The perception of the Notre Dame football program from the outside looking in is hardly irrelevant as the calendar gets ready to flip to October.
Even though the first College Football Playoff rankings won’t be released until Nov. 5, eight games and two bye weeks into the 2024 Irish schedule.
And the Irish got a bump in both major polls Sunday following their 31-24 takedown of a then-15th-ranked Louisville team Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, a team similarly constructed — even with rampant roster turnover — to the one that impaled the Irish playoff bubble last Oct. 7.
ND (4-1) rose two spots to No. 14 in the latest AP poll, while climbing a single spot to 13th in the coaches rankings.
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Alabama, with its 41-34 victory over Georgia, jumps into the No. 1 spot in the AP poll, displacing Texas. The Longhorns are No. 2, followed by Ohio State, Tennessee and Georgia.
USC remains ND’s highest-ranked opponent, at No. 11 this week. Louisville slips to No. 22, while Texas A&M is tied with AP poll newbie UNLV at No. 25.
The most important numbers to coach Marcus Freeman, though, in the coming week — ND’s first bye week in a five-week span — are the analytics and statistics that help drive personnel and schematic tweaks before ND resumes playing games Oct. 12 at home against Stanford (2-2).
“We have to get better,” Freeman said Saturday about his bye week plan. “That's the most important thing. Part of this week we’ll be out recruiting. You know, we have to continue to recruit and go see some guys.
“But the main emphasis of this week is how do we improve. Part of improving will be to get healthy. Got to get healthy in areas that we can. Got to look at schematically where can we continue to enhance? We have to get better. I'm confident we will.”
The most pressing from an optics standpoint, with a lot of pragmatism built in as well, is continuing to improve ND’s team pass efficiency rating, which stands at No. 99 out of 133 FBS teams. And rising.
Senior QB Riley Leonard had his best pass-efficiency rating of the season by far Saturday (162.1) against arguably the best defense ND has faced or will face in the 2024 regular season. He also rushed for a team-leading 52 yards on 13 carries and continues to rank third among FBS QBs in rushing yards per carry (6.34).
Perhaps more pressing is ND’s continued struggles with run defense (54th nationally). The Irish play two of the top five rushing offenses in the nation coming up (Navy 5th in rush offense on Oct. 26, Army 1st on Nov. 23). Both of those teams finished September undefeated and both received votes in this week’s AP and coaches polls.
Like coach Brian Kelly before him (14-2 in games after a bye week while at ND), Freeman has made the most of his bye weeks in a smaller sample size. The Irish are 3-0 in post-bye week games under Freeman, winning by a combined score of 131-34 over BYU (2022), Pitt (2023) and Wake Forest (2023).
Only the Cougars in 2022 among them finished with a winning record (8-5). BYU was ranked 16th at the time of the game, played in Las Vegas as part of the Shamrock Series.
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