With the offense out of the way, it’s time to move on to the defense.
For Notre Dame’s defense the story of 2007 was really the inept Irish offense. The offense didn’t control the ball, frequently turned it over, and often times failed to change the field position. This made playing four quarters of solid football a very difficult task for the Irish defense.
Despite …
At first glance the Irish offense seems dramatically improved from a unit that spent last year near the bottom of the country in every meaningful statistical category. A closer look at the numbers, however, reveals a different story.
For example, through six games the Irish stand at 4-2, a far cry from the 1-5 record they held midway through the 2007 campaign. But the competition …
Coinciding with the release of the BCS comes this week’s version of the Elite Selection Playoff (ESP). For you first timers an explanation of the ESP can be found here. I’ve also attached the links to the BCS standings and Sagarin Computer Ranking for comparison purposes.
Nota Bene, Sagarin’s strength of schedule calculation is very different from that used by the AV Ranking. Sagarin …
Charting the Irish offense from Saturday’s game against North Carolina leads to a painful—yet obvious—conclusion: Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Haywood telegraphs the pass. It is puzzling how the Irish still managed 383 yards through the air, a testament to the talent Notre Dame has on offense.
Disclaimer: The following analysis excludes the first two drives of the game …
Despite dominating multiple statistical categories, Notre Dame was unable to come away with a victory. Coming into the game, North Carolina was an opportunistic team, capitalizing on opponents’ mistakes to win games.
The Irish certainly did their part to help the cause, ultimately giving the Tar Heels exactly what they needed to inch out a victory with their established modus operandi.
Of the six …
The clock clicked to zero and the players on the field began to jog into the locker room. It was halftime and Notre Dame was beating up on North Carolina. The score was 17-9 and by that alone, you couldn’t tell that the Irish were playing some of the best football I’d seen all season. The Notre Dame defense held the North Carolina offense to …
It’s more than a clever motto: if you’ve ever visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of Notre Dame, you may have seen this phrase engraved deep into the stone above the side door. For the thousands of Irish fans across the globe, this phrase personifies the place that Notre Dame has in their lives. But, what does this phrase mean and …
Clashmore Mike would like to welcome Anthony Pilcher to our writing team. He is an Irish enthusiast who specializes in statistical analysis. Additionally, he’s a skilled writer who does a great job recapping games from an X’s and O’s perspective. We invited Anthony to our team partly because he’s a very good writer and partly because we feel sorry for him because he lives in …
Anyone who has attended multiple games at Notre Dame Stadium keeps a personal record of wins and losses while they were there. My mother, for example, has a horrible record as an attendee—Notre Dame has lost every game that she’s attended. Previous to last season, I had a 4-0 record as an attendee; however, the last game I attended was last year’s game against Navy. …
The Notre Dame kicking game the past two years, featuring the first two kickers that Charlie Weis has recruited, has had one signature trait: inconsistency. And we’re not talking about your typical college gamble on a 40+ yard field goal attempt either. This inconsistency is marked by the sound of every Notre Dame fan in the country collectively biting their fingernails whenever a 4th down …