I'm sure I sound like a broken record at this point, but what Notre Dame did to a good Duke defense on Saturday was impressive.
Even after giving up 38 points to the Irish, the Blue Devils still ranks No. 25 overall in ESPN's team efficiency defense, which is ahead of teams like Minnesota, Michigan State and Virginia.
What's really impressive is that Notre Dame spent a large portion of the game dominating Duke on the line of scrimmage, an area where the Blue Devil defense was considered the strongest.
To counteract Duke's defensive line, Notre Dame Head Coach Brian Kelly and his staff used Duke's aggressiveness against them.
"You're trying to get them to overreact a little bit, get some angles on them and they were very aggressive, fast-flowing, a week off, bye week, very anxious to get to the football. We were able to get them on edges and over block a little bit and it helped us out.
Another way to take advantage of this was to utilize quarterback Ian Book in the run game.
“Then running the quarterback, when you play a lot of man, we were able to run some people off and get the quarterback in some favorable positions," Kelly said. "I think taking advantage of a little bit of their aggressiveness and playing a lot of man to man coverage allowed us to carve out a running game."
When grading Notre Dame's game-by-game offensive and defensive performances, I've decided to look borrow from Clint Eastwood's playbook and go with "The Good," "The Bad and The Ugly" and "Overall Position Group Grade."
By looking at the Pro Football Focus grade for each regular offensive rotation player and the number of snaps they played, the offense averaged a 64.7 rating. This probably seems low but, while Notre Dame certainly dominated Duke for much of the game, the Irish also had significant lapses judgment and missed several assignments. This is especially true along the offensive line.
It still seems fair to give the Notre Dame offense a B or B minus for how well they played when things were clicking.
Offense Overall PFF Grade: 64.7 - "Average"
QUARTERBACK
Notre Dame quarterback Ian Book put together his best performance of the season against a power-five opponent.
The Good
