Friday 5: Examining Notre Dame’s Move To Keep Jarrett Patterson At Center
Brian Kelly outlined the criteria for determining Jarrett Patterson’s position on Notre Dame’s offensive line at a small press conference before his golf outing in June.
“What’s good for the five, what’s good for Notre Dame and what’s good for Jarrett Patterson?” he said then.
His decision to keep 21-game starter Patterson at center hits on the last one most of all. Patterson’s NFL future may be there, which Kelly alluded to when making the announcement Saturday. It still satisfies the other two, because no matter where he plays, his presence will help a retooled and inexperienced offensive line. But Kelly said acting in Patterson’s best interest was as much if not more of a factor than anything else.
Does the move also maximize what’s good for Notre Dame and the five starters? Not inarguably. Even Kelly said so.
“Could we be better served if he played another position?” Kelly said. “You could make the case.”
Patterson staying put means junior Zeke Correll shifts to guard from center, the only position he had played in college and the spot where he held his own when replacing the injured Patterson late last year.
Notre Dame wouldn’t have moved Correll if it didn’t think he was capable, but at 295 pounds, he gives left guard a different feel than it had with 6-6, 335-pound Aaron Banks from 2018-20. Neither Patterson nor Correll is Banks’ size, though, and his frame and mobility mixture is uncommon. He was a top-50 draft pick for a reason.
“The physical things that he brings relative to the guard position certainly outweigh the fact that he's not 325 pounds,” Kelly said of Correll’s move. “There's the plus/minus there.”
How you view the decision comes down to whether you think keeping Patterson at his best spot and shifting Correll provides more reliable play and higher impact than keeping Correll where he’s comfortable and shifting Patterson to guard. Both views are logical.
I keep coming back to this: If Patterson ends the season as a clear draft choice, wouldn’t a pro have a more pronounced effect on the offense at guard than at center, simply by virtue of each position’s duties?
The answer might not be the same for every blocking scheme, but if Notre Dame sticks to what it used last year, the guards are usually engaging in combination blocks and then finding linebackers at the second level. That’s a pivotal role in the run game. And Notre Dame needs its run blocking to be consistent to help proven playmakers Kyren Williams and Chris Tyree maximize their own impact.
2. Man Coverage
The starting cornerbacks in Marcus Freeman’s 2020 defense ranked 17th and 22nd out of 155 qualified corners in highest percentage of snaps playing man coverage, per Pro Football Focus. The Bearcats played about two-thirds of their snaps with a single high safety. Notre Dame’s corners, meanwhile, played man in about 25 percent of their coverage snaps.
A big difference. Where will Freeman settle? He offered a strong hint Tuesday.
“Do I think the corners are going to be able to be aggressive and play man? Absolutely,” Freeman said. “They’re unbelievably talented and they have a corners coach who has that same mentality.”
He is, of course, referring to former high school teammate and now colleague Mike Mickens. And Mickens sees man coverage as not just a scheme, but a mindset. That dovetails into Freeman’s unwavering confidence Notre Dame can play it successfully.
So does the corners’ summer progress. Kelly lauded junior Cam Hart and sophomore Clarence Lewis — the likely starters — for their physical transformations. Hart’s 6-2, 207-pound frame lends itself to physicality. He scored over 1,000 points in strength coach Matt Balis’ offseason workout program.
It remains to be seen how much more man coverage those two play than the Lewis-McCloud tandem did last year, but Thursday’s practice revealed a willingly physical player in Hart and a stronger version of Lewis than his 2020 self.
3. A Big Week For WR Recruiting
For as much angst and concern enveloped offensive recruiting earlier this summer, the path to a strong finish never vanished. Much of it involved landing two major receiver targets, four-stars CJ Williams (No. 29 in the Rivals250) and Tobias Merriweather (No. 155).
Williams’ Aug. 8 commitment put both in the class. Wide receivers coach Del Alexander and others on the Irish staff got both in the fold before they took any fall visits to other schools. Williams also launched Notre Dame’s class into the top spot in Rivals’ 2022 rankings, though it will almost assuredly drop. Perhaps out of the top five altogether.
The drop is likely to occur mainly because other teams will simply pass Notre Dame, not necessarily because of a poor finish for the Irish. Even if it falls out of the top five, 2022 looks like the second-best class of Kelly’s 13.
That’s still worth a lot. There are encouraging trends and meaningful results at individual positions. Nabbing a quartet of four-star linebackers is a rarity in the sport. Three four-star defensive backs further distances the secondary from middling classes and a few misses in 2018 and 2019 (minus Kyle Hamilton, of course). And the wide receiver group continues a positive trend.
With Williams and Merriweather in the fold, Notre Dame has landed five receivers ranked among the top 160 overall players and three in the top 50 ones since 2020 (one of them, Jordan Johnson, has since transferred). The Irish signed five receivers in the top 160 from 2015-19, though none ranked among the nation’s top 50 recruits.
Notre Dame may not feel this recent receiver haul’s maximum impact until 2023, but it’s a necessary step in inching closer to Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson. Those three offensive steamrollers have landed five, seven and three top-160 receivers since 2020, respectively.
4. Peacock
Take a zoomed-out look at college football television trends, and Notre Dame floating the streaming trial balloon for one of its games shouldn’t be all that surprising.
The SEC’s new TV deal with ESPN includes the right to put one non-conference game per team on streaming platform ESPN+. There are nine such games this season. Oklahoma has made one non-league game per season a pay-per-view in recent years.
The principle of those, especially the former, is the same as Notre Dame and NBC putting the Sept. 11 game vs. Toledo on Peacock Premium: Use a popular product – football games – to drive subscriptions to a fledgling service that a network sees as an important part of its future.
I can understand the grumbling about the timing of it (a month’s notice isn’t great) and the cynicism that it’s a money grab (it is). At least it’s available at no extra cost to Comcast cable subscribers (take that, ACC Network).
But I’m more curious what the move says about Notre Dame’s end goal. How will the results and feedback from this year’s trial run impact those visions? Is the hope to eventually put more games on Peacock as part of the next potential contract with NBC? These questions won’t have answers for years, but a move like this shifts them from far-flung curiosities to more relevant talking points.
5. The Coaches Poll
Notre Dame’s No. 7 ranking in the initial USA Today Coaches Poll and four opponents’ placement in it feels like the CliffNotes version of the Irish’s challenge this year.
No opponent is clearly more talented than Notre Dame. None of the 12 is ranked above Notre Dame.
But there are four 2021 opponents right behind the Irish: No. 9 North Carolina, No. 10 Cincinnati, No. 14 USC and No. 15 Wisconsin. Early betting lines and predictive metrics have pegged Notre Dame’s matchups with those four (and its trip to Virginia Tech) as close games. Toss-ups, in a couple cases. Unless one of those teams craters, that’s not likely to change.
All told, it’s a deeper schedule with more apparent challenges than the 2020 slate, despite the lack of a Clemson equivalent. Sweeping it is a tall order not many teams can accomplish. No team may be more talented, but there are a few with seemingly comparable capability. Is Notre Dame talented enough and good enough to dodge a loss against this schedule? I’m not sure the answer is entirely clear yet.
Suspense. The beauty of sports. And why this season feels like one of the more interesting of Kelly’s tenure.
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