1) If you’re going to trudge forward with a college football season as the country crumbles you might as well settle a couple old scores in the process. Last week, the Irish avenged their 2016 home loss to Duke, which remains the biggest upset by point spread of the Brian Kelly Era (Notre Dame was a three touchdown favorite, for some reason). This week, they took care of South Florida, the team that stunted the early momentum from Kelly’s first season with their improbable win in the 2011 opener. The Irish were victorious in style, despite missing a number of key players, to improve to 2-0 on the season and 26-3 since the calendar flipped to 2018.
2) I don’t want to oversell South Florida here, as they were big underdogs and clearly had a new head coach for a reason, but that was utter destruction. The Bulls mustered one (1) first down in the first half and went oh-for-third down over that same period, as Clark Lea’s lads were masterful despite missing five players from the two-deep. Between filling in for the absences to start and deep reserves getting on the field during a lengthy garbage time, we were able to welcome so many new characters from various parts of the Irish roster.
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise was Jack Kiser, who went from the scout team earlier this week to starter at linebacker after Shayne Simon and Marist Liufau were ruled out. If you’re unfamiliar with Kiser’s background, he was the 704th ranked player in the 247 Composite when he committed, playing at the lowest levels of Indiana state football. There was some message board concern it was a wasted scholarship by Lea because Kiser just wouldn’t be able to adjust to the level of competition faced by the Irish but one game of extended action and I think he acquitted himself quite well, leading the team in tackles, including two for loss. Tests will get much, much stiffer but South Florida had some speed at the skill positions and Kiser seemed unfazed.
It was also fun to see some of the younger guys show up. Isaiah Foskey had a couple more terrifying pursuits and another sack as he continues a strong start to his sophomore campaign. The freshmen also had some moments, with corner Clarence Lewis eyeing up the ball for a couple nice plays in coverage. Sophomore Cam Hart also calmly knocked down an end zone heave. Early Mike Mickens returns? Positive, even if we’re grading on a curve against a dreadful passing offense.
Jordan Botelho showed off his, uh, enthusiastic personality while abusing South Florida’s poor punter and getting a touchdown that probably should have been ruled down outside the goal line but the refs weren’t going to quibble with the margin as wide as it was. Alexander Ehrensberger, the German wild card/project, notched his first career sack and looked like he belonged already so a really nice day for the freshmen defensive ends getting their feet wet. K.J. Wallace and Houston Griffith were flying around while D.J. Brown was steady as they filled in for most of the snaps usually taken by Kyle Hamilton. Osita Ekwonu blocked a very flustered punt attempt. Ten different players recorded at least half a tackle for loss, an absolute flex from Lea and the depth chart he’s crafted.
3) Offense just ran over an overmatched Bulls front, but I want to note that one of the things that made it look easy was that Notre Dame went play-action on the first play, and then threw on the next two snaps as South Florida was geared up for rushes like Duke was to start. You don’t have to “Establish The Run” by running at the beginning of the game – you establish it on film in prior games and needn’t waste plays crashing head-on into the line to prove your manhood or whatever. Tommy Rees called a masterful game, making use of his deep well of tight ends and running backs while reincorporating Braden Lenzy into the fold. Javon McKinley was involved a bit more as the Irish were again shorthanded at wide receiver with Ben Skowronek and Lawrence Keys both missing the game.
(I was surprised to find out that coming into this game the South Florida defense was rated 34th out of 77 teams in the SP+ and 50th out of 130 in the FEI. I find it unlikely they’ll be that high when we reach December because that was not a good team, but at least on paper they were supposed to be respectable.)
If we were giving a game ball to an offensive player, it would be tough not to hand it to Tommy Tremble, who was the leading receiver, a devastating blocker and threw in one carry for a first-down conversion as a fullback. It was also the finest game of C’Borius Flemister’s career, as he ran for 127 yards and a touchdown. He got many of the second half carries because Kyren Williams and Chris Tyree did their damage early, building on the excitement of last week. Williams again showed off his tremendous balance while Tyree showed he’s as comfortable running inside for tough yards and showing patience waiting for blocks as he is frolicking through open space with the burners engaged. These two are going to mess around and put up 300 combined yards from scrimmage one of these days.
In all, Williams, Tyree and Flemister combined to rush for 259 yards on 31 carries, or over eight yards per tote. The offensive line, whose performance against Duke received raves from the analysts at Pro Football Focus, was excellent again in just completely mashing. Complementing them were Tremble, Michael Mayer and Brock Wright, who were all strong in run blocking as Rees used multiple tight end formations to build the early blowout (see above). Ian Book looked more comfortable from the start than last week, going seven of nine in the first quarter to help establish the 21-0 lead. He also ran for three touchdowns and worked in a couple of nice throws during a light day of work, including 30 accurate yards on the move to Lenzy for Zero’s first catch of the season.
4) If we want to nitpick, Book was solid but missed a few times, which contributed to the wide receivers totaling a scant four receptions - slightly troubling since “receiver” is in the name of the position and everything. The running backs also fumbled twice, and while the Irish were lucky enough to recover both please don’t do that. Also Jonathan Doerer missed a field goal, which was only the third or fourth weirdest special teams thing to happen in the game because South Florida was a mess in that department.
(I am of two minds on playcalling for Drew Pyne. One of them says if you’re going to put your back-up in in the third quarter, he should run the offense and throw more than twice. The other is that it’s possible Brendon Clark got way more reps than normal only to find out just before the game he wouldn’t be participating and/or considering everything swirling the goal was to just get out of there as quickly as possible. This was Kelly’s postgame quote on Pyne: "Drew is out there to eat clock. We gave him a couple of tough looks in the passing game where he didn't have much of a look there in terms of being able to throw it, but we really like Drew, and he'll be fine. He's smart. He works hard in all of the meetings, and he's always well prepared." I know they’re doing their best to keep Book in a bubble of one but hopefully both Clark and Pyne are ready for spot duty.)
5) Winning Is Hard Schadenfreude Round Up: A pretty light week, with most of the Big 12 on a bye and the SEC not revving up until next week. Duke turned it over five times against Boston College to lose 26-6 at home, with Phil Jurkovec earning a victory in his first career start. Louisville’s defense looked lost against Miami, who rolled to a road victory. Pitt was a three-touchdown favorite but had trouble putting Syracuse away at Heinz Field.
In the one Big 12 game that did happen, Oklahoma State looked awful against an equally woeful Tulsa team that appeared to have no idea how a play clock worked, but the Pokes escaped with a win. Tulane blew a 24-0 halftime lead against Navy, who eventually figured out how to tackle. Western Kentucky lost to Liberty at home as a two-touchdown favorite (I’m trying here). The schedule on Saturday starts to look a little more normal, but it’s very weird when the day of games is wrapped up by midnight with no kickoffs from the Pac-12 or Mountain West.
6) Notre Dame has won 20 straight home games, their last loss in the Stadium coming to Georgia at the beginning of the 2017 season. They have now won games 52-0 in consecutive seasons, following up last year’s devastation of Bowling Green with Saturday’s performance. One of the recurring themes of the last few freshman orientation podcasts is how few scholarships are wasted at this point on players who never really have a chance to contribute. Some guys don’t hit, sure, because scouting and development aren’t exact sciences but this roster is so deep and so good and built to survive this incredibly stupid season where players will be unavailable and games will be dropped 24 hours before kickoff. If you’re going to play college football during a pandemic, this weekend’s situation of losing a bunch of guys from the two-deep in the hours before kickoff and then rolling anyway is getting off easy.
The one big question remaining for this Irish is whether its passing game has enough upside to truly challenge for a playoff spot. A fair inquiry, but we’re not going to be able to answer it in either direction against Wake Forest in the next game. All the Irish can do is go on the road for the first time this year, absorb any additional roster losses like we saw Saturday and take care of business against a team they’re supposed to beat, a task they’ve done consistently for the last three-plus seasons. The real tests don’t start coming until October, but dropping the final game of September as an 18-point favorite is an easy way to make them all matter less.
