SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman’s introduction to the Notre Dame-Florida State series came without an on-ramp and prompted the then-Irish defensive coordinator to do some soul-searching and scheme-adjusting in the aftermath.
Saturday night, the Seminoles and Irish clash for the first time since that 2021 season opener played Labor Day weekend of that year in Tallahassee, a 41-38 Irish overtime survival for an ND team that eventually found its stride on defense in November.
The November evolution that’s more critical to show up in Saturday night’s meeting at Notre Dame Stadium, the 12th in the series, is the Irish offense continuing the encouraging strides it made in October.
In a matchup that shapes up very differently than it looked like in August, when the Irish were No. 7 in both preseason polls and the Seminoles 10th, the TV start time is 7:30 p.m. EST on NBC/Peacock.
The WSBT Gameday SportsBeat pregame radio show precedes the ND-FSU game from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. EST (wsbtradio.com/96.1 FM). Inside ND Sports has you covered after the game on our YouTube channel with our Postgame Takeaways Show with Tyler James and Eric Hansen.
Freeman, now in his third year as Irish head coach since his December 2021 promotion, has Notre Dame (7-1) sitting at No. 10 in the first set of College Football Playoff rankings. The Seminoles, 13-0 last season, are 1-8 and slipped into 17th place in the newly expanded 17-team ACC Friday night, when Cal won its first-ever ACC game — 46-36 at Wake Forest.
In that Friday night ACC game, former Irish wide receiver Tobias Merriweather made his season debut after sitting out the first eight games with an injury. He was targeted a team-high 11 times and finished with six catches for 52 yards.
Meanwhile, the Seminoles are 26 ½-point underdogs, and Freeman has seen this movie before.
“For them, I’m sure it’s pretty tough being a head coach and knowing you have a lot of that talent but the outcome hasn’t been what you want it to be,” he said Monday. “You just put your head down and find ways to help your team improve.
“For us, this is one of 12 guaranteed opportunities. You’re playing Florida State at home in a night game. What a great opportunity. You have to respect that opportunity by the way you prepare. That’s what I’ll continue to preach. That our preparation, physically and mentally, has to be better than what it was in the past.
“Because if you do the same thing, the natural gravitational pull is going to make you worse. That’s what I told the guys last week: if we think we do the same thing this bye week that we did last bye week, and we think we’re going to get better, that’s not how God created this earth.
“There’s a natural gravitational pull. If you do the same thing, you’re going to get worse. We have to elevate. We have to elevate in the way our preparation is this week than it was in the weeks before. We pushed them hard. But there’s got to be another step for this program.”
The Irish have won six in a row since taking four-TD underdog Northern Illinois for granted and losing, 16-14, back on Sept. 7. Notre Dame trails in the series to FSU, 6-5, but has won the last three games and has scored in the 40s in all three of those games.
Notre Dame had a bye week last week, and is 4-0 under Freeman coming out of an open date.
There are plenty of other players on both teams to keep an eye on. It’s our practice at Inside ND Sports to narrow that to four, two per team. Here they are:
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Notre Dame offensive guard Billy Schrauth
Arguably ND’s best offensive lineman, the junior returned to the Irish lineup on Oct. 26 against Navy for his first game action since suffering an ankle injury early in a 66-7 romp at Purdue on Sept. 14.
But instead of plugging him back in at his right guard spot, the Irish coaching staff left replacement Rocco Spindler at right guard and put Schrauth at left guard next to freshman left tackle Anthonie Knapp.
“I do think it gave Anthony a little bit of security, with Billy there, in the last game,” ND offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock said earlier this week. “It seems like it's been forever since we played, but the last time we played. So, I like that element of it.
“I thought there was some calmness to the way that both of them executed the game plan and kind of communicated together. The reason to put him left instead of right, it's really kind of a look at the group as a whole going into this game — and that was into the Navy game, obviously — with the things that they did defensively. Who gave us the best opportunity to perform at a high level? And that's kind of how the decisions got made.”
Freeman confirmed Monday that the offensive line configuration would be repeated from that 51-14 rout of Navy against a Florida State team, whose defensive line is the strongest collectively of its position groups on either side of the ball.
Schrauth, with a week off to get the ankle even stronger and now having a chance to shake off the rust, is a player who could accelerate the improvement of the entire ND offensive line. So he’s not just a player to watch Saturday, but one to keep an eye on for the entire month of November.
Florida State punter Alex Mastromanno
Given that Florida State is second-to-last nationally among the 133 FBS schools in both total offense and scoring offense, highlighting the Seminoles’ punter seems like a pragmatic choice, given what would seem like voluminous opportunities to punt in games.
And Mastromanno is very good at it. Probably All-American good. He leads all punters individually at 49.3 yards per boot, and the Seminoles are first nationally in the team category of net punting (46.23).
He also leads the country in 50-plus-yard punts with 24. He has by far the most 50-yard punts with one or fewer touchbacks this season, as the next-closest punter has 15.
And yet he’s punted “only” 43 times — tied for 16th most in the FBS and 15 behind leader Josh Smith’s 58 punts for winless Kent State.
That’s in part, because Florida State goes for it on fourth down a lot — as in 29 times this season, tied for most in the FBS with Air Force and almost twice as much as ND has tried to convert on fourth down (15).
Like Notre Dame first-year punter James Rendell, Mastromanno is an import from Australia and also hails from Melbourne.
Florida State safety Shyheim Brown
The Seminoles don’t have many players with big numbers, but the redshirt junior safety has a team-leading 61 tackles — 20 more than the next-closest FSU player. He’s also blocked two field goals for an FSU team that leads the nation in blocked kicks with five.
Florida State overall is 96th in total defense nationally and 86th in scoring defense.
Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts
The unanimous All-American in 2023 is on a trajectory to do it again in 2024, and might be ND’s only All-American this season.
He’s certainly earned it, and not just statistically (30 tackles, 3 interceptions, 7 pass breakups, 2 QB hurries, 1 forced fumble), but with a presence that lifts up the younger defensive backs around him — sophomore starters Christian Gray (cornerback) and Adon Shuler (safety) and freshman starting cornerback Leonard Moore.
“I think he's a guy that's just continuing to improve at his skill set,” Freeman said of the former wide receiver. “He has all the talent in the world now. He's improving at his skill set as a safety, in terms of tracking the ball, in terms of making tackles and those types of things.
“The thing I love about X the most, and that he's really improved at, is his vocal communication. Like, he's a leader. He is a problem-solver. He gets guys lined up. You see him all the time, making checks, making calls, and that's the area that I think he's made the biggest jump at, is really being a problem-solver on the field.
"When he's out there, he's able to really get everybody on the same page. And that's where he's really taken a huge leap.”
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