After another chaotic cheeseburger bye week, which I find very enjoyable, our Irish are back on the field against preseason top 10 ranked, now 1-8, Florida State. It is Notre Dame's first and only night kickoff at ND Stadium.
No way to sugar coat it, Florida State is bad. Like, bad-bad. They are ranked 74th in FPI, behind Navy at 73. As far as overall efficiency, they're ranked 100th in the country, with the only P4 teams behind them being Purdue and Stanford (and Oregon St, if you count those poor homeless souls). They are ranked 121st (!) in offensive efficiency at only 22.2%, 83rd in Def. at 47.4%, but their special teams unit is elite, ranked 3rd in the country. Comparatively, ND is 23rd in offense (70.3%, and would probbaly be much higher if not for their slow start in September), 3rd in defense (87.6%, behind only Tennessee and Texas) and 77th on ST.
Put plainly, this shouldn't be close. There's no reason why FSU should move the ball consistently against Golden's boys, and ND should be able to feast offensively if they can get the run game going and Leonard remains as efficient as he has been. Just be careful on STs and don't give the ball away offensively.
One thing I find odd: the line is ND -26.5, but the O/U is set pretty low at 42.5. That tells me Vegas thinks it'll be a 35-7 type of game for ND, or thereabouts. But if you like ND to cover, that's not a TON of wiggle room for Vegas on the O/U. I'll take ND -26.5, and the over.
My prediction: ND 42, FSU 10. Seminoles break one special teams play that puts them in good field position to scrape out two scores.
