Notre Dame Has Flipped Its Script, Thriving With Fast Pace and Big Plays

​​The Fighting Irish closed the athletic gap that existed for a long time between them and college football’s heavyweights, now relying on outrunning the competition in all three phases.

Notre Dame wide receiver Jayden Harrison scores a 98-yard kickoff return touchdown against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. / Amber Searls-Imagn Images

For decades, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were considered to have such an athletic disadvantage that they purposefully grew the grass in their football stadium to U.S. Open rough height. The long grass was supposed to slow down opposing speed, and it was especially noteworthy when playing against Tony Dorsett during his Heisman Trophy season of 1976 and Reggie Bush when he won the Heisman in 2005.

The ploy was infamous enough that when Notre Dame announced in April 2014 it was taking out its natural grass in favor of a synthetic surface, the Los Angeles Times wrote a story with the following headline: “Notre Dame to install artificial turf, lose tall-grass defense tactic.”

A full decade after going to artificial turf, the Irish finally have a football team that can thrive on a fast track. A team capable of outrunning virtually all of the competition, in all three phases of the game. Notre Dame is big-time swift, and proving it over and over with a succession of massive scoring plays.

The Irish broke open their Sugar Bowl game against the Georgia Bulldogs last week with a 98-yard kickoff return touchdown by Jayden Harrison, a graduate transfer from the Marshall Thundering Herd who had scored three touchdowns on kickoff returns there. Georgia, which has been synonymous with speed under Kirby Smart, hadn’t allowed a kickoff return that long in six years.

The Irish set the tone in their College Football Playoff first-round game against the Indiana Hoosiers with a 98-yard TD run by Jeremiyah Love in the first five minutes. It was Love’s fourth run of more than 60 yards this season; the only running back who has had more is Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty.

In the regular-season finale against the USC Trojans, the Irish put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter with successive pick-sixes of 99 yards (Christian Gray) and 100 yards (Xavier Watts). That gave Notre Dame six defensive touchdowns on the season, tied for the most in the nation.

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Four touchdowns of 98 yards or longer in three games is absurd. But it’s only a slight escalation over what the Irish did in the four games before that. They had TD runs of 68 and 58 yards against the Army Black Knights; a 76-yard run against the Virginia Cavaliers; a run of 65 yards and an interception return for 79 yards against the Florida State Seminoles; and a 64-yard run against the Navy Midshipmen.

This team is a big-play machine. And very few of them come via the most conventional method—the passing game, where Notre Dame has had just one completed pass longer than 50 yards and zero longer than 60.

Instead, the Irish hit home runs on the ground, on defense and on special teams—where, in addition to the return TD, they have blocked six kicks (tied for the national lead). They are playing not just complementary football, but explosive complementary football.

Love has rushed for 1,076 yards on 7.3 yards per carry this season, and his availability against Penn State is a major x-factor. / MICHAEL CLUBB/SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The evidence suggests Marcus Freeman and his staff have recruited well enough to close the athletic gap that existed for a long time between Notre Dame and the heavyweights from the Southeastern Conference and elsewhere. Big plays are often the result of excellent scheme and execution—but sometimes it’s just a matter of having better athletes than the opposition. And the Irish are making a ton of big plays.

That 0–10 streak in major bowl games between 1993 and this season? It’s no coincidence most of those were against teams considered athletically superior—the Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers, Ohio State Buckeyes and Florida State. Even the Oregon State Beavers, of all historically modest programs, out-athleted the Irish in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl with future NFL receivers Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh.

The clearest indication of a new Notre Dame in terms of speed is at running back, where Love and job-share teammate Jadarian Price have combined for six runs of 60 yards or longer. Both were four-star recruits who had scholarship offers from schools that traditionally put elite speed on the field (Alabama and the Oregon Ducks for Love, Ohio State for Price). Both chose Notre Dame—Price a year earlier than Love—and are now thriving in tandem.

“Very, very talented running backs is the first key,” said Irish offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock of the eruption in splash plays. “And fast.”

Denbrock is in his 11th season at Notre Dame under three different head coaches. He’s been around the program off and on since 2002. He knows what he’s seeing in terms of how fast those shiny gold helmets can move downfield. So I asked him the last time the program had that kind of speed in the backfield.

“Probably the last time they were talked about in the way that this team’s being talked about,” he said, referring to the Lou Holtz era from the mid-1980s to mid-’90s. “I mean, we’ve had some really talented running backs over the years. … But this group in particular, I think really at any level, whether it’s SEC or ACC or Big 12 or whatever, these guys could be on anybody’s football team and be running back one.”

Of course, it takes blocking to spring backs for big plays. Since Joe Rudolph arrived as Notre Dame’s offensive line coach last year, long runs are up. The Irish went from 18 runs of 20-plus yards in 2022 to 22 last year and 29 this season; from four to 10 to 18 runs of 30-plus yards from ’22 to ’24; and from two to four to 11 runs of 40-plus yards over the same three-season span.

“I think [we’re] growing to the point with our offensive line over the course of the year where we’ve given those guys those opportunities,” Denbrock said. “When it’s been there, we seem to block it the right way. They seem to hit the hole where they’re supposed to and it is just one of those things that has kind of really come together for us, helping us be a little bit more explosive offensively.”

They’re explosive defensively as well, leading the nation with 31 turnovers forced (18 interceptions, 13 fumbles). Notre Dame has drilled on the techniques necessary to make those plays, but there’s more to it than learning in practice how to punch the ball out of the hands of a ball carrier or strip a quarterback. 

There has to be a mentality to look for those opportunities and then make the plays happen. And once turnovers start happening, it can be contagious defensively.

“It’s a stimulus response,” defensive coordinator Al Golden said. “It happens so quickly on the field. They have to know how to respond when they see that stimulus. They have to know how to apply it to the game. A lot of guys can do a punch-out in practice, but they can’t see it in a game to do it. And you have to have confidence to do it.

“When you show it [in film sessions] and you emphasize it, [players think] I want that to be me on the screen there.”

Can Notre Dame produce some more highlight-reel worthy big plays against the Penn State Nittany Lions in the Orange Bowl? Tom Allen’s defense doesn’t give up a lot of them—just seven plays of 40-plus yards in 15 games, and only three on the ground. And Notre Dame’s biggest home run hitter, Love, is trying to come back from a knee injury suffered against Georgia.

So we’ll see Thursday night. But this season is the first time in a long time where Notre Dame has the speed to play with anyone, no matter how tall or short the grass is.

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