As much as I'm happy for the great improvement shown in Kelly 2.0, the way Northwestern dominated our O-line was disheartening. Alabama has basically all NFL-talent and it would take some sort of miracle for the Irish to score more than 20 points on that defense. Yes, I know Michigan's is supposed to be "better" and we fared okay in that game.
Sagarin has Alabama as a 19-point favorite on a neutral field over Notre Dame right now. That sounds about right.
long
Watch the video and look at where their safeties were playing. There were eight defenders within 7 yards of the line of scrimmage, slanting and run blitzing. They did the same thing Pitt did. The counter to that is to hit a few streaks, or to get wide quickly. I kept wondering why they didn't run a bootleg, which seemed available the entire second half at least. Turns out they were saving it for when they felt they needed it.
Or maybe Kelly and Long are gambling with the fact that they expect to make the playoffs and don't want to tip their hand before they have to. Far-fetched maybe, but with Kelly anything is possible.
The OL has struggled, and it will have to do better if ND gets into the CFP.
They had 9 gms and many practices to iron out the kinks. Losing Alex Bars hurt but they've had
enough time to adjust. They are what they are.
the same thing all year, aggressive DL are able to grt up field before NDs OL can put a hat on them. I don’t see ND run an effective enough zone read option game to defeat that. This, however, has been one of my biggest gripes of Kelly through the years, he recruits road graders and then want’s them to be more finesse on the OL.
thinking the same thing. LSU has some problems but speed isn’t one of them.
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