A look at what the media is saying after Notre Dame’s 31-17 victory against North Carolina on Friday.
Patrick Engel, BlueandGold.com: Forget Damage Control. Irish Defense Dominates Potent UNC Offense
Take Drew White at his word, and you’d have to believe he and his Notre Dame defensive comrades compiled every media question, every stat, every film session regarding North Carolina’s offensive proficiency and stored them in the motivation bank.
They surely ingested enough to tire of it. But no, the more public and private recognition of the challenge at hand, the bigger the chance to make the statement White felt the Irish could make.
“Just reinforce we believe we’re the best defense in the country,” said White, Notre Dame’s senior middle linebacker.
Or at the very least, doing much more than mere damage control. That’s the expectation these days when a top-flight defense encounters an elite offense. Hold ‘em to under 30 and that’ll do, especially against a team with a consistently leaky defense.
Pfffft.
As reasonable and supported by statistical evidence as expecting bend-but-don’t-break defense is, No. 2 Notre Dame (9-0, 8-0 ACC) squashed the notion that it can lock up a middling offense but is resigned to going full Big 12 when facing the best. Notre Dame met North Carolina’s offense and, after an initial sputter, squeezed any life out of it like a boa constrictor. The resulting 31-17 win was a testament to talent, resolve, depth, coaching and trust.
“One of those road wins that really shows the mettle of your football team,” coach Brian Kelly said.
A sampling of the defensive numbers: North Carolina had scored fewer than four touchdowns just once and put up at least three in every game. Notre Dame held the Tar Heels to a pair. The Irish didn’t allow a second-half point to a team that had scored 103 in fourth quarters alone.
North Carolina’s 298 total yards are the lowest in 22 games since coach Mack Brown’s return. After 14 plays produced 14 points, Brown’s oft-dangerous offense produced 148 yards on 44 plays the rest of the way. After scoring those first two touchdowns, The Tar Heels had two drives longer than four plays. An offense that averaged a nation-best 22.6 plays of at least 10 yards mustered 13 of them.
“We came out in the second half guns blazing,” White said.
Elsewhere, North Carolina running backs Javonte Williams and Michael Carter, a tandem that averaged a combined 7.1 yards per carry coming in, combined for 85 yards on 19 carries and no touchdowns. Quarterback Sam Howell, who entered with 17 fourth-quarter touchdown passes, had 34 pass yards in the final 15 minutes.
Patrick Engel, BlueandGold.com: Initial Thoughts: Notre Dame Stops North Carolina, Improves to 9-0
•Take a bow, Clark Lea. Notre Dame got socked early on and never flinched. North Carolina hung 14 points and 8.9 yards per play on Lea’s defense on its first two drives. In the second half, the Tar Heels ran 25 plays and gained 58 yards. That’s 2.3 yards per play.
•Join Lea, Marist Liufau. Brian Kelly said earlier in November the buck linebacker job wasn’t totally settled despite some strong recent play from starter Shayne Simon. Liufau, a sophomore, came into the game on Notre Dame’s third defensive series and stayed there. He was at his best on blitzes. The half-sack he was credited with doesn’t illustrate how disruptive he was as a rusher. He ended with five tackles.
•If you want one area to point to on defense, the linebackers were aggressive coming downhill and got home on blitzes. Liufau, mike linebacker Drew White, rover Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah and nickel linebacker Bo Bauer combined for 21 tackles, 1.0 sacks, one pass breakup and 2.5 tackles for loss. They were in passing lanes, in the proper gaps and causing problems on interior rushes. North Carolina’s normally lethal run-pass options aren’t shut down without them.
•Notre Dame’s offensive line was up and down early on with new starters at center (sophomore Zeke Correll) and right guard (senior Josh Lugg). The run-blocking was effective. Correll had a key second-level block on freshman Chris Tyree’s 16-yard run in the first half. Lugg was effective as a puller.
•Pass protection was a bit bumpier. In the first half, Lugg allowed a pressure that led to Book needing to check down to Kyren Williams on a third down. The result was a punt. Correll had two bad snaps.
•What mattered in the end: Notre Dame did what it usually did. Control the clock. Run the ball well. Its game-sealing drive took 4:32 off the clock, and the Irish held the ball for just over 35 minutes. Take out sacks, and they ran for 214 yards on 34 carries. The 25 second-half plays North Carolina ran is a testament to the offense as much as the defense.
•Seriously, Ian Book’s escapability is such a weapon. He creates big plays. Just as important Friday, he negates crushing negative ones.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — College football has eras just like the Earth itself.
You know this place was once all covered in ice. The Ice Age, they called it. The dinosaurs roamed the globe during the Jurassic Age. The Pleistocene Age came about some 300,000 years ago, when modern humans began to evolve in Africa.
But enough history, let’s get back to college football. It’s why you’re here and it’s why I’m here too. College football once had an era without passing and face guards. We’ll call it the Bloodied Age, because most players never left a game without blood somewhere—gushing from their arm, stained on their pants, matted in their hair. The sport then shifted heavily toward a specific ground-and-pound scheme: the Option Age. And don’t forget the days of the I-formation Age (one of my favorites).
For the last decade or so, college football—and football in general—has found a new system of offense, one that includes five receivers, relentless shotgun snaps, no huddles and bonanzas of points and yards.
The Spread Age has changed the game forever. It has changed defenses, too. And it has recently made the game’s greatest active coach, Nick Saban, a defensive guru himself, acknowledge that a great defense can no longer beat a great offense.
And then there’s Notre Dame. They run the ball, they play great defense and they’re undefeated.
Here on Friday night, in the clear and cool skies of North Carolina, the Irish displayed a style of ball that we (well, me at least) long for. Bruising. Bullish. Bashing.
Mike Goolsby, BlueandGold.com: Notre Dame-North Carolina Postgame Show With Mike Goolsby
Instant Takeaways
“Holistically, looking at the team, Notre Dame takes a professional approach. I would like to see them let their hair down some at times, but that professional approach has become our identity and it has served us well. Notre Dame came into this game down two starters on arguably its best unit which creates a big hole in the offensive line and then you lose probably your best overall player on defense, or at least one of the top two players on the team next to Owusu-Koramoah on defense when Kyle Hamilton went out with the targeting penalty. Then the defense handled business like it can and should. That is a championship level mentality to me.
“Notre Dame lost some kids today and got it done. If there was a weakness to this team, it is the secondary and losing Hamilton hurts. Then you play North Carolina with Sam Howell who just put up 50-something points last week and threw a bunch out of touchdowns, but you go out and hold him to 17 and a shutout in the second half? The [Notre Dame players] stepped up and we saw that today.
“That has been the question all year long for Notre Dame was whether or not they had the depth to get it done and be a championship level team in situations like today and they did. That is the mark of a championship-level program. Sure, everybody wants to win every game by a four touchdown margin but today we showed some of that mental toughness and got out of there with a good win.
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Since quarterback Sam Howell arrived at North Carolina, the fourth quarter has always been when the magic happened. From his first collegiate start as a freshman last season when he led a 15-point rally against South Carolina, to last game out against Wake Forest when he helped produced 28 points in the final period to complete a 21-point comeback, the Tar Heels never feel out of a game when Howell’s under center.
North Carolina entered Friday’s game against Notre Dame with a 133-point differential in fourth quarter scoring margin under Howell’s guidance the past two seasons, which leads the entire Football Bowl Subdivision. Appalachian State was the next closest team with an 84-point margin.
So why couldn’t Howell rally the No. 25 Tar Heels after trailing just by seven entering the fourth during their 31-17 loss to No. 2 Notre Dame on Friday? UNC coach Mack Brown was upfront about the answer.
“You see it, I saw it, looked like they whipped us upfront,” Brown said in his postgame video conference. “They got too much pressure on Sam, (he) didn’t have enough time to get the ball to the guys. And we knew that was an issue.”
No amount of trick plays or bubble screens or flat passes could disguise how Notre Dame’s defensive front dominated the line of scrimmage. Carolina ran a total of 14 plays on three possessions in the fourth quarter and gained a total of just 20 yards.
Brown pointed out the Irish has veteran players across the line. Two of their starters are graduate students and the other two are seniors. Having been in close games in the fourth quarter meant the Irish doesn’t get rattled.
“They were always where they’re supposed to be and they play really hard,” Howell said in his postgame remarks to the media. “They probably played harder and more physical than anyone we’ve ever played since I’ve been here.”
Notre Dame’s defense shut out North Carolina in the second half on the way to a 31-17 win over the No. 19 Tar Heels.
No. 2 Notre Dame (9-0) tied the game at 17-17 just before halftime and took the lead in the third quarter on a Ben Skowronek rushing touchdown. That was all that the Irish needed thanks to a steller defensive effort that forced punts on five of North Carolina’s six second-half possessions.
Oh, it didn’t hurt that Ian Book was pretty damn good too.
Book was a magician throughout the game and seemingly escaped pressure from the North Carolina defensive front whenever it came. This crazy underhanded flip pass to Michael Mayer in the second half even worked out too.
Book finished the game 23-of-33 passing for 279 yards and a touchdown. He also had to 48 yards rushing on eight carries.
Notre Dame put North Carolina away with a stellar drive at the end of the fourth quarter. The Irish got the ball up seven with 5:40 to go and promptly went 89 yards in eight plays and took 4 minutes and 20 seconds off the clock before Kyren Williams scored his second touchdown of the game. Williams finished the game with 23 carries for 124 yards and two touchdowns.
Notre Dame sacked Sam Howell 6 times
As Book was able to escape from pressure over and over again, North Carolina QB Sam Howell could not. The Irish sacked Howell six times and held North Carolina to its lowest offensive outputs of the season.
Entering Saturday, the Tar Heels hadn’t scored fewer than 26 points or had less than 401 yards in their first eight games of the season. Against Notre Dame, North Carolina had just 298 total yards. In those first eight games, UNC averaged over 563 yards per game.
The game looked like it was going to be a shootout at the start. Both teams traded touchdowns in a 28-point first quarter that ended 14-14.
But Notre Dame locked Howell and the UNC rushing attack down after that. North Carolina’s two touchdown drives totaled 125 yards. The Tar Heels had 173 yards over their final nine drives.
Postgame Interviews
SOCIAL MEDIA REACTION
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