six guys and we didn't get pressure,” Freeman lamented. “And so, I can't get mad at the DBs. If we're bringing six guys, man, we have to get pressure.
“And so, we challenge those guys. If we're going to blitz you, let's get pressure so the DBs don't have to cover longer than the amount of time we need them to.”
In the Ohio State matchup, there may be no more critical matchup in trying to neutralize perhaps the nation’s best wide receiver corps than creating pressure on a talented but relatively inexperienced starting QB in Kyle McCord, who has the least mobility of any QB the Irish will have faced so far this season.
“It just comes down to trust,” Irish senior defensive tackle Rylie Mills said of the difference between last year’s Irish defense, that crumpled at times in critical situations, and this year’s that came into the game seventh nationally in total defense.
“You know, the first half we came out, and they [Central Michigan] scored points. I think last year we were freaked out and, ‘Oh, my God, what's going on?’ Through the preseason and through camp, we kind of came together and were like, ‘Look, we all trust. We all know everyone can do each other's jobs.’
“So, when we go out there, we're just confident knowing that we can go out there. And when we play our best football, no one can get by us.”
But are they ready to play their best football?
Junior running back Audric Estimé was for the Irish on Saturday. He ran, hurdled and piledrived his way to a career-high 174 yards and a TD on a career-high 20 carries, with a 72-yarder for another TD deleted by a holding penalty.
“I didn't have a hot dog,” Estimé said of the lightning-delay refueling that was followed by an 80-yard TD last week against NC State. “I had some lasagna, some chicken, and shrimp. No hot dogs this week.”
Sophomore wide receiver Tobias Merriweather caught a 75-yard TD pass and finished with a career high three receptions for 91 yards. Freshman wide receiver Rico Flores Jr. set new career standards as well (three catches, 60 yards).
And kicker Spencer Shrader nearly bested his school-record 54-yard field goal from last weekend at NC State with a 59-yard attempt Saturday that was on target but fell a couple of yards short. He did connect on a 50-yarder and 31-yarder late in the game.
In totality, the 578 yards against 268 given up was comparable to the Ohio State/Western Kentucky final tallies for total offense in their game (562/284). And it represented the most yards amassed by the Irish on offense since putting up 591 against New Mexico in 2019.
Also, the Irish scoring continues to make history. Saturday marked the fifth consecutive game in which Notre Dame scored more than 40 points, dating back to Buchner’s last ND start, in the Gator Bowl. No Irish team had done it more than four straight games.
And the 184 points through the first four games of this season are the most out of the gate by an ND team since Knute Rockne split 1914 between playing professional football as a rookie for the Akron Indians and serving as an assistant coach at Notre Dame for Jesse Harper.
“We're just striving to reach our full potential like coach Freeman always preaches,” Estimé said.
Saturday may have clouded that potential a bit, but didn’t extinguish it. Notre Dame was without some key pieces, most notably starters JD Betrand at middle linebacker with a concussion, tight end Mitchell Evans with a concussion, and safety DJ Brown with a tight hamstring.
But flexing depth has always been part of the equation.
“We’ve got to hold each other accountable,” Kiser said. “We’ve got to make each other better. And that was a big challenge for the younger guys. Listen, you're going to get an opportunity. Make the most of it, you know?”
The biggest opportunity to change big-picture perceptions of the program and the trajectory of this particular season for the better is now at Notre Dame’s doorstep.
A time to believe? A time for harsh reality? A time for everyone in Notre Dame Stadium to join Obi in a dance?
“I told them at halftime,” Freeman said, “‘If you need me to give you a rah-rah speech, that's not what this team needed.’ This team needed to settle down and really look at the mistakes that happened in the first half and why was it a seven-point game? …
“You put a lot of work in to win these games, to give your team a chance, right? I still don't know if we've seen the full potential of this team. And that's my challenge.”
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