SOUTH BEND, Ind. — As the Notre Dame wide receiver room repopulates with healthy bodies and one still closing in on that status (Deion Colzie), the Irish football coaching staff had a decision to make on high-ceiling/enigmatic sophomore receiver Tobias Merriweather.
Coming out of the first of two late-season bye weeks and heading into a Saturday matchup with a team vulnerable against the passing game in Pitt (2-5), ND head coach Marcus Freeman was clear in what direction he’d take with the leader in snaps among the Irish wide receivers.
Doubling down.
And yet Merriweather will have to do so as a non-starter, with freshman Rico Flores Jr. leapfrogging the 6-foot-4, 204-pounder on the Notre Dame depth chart this week.
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“As far as Tobias, we talked about this today in our meeting,” Freeman said during his weekly Monday press conference with the media at Notre Dame Stadium. “We have to try and find ways to get him the ball and take some shots downfield with Tobias.
“With his body, his length, his speed, we have to try to continuously find ways to truly take shots. Not look for just the wide-open, perfect play. That’s what, at times, we can end up doing. We have to take shots and believe that he’ll make a play on a 50-50 ball. We have full faith that he will.”
Merriweather is tied for eighth with backup running back Gi’Bran Payne in receptions (8 for 164 yards, 1 TD) and ranks fifth among Irish wide receivers. Only one of those eight catches came during the past three games combined — against Duke (0), Louisville (1) and USC (0).
He has the lowest reception rate among any Notre Dame player (44.4% of his targets), and the highest drop rate (20%) and yet he shows enough flashes of what could be to keep him in the rotation.
The offensive approach for 14th-ranked Notre Dame (6-2) in its last four games of the regular season plays into that, beginning with the Panthers (3:30 p.m. EDT; NBC/Peacock) who are 26th nationally in total defense but 95th in pass-efficiency defense.
“We had success throwing the ball early in the year, just because of what our pass concepts were,” Freeman said. “They didn’t have to be play-action shots. Then you come back and you say, ‘OK, we have to be able to run the ball.’ We didn’t run the ball well versus Duke. We ran the ball well versus Ohio State, but versus Duke we didn’t run the ball well.
“We have to be able to find ways to run the ball. Well, now teams are saying, ‘I dare you to throw the ball.’ They’re truly putting an extra defender in the box. Part of that is, OK, now we have to be able to take some shots. We have to look like we’re running in a run formation and be able to run some play-action shots. That will be a challenge for us to continue to evolve that part of our game.”
Also part of the game will be fully healthy wide receivers Jayden Thomas (15 receptions, 228 yards, 1 TD) and Jaden Greathouse (12, 166, 3). Colzie, originally expected to be back from arthroscopic knee surgery around this time is still on the mend.
“With Deion, he will probably start some individual this week,” Freeman said. “He’s probably a little bit behind of where we thought he would be with the scope on his knee. But I still see him coming back here in the next couple weeks and being able to be available.”
Bye-week review
Three days of practice early last week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) was followed by the coaching staff hitting the road to recruit Thursday and Friday, and the players free to head home on Wednesday night.
The bye-week break concluded Sunday night with all players reporting back by 7 p.m., and with practice resuming Monday afternoon.
All of which kept deep-dive self-scouting largely on the back burner, though Freeman does more on a weekly basis in that regard than a lot of other coaches.
“You really didn’t have much time other than that,” he said. “I gave [the coaches] Saturday off and the majority of Sunday off. A lot of them could go see their kids play flag football. We got back in yesterday just to go over a couple things. I felt that was important to be able to give them a chance to be a father and a husband for a weekend.”
While first-year offensive coordinator Gerad Parker’s play-calling has come under fire in recent weeks from the outside, Freeman continues to point to execution as the culprit in ND’s statistical offensive regression and not play selection.
“There's not just one common theme in the last three or four games that we say, ‘This is the reason,’” Freeman said. “Each game has its own different story that we have to continuously attack. Five turnovers, and that's a different story than last week.
“And so, we have to continue to build confidence in taking shots, especially playing the defense we’ll play this week. You're going to have to take some shots and some play-action shots and continuously look at the things we do. But the biggest thing is the execution, so the challenge will continuously be, ‘Hey, we have to simplify so the execution is at the standard we need it to be.’
“It's not ‘more, more more.’ It's ‘clear, clear, clear.’”
The Irish scored 48 points and cashed in on USC’s five turnovers during its 48-20 romp on Oct. 14, but also amassed a season-low 251 total yards and struggled on third down. Notre Dame now ranks 55th nationally in total offense after sitting at No. 16 after its first four games.
“It's like, What do we do well?” Freeman said “How do we find different ways through formation shifts, personnel, to continuously do those things we do well? I don't want to continue to find ways to trick the opponent. I want to out-execute them, and that means our guys on offense know every defensive look they can see, so they know how to block it or obviously they can convert the routes or make the right decision in the pass game.”
Hello again
Three former Notre Dame players dot Pitt’s roster, two of them current starters and one now a demoted third-stringer.
Grad senior running back C’Bo Flemister is the Panthers’ leading rusher, with 282 yards this season on 68 carries with two TDs. He has five receptions for 92 yards and a touchdown.
Grad senior linebacker Shayne Simon is Pitt’s fourth leading tackler (27). He has five tackles for loss with three sacks, two QB hurries and a pass breakup.
Grad senior quarterback Phil Jurkovec started the first five games in his first season at Pitt after transferring in from Boston College. But redshirt sophomore and Penn State transfer Christian Veilleux has started the last two games, and redshirt sophomore Nate Yarnell is listed as No. 2.
All three former Irish players were part of the 2018 Notre Dame 27-player recruiting class and have exercised their COVID-year option for a sixth year of college eligibility. The Irish already faced another player in that class, defensive lineman Ja’Mion Franklin, when they played Duke on Sept. 30.
The only member of that transfer-heavy class still on the Irish roster is safety DJ Brown.
“It hurts when you see people leave that don't get their degree,” Freeman said. “That's what really hurts. Guys who were able to get their degree from this place and go on and look for an opportunity to play more elsewhere, I'm so happy to see that.
“Both of those guys [Flemister and Simon] got the Notre Dame degree. I’m proud of what they've done here at Notre Dame, what they're doing at Pitt, and look forward to seeing them perform on Saturday.”
Squibs
• After some in-game personnel shuffling in the 33-20 loss at Louisville on Oct. 7, Notre Dame, per Freeman, is sticking with the same five offensive line starters in game 9 who started the previous eight games — tackles Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, center Zeke Correll, and guards Pat Coogan and Rocco Spindler.
Collectively, they’re coming off one of their best games of the season, in the win over USC.
“It starts with what we’re asking them to do,” Freeman said. “There are still areas of improvement as you really look at the fine details of things. But I thought they battled their tails off versus a really good front. USC’s front four is as good as you’ll see.”
• Notre Dame is getting closer to a kick time for its Nov. 4 road game at Clemson, with a night game being ruled out. ABC/ESPN, though, will exercise its six-day option, meaning it doesn’t have to announce whether ND-Clemson or Pitt-Florida State is assigned the noon time slot and which is assigned a 3:30 p.m. ET window until after this Saturday’s games have been played.
• The belated Players of the Week announcement from the Oct. 14 win against USC came Monday, with running back Audric Estimé (offense), safety Xavier Watts (defense) and Jadarian Price (special teams) being named.
Scout-team winners were QB Kenny Minchey (offense), defensive end Cole Aubrey (defense) and Eddie Scheidler (special teams).
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