Perhaps the biggest surprise involving the 2024 Notre Dame football team, just past the midpoint of its season, is what’s happening around it.
Preseason Top 25 opponents and potential Irish résumé-builders (or wreckers) Florida State and USC are midseason enigmas, with a combined record of 4-10. The Seminoles (1-6, 1-5 ACC), which visit Notre Dame Stadium on Nov. 9, are in 15th place in the new 17-team ACC. USC (3-4, 1-4) is tied for 16th in the new 18-team Big Ten with fellow California import UCLA.
The Irish finish their regular season in Los Angeles against the Trojans on Nov. 30.
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Meanwhile, two upcoming matchups with two preseason poll afterthoughts are now Notre Dame’s best opportunities to build its College Football Playoff-worthiness image.
Army and Navy, and CFP aspirants in their own right — and realistic ones at that.
They’re a combined 13-0. And both on Sunday were ranked for the second week in a row. The Cadets (7-0), which held steady at No. 23, pop up on the schedule the Saturday before USC does (Nov. 23), and at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.
The 24th-ranked Mids (6-0), up one spot in the AP poll, are up next, this Saturday at East Rutherford, N.J. (Noon EDT, ABC). The Irish (6-1) head into that matchup ranked 12th for the second straight week, on the heels of their 31-13 dismissal of Georgia Tech (5-3), Saturday in Atlanta.
ND repeated its poll position in the coaches Top 25 as well, at No. 11.
With so few Top 25 teams losing or even getting threatened this past weekend, there weren’t many lanes for teams that won even impressively to allow much upward poll movement. Most of the poll shuffle happened at the very top, following Georgia’s Saturday night takedown of No. 1 Texas on the road.
Oregon (7-0) is the new No. 1, followed by Georgia (6-1), Penn State (6-0), Ohio State (5-1), Texas (6-1) and Miami (7-0) at No. 6.
Notre Dame’s path to the CFP hinges on taking care of its own business more than anything else. And the Irish get a much more difficult version of Navy than the one they flexed on in Dublin, Ireland, last August, 42-3.
The biggest differences are new offensive coordinator Drew Cronic and junior quarterback Blake Horvath, neither of whom were involved in last year’s international blowout. Head coach Brian Newberry fired Cronic’s predecessor, Grant Chesnut, after just one season.
And this is what that change looks like statistically: Navy has improved its national total offense standing from 123rd to 34th, rushing offense from 17th to 4th, pass efficiency from 112th to 2nd, scoring offense 122nd to 4th, third-down efficiency from 127th to 55th and red zone offense from 127th to 1st.
It is not traditional triple-option football. Cronic marries elements of the old Navy triple-option with pro-style concepts. And Horvath, seventh nationally in points-responsible-for per game (20.7), is a master of carrying that out.
The Irish, meanwhile, look statistically more like a playoff team in the five key metrics those teams tend to excel in: Rush offense (18th), Rush defense (30th), Total defense (10th) and turnover margin (28th), with the outlier still being pass efficiency (74th).
Notre Dame doesn’t build its image in a vacuum, and the one game outside its control this coming weekend that has the most likelihood to affect the perception of the Irish involves its former head coach, Brian Kelly.
Kelly’s eighth-ranked LSU Tigers (6-1) visit No. 14 Texas A&M (6-1) on Saturday night (7:30 EDT, ABC). Those are the only two teams in the SEC team without a conference loss, so the winner had an inside track to the SEC title game. The Irish beat the Aggies on the road, 23-13, on Aug. 31 in their season opener.
LSU’s only loss came in its season opener, 27-20 to USC, in Las Vegas.
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