SOUTH BEND, Ind. — For the second week in a row, Drew Pyne completed fewer than 10 passes in a game. For the fourth in a row his completion percentage didn’t break 50.
And on an admittedly blustery night, in which wind gusts had reached 66 mph earlier in the day, Pyne’s 85 passing yards were the fewest by a Notre Dame starting quarterback since DeShone Kizer squeezed 54 yards out of 26 stubborn attempts in the outer bands of a hurricane in a 10-3 loss at NC State six seasons ago.
And on Monday, one of the only seven healthy scholarship wide receivers he had to throw to — grad senior Joe Wilkins Jr. — hit the transfer portal.
Yet, the poise, the precision with which Pyne controlled and changed tempo and slid protections at the line of scrimmage, his strong decision-making and toughness running the ball Saturday night at Notre Dame Stadium felt like progress.
Irish first-year head coach Marcus Freeman took it a step further. On Monday, he announced the 6-foot, 198-pound junior as the Offensive Player of the Game from one of the most momentous Irish upsets in decades, a 35-14 usurping of CFP No. 4 Clemson.
“He did a really good job in what we asked him to do,” Freeman said.
So where do they go with Pyne now?
On Saturday, the 20th-ranked Irish (6-3) face Navy (3-6) at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore (Noon EST: ABC), a team whose strength is its nationally ranked No. 7 run defense and its liability one of the worst pass-efficiency defenses in the 131-team FBS (No. 122).
Even the nation’s No. 1 rushing offense, Air Force, threw for 156 yards in a win over the Mids earlier this season.
So do the Irish lean into one of the things that fueled its 6-1 surge, a running game that’s risen from 111th to 28th nationally in rush offense since game 2 of the season and bullied what was then a top 10 run defense in Clemson to the tune of 263 rushing yards?
Or do they take advantage of the massive mismatches in the passing game, in part created by Navy’s selling out to stop the run?
Freeman offered this as to what Pyne’s next step in his evolution should look like:
“The challenge for him is I don’t know how many games in a row that we continue to get a couple of balls batted,” he said. “I hear (offensive coordinator Tommy) Rees saying all the time, ‘Step up, man. You have to find those open spaces. You’re not 6-4.’
“But God is fair, we say. He has some other gifts. He has to be able to step into those open windows to deliver a ball. He has to continue to run the offense the way we need him.”
Reading between the lines, and given Rees’ postgame reaction to Pyne’s play against Clemson, if ND is going to mix more passing in with its relentless rushing attack, it will likely be done incrementally, not seismically, and take into account the flow of the game.
As for Rees and Pyne? Six games after Rees was captured by the NBC cameras screaming into the coaches box phone to a skittish Pyne on the sideline during his first career start to “do you (bleeping) job, Rees was caught Saturday night having left the press box early to find Pyne in person and give him a hug.
“That's a real relationship,” Freeman said. “They’re not always hugging each other like they were doing out there on the sideline. You're not always, hopefully, yelling and screaming at each other like they were doing in the Cal game. That’s a real, authentic relationship and that's a reflection of two guys that trust each other.
“That you can have those types of moments, but also embrace and tell him you love him and I'm so proud of you, that's real. That’s what I tell our players and I tell these recruits. That’s what you’ll get here at Notre Dame.
“You’re going to get real, authentic relationships, where sometimes the greatest display of love is discipline. Discipline might be yelling and screaming at somebody, 'Do your job' or whatever expletives that he used. But the other part is telling him I love you and I'm so dang proud of you, man.
“That’s what I want all of our coaches to have. That’s what I want our players to have with their coaches."
Navy QB reset
Like Notre Dame, the Mids are without the QB1 they started the season with.
Junior Tai Lavatai suffered a season-ending injury in a 27-20 Navy win over Temple on Oct. 29. Junior Xavier Arline and senior Maasai Maynor have tag-teamed since, with Arline the starter. He and Lavatai each played in last season’s 34-6 Irish victory at Notre Dame Stadium.
Running the triple-option, though, no matter who’s the quarterback, is more challenging this season. That’s because the NCAA rules committee changed the rules substantially this offseason when it comes to cut blocks, a longtime staple for triple-option teams and a longtime complaint for those teams that had to deal with them.
Starting this season, all blocks below the waist outside the tackle box have been prohibited. Backs must be stationary and inside the box at the snap in order to throw cut blocks. This was done in an effort to cut down on knee injuries for defensive players.
As far as defending the triple-option, Freeman retained the scout squad of practice players that predecessor Brian Kelly established. It’s a group that hones the triple-option year-round to present it at various times to the ND defense in practice and not just in the days before playing Navy.
"We did a little bit and introduced it in fall camp and did it during the bye week (the last week of September),” Freeman said. “Just so we can get the things that we need to show them on film. Then this week is full throttle, but we did sample it a little bit.”
Last season the Irish held Navy to 166 rushing yards and a 3.0 yards-per-carry average. The Mids’ 184 total yards in that game was roughly 100 below their season average.
Irish first-year defensive coordinator Al Golden, who spent the past six seasons in the NFL, is eager to face the triple-option, Freeman said, having gone against Navy when he was the head coach at Temple, and having regularly faced Georgia Tech during its option era while Golden was the head coach at Miami.
Sizing up the competition
While Pyne garnered Offensive Player of the Game vs. Clemson, junior Jordan Botelho and Prince Kollie earned the honor for special teams play — Botelho blocking a Clemson punt, Kollie returning it 17 yards for a touchdown.
And freshman cornerback Benjamin Morrison took defensive honors, with two interceptions — including a pick-6, a pass breakup and a career-high seven tackles. He was especially effective in slowing Clemson’s perimeter attack.
“Great tacklers are confident and great tacklers are aggressive,” Freeman said. “The first tackle Ben made on No. 84 (6-6, 250-pound tight end Davis Allen), it wasn't a tackle and he almost got run over by 84. And I told (cornerbacks) coach (Mike) Mickens to tell Ben, ‘I know that he's confident and he's aggressive, but he better go low on that big dude.’
Morrison is 6-0, 179.
“The next opportunity he had, he went a little bit lower,” Freeman said, “probably not as low as I want him to go. And he’s got to understand that there are weight classes to this thing. If you have someone outside your weight class, you better go low.
“But he's confident and he's aggressive and that is what makes him such a really good player. But if you want to stop the perimeter run game, you’ve got to be able to close space and not wait, wait, wait. You see a lot of missed tackles or tackles that end up giving the offense a lot of yards because the defensive guy doesn't close space to a ball carrier, but that takes confidence to do that."
Signaling spectacle surprises Freeman
Freeman gave the green light to defensive coordinator Al Golden to come up with a way to prevent Clemson from stealing ND’s defensive signals during Saturday night’s game. Yet even he was surprised at the elaborate extent Golden took it.
Three signal-callers, including walk-on safety Eddie Scheidler, stood in front of a colorful background gyrating and flashing hand signals to the players on the field, each wearing a different colored shirt and cap. The premise is that only one of them was sending in legitimate signals.
On top of that, after each defensive series, the three signal-callers dashed into the ND medical tent and changed shirts with each other.
“I didn't know we were going to have them big ole boards up there until I saw them on the sideline right before the game,” Freeman said with a smile. “It's a little bit of gamesmanship, right? Part of it is acting like we're trying to prevent people from stealing our signals. If somebody wants to steal the signals, they can.
"What we have to do is continue to find different ways to make sure teams can't. Those big boards aren't going to be the only way a team can steal signals. The ability to change signals, who's live, it's gamesmanship. It's a part of the game of football. And if you don't think it's real, then your signals are going to be stolen.
"That's a challenge from me to the coaching staff is to find a better way to do it. It's our job to make sure nobody steals our signals, no matter who the opponent is.”
Squibs
• One hidden benefit of Notre Dame’s running game resurgence? Faster games.
At an average of three hours and 16 minutes, the Irish are tied for 11th among the 131 FBS schools in shortest game length and tied for third among the 65 Power 5 teams.
The average length of a college game this season is 3:27.
• The Football Writers Association of America named Notre Dame the Cheez-It National Team of the Week for its takedown of Clemson.
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