Instant Analysis: Reacting to Notre Dame's 31-24 Win Over Louisville

Irish Illustrated's Tim Prister and Tim O'Malley are joined by John Brice of Football Scoop as they review Notre Dame's 31-24 victory over No. 15 Louisville. As always, Instant Analysis is brought to you by the RVMH Hall of Fame, located in Elkhart, Indiana.

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[jonathanthie]

Tim,


You do a great job O’Malley playing the critic you are a great actor, love that about you.

[Dane-xvgo]

Lots to clean up, Riley looked good til he went down . A dub is a dub tho keep stacking positives.
Go Irish ☘️

[RaymondHarton]

I think once they jumped out with 21 points MF changed the offense. It looked a little like the "don't lose the game" mode we've seen time and time again. greatfull for the win

[Dimwitland]

It sure looked like Leonard was significantly feeling it on the injury-missed play, and something indeed did change, and can't say it was him, but 'the way they called the plays" or the way HE ran them did certainly seem to change. Either way - to me that was not only a tough and gritty performance, it was a valorous one. I would say for much of the Irish, both sides of the ball, it was a valorous one.

I have no criticism of the plan or the play, as the task was to win - and they did, outside of any possible expectation provided by the statistics.

I do have two criticisms on the game (of the three overall) that are strictly moral I suppose, in character.

One is the practice of having clearly not badly or not at all injured players stopping the clock on the Card side, more than once for convenience, both when they still had a TO, and when they had already used them up. In contrast, the Irish had at least two players on the ND side who were clearly trying NOT to exit the field when, ultimately they had to.
The second is, and I know this is subjective and prone to be being seen as a typical partisan thing to say or perceive, but there did appear to be some cases where barely borderline late or unnecessary plays appeared to be aimed simply at trying to injure key offensive players on the Irish side. Not so, the injury to Faison, which, while lamentable, was clearly in the course of standard play, but certainly on Leonard more than once, and also on Love, at least once. I am not saying the Irish weren't also violent (we know which ones are really goons in uniform), and that is part of the game -the head butt proves the point, and that wasn't even part of any play at all and the team payed for it. Either way, on the Card side, not disciplined and not called, which leads me to number 3:
The third is not moral at all and not levied against a player or a team or the often maligned stadium crowd. The annual complaint about the 'quality', so called, of the ACC Official squad was pretty hard not to recall. They did get a handful of things right. The did get a handful of the reviewed plays right. Meanwhile, there were not only some very badly missed and BLATANT calls not made, they were often clearly in the foreground of the TV coverage, although more are evident from other viewpoints. At least one phantom call on ND for PI, and the bad commentator call on the mutual PI interference were just the cherry on top. I guess either they really can't see a replay or had money on the game.

[Phepsi]

I sure would like to see Notre Dame do more misdirection plays on offense, can you ask Coach Denbrock why they aren't running more of those types of plays?

[MingoThePoet]

Open up the offense some attack more but great win 🥇

[DCSker]

2 of those Louisville TDs were aided by bad turnovers at Notre Dame's own territory.

[ZiklagStripling]

Things were going well till QB13 got landed on by a big brotha. After he got banged up, they didn't want to run him too much anymore. Made things tight. So, now what? They need a plan to get a 1st down with 3 to 4 plays to run the clock out. Back to back runs into the teeth of defense with a banged up QB is not creative enough. Solid win nonetheless. Team has potential to be a problem at the end of the season. Offensive has to continue to grow. We will see.

[patrickschaller]

Notre Dame is banged up no doubt.... good there is a bye week -heal up those that you can, Time for film review of what they are screwing up on O Line However, realistically you CAN'T instantly invent veteran O Line experience you have to play through the rough patch to get there....in short, ND will have a growing pains remainder of the season as far as O line production goes. One other item, they may have to find a coaching patch for focusing on special teams to spring punt returns & KO returns for TD's to aid the lack of O Line production in these games this year. Leonard is a $2 million dollar one off...if he keeps putting himself out there on runs he risks another big injury. ND may have to integrate Carr & Minchey into QB play more. We can't totally throw Angeli out of the equation but all the QB's need to brush up on fast 3 step drop and deliver the ball with good diagnostics on the Defenses they face over the bye week

[mfnflyw]

@david. RL was 17/23 for 74%. I think need better play calling with mis direction and play-action passing. Like Steve but not sure how he do with this OL

[patrickhennessy]

Is it time to cut into the reps of Mills and Oben?

For me...Biggest disappointment has been our interior Dl play.

[DirkDiddler]

Whats with all the rollout passes wasn't working

[WarrenFamily]

What's up with all of the knee injuries? Fluke or poor strength & conditioning?!

[paddy]

What the hell was that 3 and out that last set of downs for the Irish?? If ya punt 5 times in a game like the Irish offence is NO good

[brianbrandt-pi]

Better get good ND. And fast. Freeman and staff 😢

[noflybynghtsht]

they stacked the box, we couldn't run all OL pulls were getting blown up. they basically forced ND to throw the ball which riley couldn't do consistently

[StoicBehavioR]

Marcus should stop listening to the analytics guy. That 4 and 3 should of been a punt.

[keithdoherty]

cut rocco spindler---terrible... is mitchell evens on this team???

[davidkovalewski]

Leonard has not improved just had a better game. Still late throwing the ball, very inaccurate and doesnt see open receivers. Steve will never get his deserved shot at notre dame and probably should transfer.

[tl]

ND is not in the stratosphere of elite teams.