With injuries mounting and youthful growing pains subsiding but still evident, the bye week for Notre Dame couldn’t have come at a better time.
The No. 13 Irish (5-1) returned to work this week to prepare for a rivalry game against USC (3-3) in a series that dates back to 1926 and was played in every season since 1946 before the pandemic cancelled the 2020 game.
With three straight victories and a 7-3 overall record against USC, Irish head coach Brian Kelly has taken control of this longstanding rivalry.
Two programs, two directions
When Kelly took the Notre Dame top job in 2010, the Irish had lost eight straight and 12 of 16 meetings to the Trojans.
Fortunes have obviously flipped since — as has program rhythm — so much so that when these two meet Saturday night at Notre Dame Stadium, Kelly remarkably will be trying to beat a fifth different USC coach in 11 meetings.
USC cornerbacks coach Donte Williams is serving as interim head coach the rest of this season after Clay Helton was fired in week two after a disappointing 42-28 home loss to Stanford.
Helton, it seemed, spent his entire seven seasons coaching the Trojans from the hot seat, while Kelly’s program is moving through a sustained stretch of success not seen at Notre Dame since the late 1980s and early 1990s under Lou Holtz.
“Again, USC is going through a coaching change, we understand that,” Kelly said. “But this team plays extremely well against Notre Dame. It’s a rivalry game and they played very well on the road because they can get away from the distractions that they’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis.”
To Kelly’s point, the Trojans are 2-0 on the road this season and only 1-3 at home.
A well-timed bye
Given the way that the first six games of this season played out for Notre Dame — highlighted by five wins, but low-lighted by sketchy offensive line play, musical chair quarterbacks and comeback victories against lesser opponents — a chance to assess and improve during a bye week at the halfway point of the season provided a welcome reset, along with a warning from Coach Kelly.
“You can’t just stop training, you can’t stop thinking about what you need to do to stay ready,” Kelly told his guys. “We’ve been very, very focused on that and our off week, and leading up to today about turning it down a little bit and really amping it back up as we get into the game.”
Kelly’s bye week assessments and self-scouting didn’t provide any panic attacks or unit overhauls.
Instead, Kelly talked about how the Irish staff used its extra time on improving assignment recognition and reaction on both sides of the ball — areas such as picking up a blitzing defender on offense in the run game and improving pass coverage techniques on defense.
“There were a lot of things obviously that we needed to get better on,” said Kelly, who believes the extra bye time will bring notable and widespread improvements during the season’s second half. “So, we need to spend more time slowing down, walk through it, show it on film, and make sure that we’re better for it moving forward.”
Maybe a chance, maybe?
Given the lack of power in the second half of the Notre Dame schedule — no ranked teams in this week’s AP poll — I was quick to dismiss any and all playoff hopes the night of Oct. 2 when the No. 9 Irish lost 24-13 at home to No. 7 Cincinnati.
The loss dropped Notre Dame all the way down to No. 14 and with seemingly no chance of eventually climbing back into the top four by season’s end.
And while playoff hopes remain a long shot for No. 13 Notre Dame, it’s not completely out of the question that it could play its way into some consideration, but it will take much more than finishing the regular season 11-1 and on a seven-game winning streak.
Wins typically trump aesthetics when it comes to College Football Playoff Committee assessments. But given the first half of this Irish season provided few style points, how Notre Dame wins the rest of the way will be magnified.
For evidence into the damage Notre Dame did to its ranking with some pedestrian performances in its first six games, six one-loss teams are ranked ahead of the No. 13 Irish in this week’s AP poll — No. 4 Alabama, No. 5 Ohio State, No. 7 Penn State, No. 10 Oregon, No. 11 Iowa and No. 12 Ole Miss.
Notre Dame’s ranking seems low given that its single loss came to No. 2 Cincinnati in a game the Irish trailed only 17-13 in the fourth quarter. But given its independence, style points have always mattered more for Notre Dame than any other team in the country, which often makes for a slow upward climb in the polls, but not an insurmountable one with six well-played games and a couple of blowout wins between now and Thanksgiving weekend.
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