Progress in ND romp over UNLV is real, but so are the persistent questions
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The most significant flashes of what Notre Dame football could still transcend into under Marcus Freeman showed up Sunday through Friday, before the Irish had 73,165 sets of eyes on them.
Some of those strides carried into ND’s 44-21 dismissal of UNLV on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium — most notably to start fast and strong. Some of them apparently are still percolating, and perhaps a few still have no obvious answers.
At times on Saturday, the latter appeared to apply to the quarterback position. Not conclusively but conspicuously, as the Irish (4-3) squandered some great field position and played seemingly sure touchdowns into field goal tries way too often.
It wasn’t until sophomore running back Logan Diggs took over the game late that the Irish looked formidable on their third downs, his 130 yards and 28 carries both career highs.
Junior Drew Pyne’s fifth career start at quarterback, meanwhile, felt like a missed opportunity.
Since replacing the injured Tyler Buchner, Pyne has faced five teams with national total defense rankings in the bottom half of the 131-team FBS. He might not see another the rest of the season, and the two most formidable remaining — Syracuse and Clemson — are now at his doorstep.
His bottom line of 14-of-28 for 205 yards, two TDs and an interception against the Rebels (4-4) translates to a 127.9 pass-efficiency rating, roughly 40 points below his cumulative season peak two weeks ago after a masterful performance against BYU in Las Vegas.
Pyne wasn’t helped by a couple of drops Saturday, but he also had multiple passes tipped at the line of scrimmage and missed a wide-open Chris Tyree for a touchdown.
“I know Drew pretty well,” offered junior All-America tight end Michael Mayer, who accounted for six of the 14 completions, more than half the passing yards (115) and one of the two TDs — all in the first half.
“I know when he's down. I know when he's up. I know when he's in the middle. I know when he needs a slap on the butt to say, ‘Let's go; we're still in this thing. Let's drive down the field. Let's go score.’
“I think it's important, because he does get down sometimes, and I think he does need some people to lift him up sometimes.That's why I'm there. The other captains on the team are there for him.
“I know coach Freeman is, (offensive coordinator Tommy) Rees is. And it's just about lifting him up and giving him confidence, because we need our quarterback to have confidence.”
As Mayer’s comments suggest, the biggest thing Pyne has going for him is that he’s not charged with lifting up a broken team. A flawed team, perhaps, but one that responded well to Freeman’s practice tweaks and poised demeanor this week after a 16-14 upset loss to Stanford at home on Oct. 15.
Chemistry and camaraderie continue to build, with admittedly big tests for those aspects ahead, as well as those pertaining to X’s and O’s. But if you’re looking for signs of a first-year head coach who’s learning and applying the painful lessons, the run-up to the UNLV game was a polar opposite of the Stanford game itself and Freeman’s overuse of the word “execution” (and its derivatives) in the postgame presser describing what went wrong.
He, in fact, reduced those mentions by 20 post-UNLV, and took a self-deprecating stab at himself along those lines with the media earlier in the week when he could have dug in his heels philosphically, got defensive and closed ranks.
Eventually all of that needs to translate into wins. Saturday it produced some noteworthy progress.
Notre Dame’s 23 first-quarter points were 17 more than the Irish had accrued in the first periods of their first six games of the season — combined.
The Irish defense held the Rebels to 0-of-12 on third down and coaxed just their third opponent turnover of the season, a strip and recovery by junior cornerback Clarence Lewis after a 26-yard pass completion from Cameron Friel to Ricky White.
And Isaiah Foskey awakened.
The preseason All-America defensive end showed up prominently both on special teams and on the ND defense.
In the first half, he became the first Notre Dame player ever to block two punts in a game. He now has four for his career and the Irish have four this season, tying a modern record set in 1938, and matched in 1949 and 2000.
On defense, the senior had a season-high five tackles, a QB hurry and three sacks. With 21.5 for his career, Foskey is three away from tying Justin Tuck’s 18-year-old record.
“I hope everybody in our program had a little sense of urgency this week,” Freeman said. “That comes from the top down. That was a big word for us — urgency. The minute we hit the practice field, we're going. The minute we come out of that locker room, we're going.
“And the urgency that we must have is to execute. The urgency to do our job. The urgency to play really hard but understand what our job is and do our job. Hopefully, that was a reflection of it, but that's what you expect out of Isaiah Foskey. He can be a dominant football player, and we're going to need him to be, especially these upcoming weeks.”
Senior linebacker JD Bertrand complemented Foskey’s performance with a team-high seven tackles. He narrowly escaped his third targeting violation of the season, though, when the replay booth reversed an on-the-field call.
When UNLV did get punts away, Brandon Joseph returned three of them for 42 yards and drew a 15-yard penalty for the Rebels interfering with his ability to field the ball on a fourth.
“We needed this,” Freeman said. “We needed this for our mentality. We are a good football team that doesn't always play that way. It's our job as coaches to get our team to perform this way.”
Particularly Pyne, moving forward in his next five starts.
Quarterback play has been one of the biggest separators from Notre Dame being a team that can make playoff runs and one that’s capable of winning games on those kinds of stages long before Pyne showed up as a freshman two seasons ago. Not that that dynamic is still in play this season.
Committed prodigy CJ Carr is at least a season away from joining the QB room, and two away if he doesn’t reclassify. So what Pyne does over the balance of the season not only affects 2022’s bottom line but the reckoning of what the Irish ultimately do about 2023.
For those curious about how freshman Steve Angeli might fit in, he did get a three-play cameo in the first half after Pyne left the game late in the second quarter with a hit to the head at the end of a long scramble near the goal line.
“He tried to stay in the game,” Freeman said of Pyne. “The doctors pulled him out to make sure they evaluated him. Then after that series, a couple plays, they said he was ready to go. He wanted to keep going, but the doctor said, ‘you're out.’
“So they did the evaluation and they gave him the thumbs-up to go back in the game.”
With the Irish having first-and-goal at the 1 on Angeli’s first snap, the freshman lined up in the shotgun. Sophomore tight end Mitchell Evans, a high school quarterback, then went in motion, stopped behind center Zeke Correll, took the snap and plowed in for a TD.
Earlier in that same drive Evans converted a third-and-1 on a similar play with a four-yard burst, that time with Pyne in the game.
Angeli’s other two plays came on ND’s next offensive drive. Both were handoffs to Diggs.
Freeman had designs on bringing Angeli back in the fourth quarter to run a series of his own, but a UNLV scoring drive midway through the fourth quarter that cut the lead to 16 points changed his mind.
“I wasn't going to put Steve in right at that moment,” he said. “I wanted to stay with the offense. We were able to go down and score and move the clock the way we wanted to.”
Diggs ran the ball nine times in the 11 plays as ND answered to push the lead to 44-21. Pyne connected with Lenzy on a short pass for a four-yard scoring play to cap it.
“Me and Drew always had a lot of one-on-ones even before the start of the season, like spring ball and everything,” Diggs said. “I just look him in his eyes and I tell him, ‘You're quarterback 1, and we need you. Lead us.’”
Added Freeman, “The big thing with Drew is just continue to be confident. I kept telling him, the ebbs and flows of a season happen within a game. It's OK. You have to get your mind right, get back to the sideline, and make sure you understand that the next opportunity you get, let's go. There's a reason why you're our starting quarterback. We all believe in you.
“That's my biggest thing in him, be confident. If we throw the ball, let's go. Put the ball where it needs to be. It's never going to be perfect. As long as you continue to balance, one play, one life. We talk about that often.
“I told him the biggest thing, get those guys up, let's go. We're confident, and let's go out there and execute.”
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