Approaching the halfway mark for Brian Kelly’s seventh season at the helm, Notre Dame still has a losing record, even after a seemingly improved performance in a 50-33 neutral site win over Syracuse in East Rutherford. With Brian Kelly entering his second game running the Irish defense – with vaguely detailed help from Greg Hudson – the Irish have a must-win game in Raleigh against a tough, 3-1 North Carolina State team.
If Notre Dame wins, they would climb back to .500 on the year, at 3-3, and would need three more wins for bowl eligibility, with six games left. Or, they might be able to get into a bowl with two more wins, at 5-7, if the bowls run out of six-win teams and start looking at 5-7 teams with high graduation rates.
Yet if Notre Dame loses, they would fall to 2-4, .333., halfway through the season, with games coming up against top-15 Stanford and top-10 Miami (Fla.). Notre Dame’s other remaining regular season opponents will be Navy, Army, top-25 Virginia Tech and a resurgent Southern Cal. If Notre Dame somehow loses to remaining opponents that are currently nationally ranked – i.e., if they continue their losing streak to ranked opponents that dates back into 2015 – that alone would give them six losses. And unranked Southern Cal, after falling out of the rankings, just routed a strong Arizona State team and seems to be rebounding. Either way, if Notre Dame loses to North Carolina State, they basically would have to beat Navy, Army and Southern Cal just to qualify for a bowl at 5-7 with their high graduation rate.
Meanwhile, North Carolina State just beat a previously undefeated Wake Forest.
The Wolf Pack are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their home field, Carter-Finley Stadium, and undoubtedly already will be geared up for Notre Dame as one of their biggest games of the year.
Similar to Notre Dame’s game last year at Clemson, the outskirts of a hurricane will bring heavy rains and strong winds. In this case it will be Hurricane Matthew. However, it will be a noon game instead a night game like the one at Clemson.
Hurricane Matthew is expected to start veering out to sea once it hits North Carolina. However, even if the eye does not pass over Raleigh, the game could still get heavy rain, strong winds, and stronger gusts. Brian Kelly seems to think that the noon start time might spare them some of the brunt of the storm, but the National Weather Service is looking at a fairly ongoing onslaught.
Meanwhile, the field is natural grass, much more prone to being waterlogged and, by definition, muddy, including from whatever rain hits beforehand. Up to four inches of rain are predicted for Saturday.
According to the Weather Channel, rain is coming all night, and heavy rain is projected for kickoff and throughout the game.
Looking at the North Carolina State depth chart, the young Irish will not have much of a size advantage to speak of, and the rough weather might dampen Notre Dame’s speed and athleticism a bit.
Against Wake Forest, North Carolina State rushed for 200 yards at more than 5 yards per carry, paced by Matthew Dayes with 125 yards on 25 carries. The Wolf Pack also had 327 yards passing, with Boise State transfer Ryan Finley throwing for 300 yards to 9 receivers, on 23 of 36 passing (65%).
So North Carolina State has a balanced offense that includes a solid running game. The weather might help prevent the Wolf Pack quarterback from doing as much to slice and dice a young Notre Dame secondary, one that has had as many as four freshmen defensive backs on the field at once. Although on sloppy turf, sometimes the offense can have an advantage, because the receiver knows which way he’s going to cut before he cuts, while the defender has to react after the fact.
Gaining 527 yards against Wake Forest on offense, North Carolina State surrendered only 352 yards on defense. While giving up 283 yards passing, the Wolf Pack defense gave up only 69 yards rushing on 21 Wake Forest carries, at just 3.3 yards per carry.
Unfortunately, if the Wolf Pack defense remains stout against the run, that could frustrate a Notre Dame team that might be tempted to grind it on the ground in a hurricane with high winds.
Notre Dame’s rushing offense is only ranked #72, although they are averaging 4.4 yards per carry, and they have multiple backs who show flashes of brilliance, as well as an offensive line with a mix of experience, inexperience, size and strength.
The Irish have a top-15 passing offense, and Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer is top-10 for passing efficiency. He throws to a very young receiver corps paced by Equanimeous St. Brown, who is progressing with Will Fuller-type stats, as well as veteran Torrii Hunter Jr., who earlier missed some time after taking a non-called cheap hit against Texas.
Brian Kelly seems to think that they can still throw in the wind, recalling them throwing last year against Clemson.
However, they lost to Clemson.
And it is unclear whether the weather at North Carolina State might actually turn out to be a good deal worse than what it was at Clemson.
The character issue, and game day readiness issue, and sense of urgency or lack of urgency, might complicate things if they rear their heads.
Under Brian Kelly, Notre Dame has had some hard-fought wins; and they’ve had games where they have had dramatic, hard-fought wins or losses playing down to the level of weaker opponents; and they’ve had some games coming at flat, including last year’s baffling performance against Clemson. Notre Dame spent about half the game coming out flat and acting like they were getting in touch with themselves and their emotions about the rain, and then simply put their nose against the grindstone instead of staging a fully inspired, impassioned rally.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame is in a rebuilding year, and have been slow in the process of getting young players to over-achieve ahead of schedule. A year-and-a-half ago, Notre Dame had virtually nobody at the NFL combine; if memory serves, one then-recently active player was at the combine and then got drafted. That wasn’t because they had no talent; it was because everybody who could stay (in school) was staying, for a fifth year, fourth year, or otherwise. Six months ago, it was the reverse. Everybody who stayed was leaving, and more players who could leave were leaving. There was a boatload at the combine and in the draft. One figure that was trotted around was about a dozen going to the NFL draft or at NFL camps. So there has been a huge pendulum swing in the roster, much moreso than usual.
And even if the other players were rated as top prospects, there is no way of guaranteeing whether a top prospect will turn into a good, solid next man in, or a future NFL draft pick, or an All-American. Perhaps more importantly at present, there is no telling how quickly a player will develop, this year versus a year or two down the line. (Then there are the unpredictable injury issues.)
All of that, and the big pendulum swing of people coming and going, means a rebuilding year.
Of course, it could have meant a reloading year.
The wild pendulum swing in the roster does not mean that Notre Dame could not excel, or at least be bowl-eligible, but it meant there would have to be a great coaching job to push the learning curve forward and an intense effort up and down the roster both with development and game-day intensity. Notre Dame knew they were going to have to over-achieve, and they failed to do that. They also failed to take care of business against Duke, Texas and Michigan State.
Meanwhile, while it makes for good sound-bites, it is silly to suggest that Notre Dame competes for national titles, in some sustained meaningful manner at this point, and that Notre Dame therefore has a motivation issue otherwise. Notre Dame has never won a major bowl game in the entire 85-scholarship era, nearly a quarter-century. Even Lou Holtz was 0-2 in the 85-scholarship era. For that matter, Charlie Weis winning the Hawai’i Bowl in his fourth year was Notre Dame’s first bowl win since the Lou Holtz era. Brian Kelly winning the Sun Bowl was the second. The Pinstripe Bowl and Music City Bowl round out Notre Dame’s four bowl wins over the past quarter-century.
Simply winning a bowl game is a big goal for Notre Dame. With Brian Kelly, Notre Dame was willing to keep a coach on for seven years without a consensus national championship for the first time since Elmer Layden in the 1930’s (only the third time in history, including Knute Rockne, who won a national title in his seventh year, and had two undefeated seasons in his third and fourth years).
Even though Notre Dame was willing to lower its standards by keeping Kelly on without a consensus national title, they need to make it a defining standard to win a major bowl game, and to win any bowl game when the opportunity for a major bowl is not available.
So for Notre Dame, the big goal right now needs to be to beat North Carolina State.
The next big goal needs to be five wins, to get into a bowl game at 5-7 with their high graduation rate, if need be. The next big goal needs to be six wins, to be bowl eligible the regular way. The next goal needs to be to go for 9 wins, and an outside chance at a major bowl win.
There are several rules of thumb for what’s going to happen. First, if Notre Dame doesn’t come ready to play, right out of the gates, if they don’t treat it like an in-season bowl game, Notre Dame is going to lose.
Right now, they are not good enough to take a few quarters off in bad weather and still beat a 3-1 power conference team. Even if Notre Dame plays their best, they still might not win.
But if the Irish can show some character, and grow up fast, and if Brian Kelly has enough competitive fire to run both the offense and the defense, they can turn the tide on the season and still over-achieve.
