Relax, South Bend.
The first win of the season is finally in the books. Better late than never, right?
Of course, the 56-30 win over Purdue didn’t settle anyone’s nerves. The Boilermakers’ offense demonstrated that Notre Dame’s defense still has issues, starting with something as fundamental as tackling.
There’s been plenty of piling on Chris Ash, who looks to have his skies above his head.
It was the offense that was supposed to be a question. CJ Carr didn’t win the starting quarterback job by a landslide. When Carr didn’t beat out Kenny Minchey early in the process, alarms were ringing throughout the college football world. Even some thought it was a mistake not to keep Steve Angeli.
The offense hasn’t been the problem, particularly in the quarterback position. In the Miami (FL) loss, it was game planning that took the Fighting Irish down. In the Texas A&M loss, the offense scored more than enough points, even though Mike Denbrock called the direct snap to Jeremiyah Love two or three times too many.
The issues have been on the other side of the ball. The defense has defenders out of place six to seven times a game. As previously mentioned, the tackling is suspect. The defensive line can’t generate pressure on the quarterback, and Ash’s scheme hasn’t shown an ability to be creative enough to get home on the blitz.
With a trip to Arkansas ahead, it looks like Notre Dame needs to put together an offensive scheme to win games in a shootout. That’s not what the season was supposed to look like. It was supposed to be a strong defense until Carr matures, but that hasn’t been the case.
It doesn’t sound like Marcus Freeman wants to take over the defense, even though some media outlets and a large number of fans would like to see that happen.
For now, Notre Dame is asking Carr and Denbrock to be on a fast track to 40 points a week.
So, when Notre Dame plays, it’s reasonable to expect games to look like it did against Purdue.
How sustainable is that? Who knows.
