Rewatch the Notre Dame media availability for defensive players on Tuesday, and you’ll encounter a spree of questions pondering how the Fighting Irish defense can slow down Alabama’s explosive skill players.
This is with good reason. Senior wide receiver DeVonta Smith and senior running back Najee Harris combined for an outrageous 3,100 total yards and 45 touchdowns in 11 games played this season.
Then there’s redshirt junior quarterback Mac Jones, who completed 76.5 percent of his passes for 3,739 yards (11.4 yards per attempt) with 32 touchdowns and just four interceptions.
All three finished among the top five in Heisman Trophy voting.
“All great guys, all great players,” senior rover Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah said. “Every great player can be contained; every great player can be limited. You just have to find their weakness. That’s been our challenge all throughout the week.”
Given all this talent at offensive skill positions, it’s no wonder the Crimson Tide have by far the most efficient and productive offense in college football. While playing 11 games against SEC opponents, Alabama averaged 49.7 points per game.
But what makes the offense tick goes well beyond its Heisman Trophy finalists and quick scores on explosive plays. If Notre Dame wants to impede (or at least inconvenience) such a historic offense, it may have to look beyond trying to shut down Smith or Harris.
Penetrating The Alabama Offensive Line
For as great as the Crimson Tide’s skill players are, the core of its offense may be its line.
Along with Notre Dame and Texas A&M, Alabama is one of three finalists for the Joe Moore Award, which goes to the nation’s most outstanding offensive line. In fact, the dominance of their offensive line is likely a significant contributor to Jones’ success.
“Mac Jones has all day back there,” senior defensive tackle Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa said. “I don't think there’s been a defensive line that has really challenged the pocket.”
There’s definitely proof to such a statement. According to Pro Football Focus, Jones was pressured less frequently than every Power Five quarterback other than Texas Tech’s Alan Bowman (minimum 100 quarterback drop-backs). While dropping back to pass on 346 occasions this season, Jones was pressured just 18.5 percent of the time.
Perhaps if the Irish defense can penetrate the offensive line and encumber Jones, they may have a chance to keep up on the scoreboard.
“Week in, week out, when faced with a tough opponent offensively, we're posed with the question of how can we stop this offense,” Tagovailoa-Amosa said. “I'll give you the same answer every time: Just dominating the line of scrimmage and affecting the QB.”
Of course, this is much easier said than done.
Alabama left tackle Alex Leatherwood and left guard Deonte Brown are both considered top-10 2021 NFL Draft prospects at their respective positions. Meanwhile, sophomore right tackle Evan Neal is a former five-star high school prospect and the No. 1 offensive tackle in the 2019 recruiting class.
But like the Irish, the Crimson Tide will be without their starting center on Friday. Senior Landon Dickerson suffered a season-ending knee injury in the SEC Championship Dec. 19, and Alabama will play its first game without the anchor of its offensive line against Notre Dame in the playoffs. Dickerson is the top-rated center in the 2021 NFL Draft class.
The Alabama offensive line also possesses significant girth. For instance, Neal is listed at 6-7 and 360 pounds. That’s substantially larger than Notre Dame’s right tackle Robert Hainsey who is 6-4 and 290 pounds. Yet, even at his size, Neal is incredibly agile.
Even Notre Dame’s largest offensive lineman in left guard Aaron Banks (6-5, 330 pounds) is much smaller than his Alabama counterpart. Brown weighs 350 pounds.
Surprisingly, the Crimson Tide’s overwhelming size could provide some advantages for the Irish and their smaller, yet athletic defensive linemen.
“Personally, I like going against bigger offensive linemen only because for me, with my size, it’s all about point of attack,” said Tagovailoa-Amosa, who’s 6-2 and 282 pounds. “If I have the lower leverage, I’m always going to win. It really comes down to using our technique, having low pad level.”
In the moments where Notre Dame’s defensive linemen win their matchups on Friday, they need to hit Jones and produce sacks.
Against Clemson in the ACC Championship, the Irish finished with 21 pressures, but only five of those resulted in a quarterback hit or a sack. Furthermore, there were multiple instances where a lineman got a hand on Tigers quarterback Trevor Lawrence in the backfield, failed to bring him down and watched him scamper for a positive gain or a first down.
“For me as a competitor, I love to compete against the best,” Tagovailoa-Amosa said. “I love to see where I fall in terms of competing against probably one of the best offensive lines we'll probably face this season.
“As far as goals go, I definitely just want to focus on getting our game plan down, honing in on just little tendencies that this offensive line can give us and capitalizing off those opportunities.”
Return To Third-Down Dominance
Thanks to a stout offensive line and explosive skill players, Alabama has ample opportunity and time to set up big plays on offense. That’s why they often score so quickly and average 1.61 points per minute the offense is on the field.
Yet, the Crimson Tide offense is also the best in the country at moving the chains on third down, converting 59.2 percent of the time. Only seven other teams in College Football have a third down conversion rate of 50 percent or higher.
This is also an area where Notre Dame thrives defensively. The Irish are currently sixth in the country in third-down defense, allowing a first down just 29.4 percent of the time.
But first the Irish must recover from their woes against Clemson, where they allowed the Tigers to convert on 8 of 14 third downs.
“Coach [Clark] Lea always preaches throughout the week that first and second down are really important downs, setting up third down, third and five, third and manageables, [when there’s] a wide variety of plays that they can run to get those five yards they need or four yards, whatever it is,” sophomore safety Kyle Hamilton said. “But if we get them in third-and-seven, third-and-eight, third-and-long situations, we can go deeper into our third-down playbook and get some pressure going or get some more stuff going in the coverage game.
“And then the offense is only limited to a certain amount of plays that they can run, too.”
The biggest issue is that Clemson still found a way to convert on third-and-long, picking up a first down with at least six yards to go on five different occasions (including on three instances of third and nine).
Perhaps it was a result of players trying to do a little too much against Clemson rather than playing within the confines of their particular role.
“We always say this: Before anything else, your responsibility is to make the other 10 guys better on the field," Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea said. “So how do I do that? By communicating. By playing hard and fast. By being one of 11. By executing my responsibility.
“If I set the edge as a force player and I do it to ball level, then the ball gets funneled in. And we trust in our pursuit to finish. If I don’t set the edge as a force player and I don’t get to ball level, then the ball runs away from our pursuit. And if we’re going to an effort-based unit, which we are, that's counterproductive to our purpose.”
If Notre Dame can return to form, maybe they can limit Alabama’s big plays, impede them on third down and force them to punt more than two or three times on Friday (the Crimson Tide average just 2.45 punts per game). This is actually one of the team’s weakest aspects — they net just 34.59 yards per punt (113th out of 127 teams).
Of course, this could be due to primarily punting from good field position, but Notre Dame needs to exploit any potential weakness it can find. Otherwise, the Irish have no hope of pulling off the biggest upset in the history of the College Football Playoff.
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