Matchups to Watch in the Orange Bowl

College Football Playoff Semifinals: Penn State vs. Notre Dame

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard celebrates the Fighting Irish's playoff win against Georgia. / Amber Searls-Imagn Images

Something close to consensus has been reached in expectations for the college football playoff semifinals this week. While most are predicting Notre Dame to win a close game over Penn State in the Orange Bowl, Ohio State is favored to win by a touchdown over Texas in the Cotton Bowl, and almost all agree that the spread would be much larger if the Longhorns weren’t expected to enjoy a significant home-field advantage. When discussing the games I have found that I can conceive of almost any plausible outcome for either game, depending on how a couple of variables play out. Let’s take a look at those key variables, starting with Thursday night’s game..

The Nittany Lions and the Fighting Irish resemble each other much more than they differ. Both want to stop the run on defense and establish the run on offense. Both have excellent linemen on both sides of the ball. Both have quarterbacks with some lingering questions. Both have coaches who have yet to prove that they can win the biggest games. Here’s something else that they now have in common: both have a key player with an injury that is unclear as to its severity.

Key #1: Jeremiyah Love’s knee injury vs. Abdul Carter’s upper body injury

If Jerimeyah Love’s knee were perfectly healthy, the Irish would likely be close to being favored by a touchdown, but he has been limited in practice and has been sporting a knee brace that spotlights the likelihood that he will be somewhat hampered in the game. When healthy he is one of the most explosive running backs in all of college football, as was spotlighted by his 98-yard touchdown run versus Indiana in the first round of the playoffs. How much will the banged-up knee slow him down? It's tough to say, but he looked like he was treating it very gingerly in practice, especially when making cuts. That’s a serious issue because it is his elite level of planting a foot to make the decisive cut upfield that has been the showcase of his talents as a running back. If he can’t fully plant on that foot, he might still be effective, but it’s implausible that he can be the sort of weapon that he has been.

Meanwhile, Abdul Carter is injured, and we still aren’t exactly sure what the nature of the injury even is, nor is it entirely clear when he first sustained the injury. During the first half of the Fiesta Bowl against Boise State, Carter had to leave the game to go to the injury tent on the sideline. Afterward he was wearing a compression sleeve on his left arm. It’s been summed up as “an upper body injury.” Since he wasn’t icing his elbow or bicep, it would mostly likely be something shoulder-related, though not significant enough to require a sling. While the Boise State game may have been when he first injured his shoulder, defensive coordinator Tom Allen mentioned that they had been working on a special scheme before the game with a lineup without Carter “in case he had too many snaps.” That seems like an unusually specific scenario to have prepared for, unless Carter already had a nagging injury of some sort in the week prior to the game. The most likely injury would be a severe “stinger,” which is an overstretching of the brachial plexus nerve due to the shoulder being stretched too far from the shoulder & neck. This overstretching pulls at the nerve, sending a burning sensation up and down the arm, shoulder, and neck areas. A mild stinger can feel like something roughly equivalent to bumping your elbow’s funny bone, and the symptoms can go away just about as quickly. Other times it can have lingering effects, such as a partial loss of sensation in the upper arm/shoulder/neck region, and sometimes a loss of strength in that arm. If you’ve ever slept wrong and woke up with a sore neck and a loss of strength in your arm, you have likely experienced something similar; the difference is that you probably aren’t an all-American defensive end who is expected to tackle running backs like Jeremiyah Love. Carter is Penn State’s most effective defensive weapon, having accumulated 21½ tackles for loss this year. With Jeremiyah Love’s uncertain injury status, a fully healthy Abdul Carter would likely have meant that Penn State would be a slight favorite in this game.

If either Love or Carter proves to be reasonably close to 100% while the other is not, his team will have a huge advantage.  Both teams’ coaches are motivated to be ambiguous about how healthy their star player actually is because that information would likely assist the opponent in knowing how to gameplan against them. It’s hard to imagine that either won’t attempt to play, but it is unlikely that both will play the entire game. If either does—and he’s as effective as he has been—his team will likely win this game.

Key #2: Riley Leonard (QB, N.D.) vs. Drew Allar (QB, PSU)

Both teams want to establish the running game in order to set up the pass. Both teams have struggled when they have failed to do so. Riley Leonard is a bit of a throwback as far as college quarterbacks go. While he has good passing stats—66.5%, 2,383 yds, 18 TDs, 6 INTs—he doesn’t have a reputation for having great accuracy. In the Irish’s lone loss to Northern Illinois, he threw 2 interceptions and no touchdowns. He has had his greatest success as a passer when Notre Dame is moving the ball effectively on the ground so that the play-action pass leads to wide-open receivers in single coverage at a time and place that the defense wasn’t expecting him to throw. Would Leonard be able to carry the Irish on the strength of his arm if they are unable to run the ball? It’s doubtful. However, he is a leader. Perhaps the greatest immeasurable asset of a winning quarterback is the way that he lifts up the effort and the execution of his teammates by his own leadership qualities. If you saw Leonard jump over a Georgia defender along the sideline and do a full flip in order to ensure a first down, you saw the sort of selfless courage that inspires teammates to play harder and play better because they know that their quarterback will sacrifice his own body in order to win. He was chosen as a team captain despite being a transfer from Duke, which shows a high level of respect from before the season had begun. It was even more obvious when the entire Notre Dame sideline was ready to go to war on his behalf when he was hit only slightly out-of-bounds against Indiana. That penalty extended the drive. Leonard has an innate ability to scramble, dive, or do whatever is necessary to lead his team to victory, and they tend to follow his example. His greatest liability seems to be his potential for throwing interceptions. If Love isn’t fully healthy, and the Irish need to rely on Leonard to move the ball, the Irish might be better off if he’s scrambling for first downs than trying to thread the needle with a tough pass.

Drew Allar has an NFL arm. He has shown both strength and accuracy, but the ongoing critique prior to the playoffs has been that he hasn’t shown up to make the big plays that have been necessary to win in the biggest games. It’s great that he can put together highlights against the lesser teams, but the big plays were mostly absent against the best teams, though he did have a good game against Oregon. Allar’s stats are similar to Leonard’s when accounting for his having more attempts: 67.4%, 3,192 yards, 24 TDs, 7 INTs. His career biography reflects Penn State’s recent pattern of beating the opponents that they should while losing to Ohio State and Michigan in the past, now to include Oregon in this year’s Big Ten conference championship game. What many have failed to notice is that those games have been steadily getting closer, and Allar’s play has been elevating. What Allar has most lacked is the sort of elite wide receivers who can help him look better by making big plays when called upon. He does have the luxury of the nation’s best tight end in Tyler Warren, but having just one of the recent stable of Ohio State elite wide receivers would likely have padded his stats in innumerable ways,… and plausibly would have added a win this year against either Ohio State or Oregon.

Touchdowns to turnovers is the stat to watch. Scoring 3 or more touchdowns will likely be enough for either team to win this game as neither defense will surrender much more than that. Since either team is likely to have at least one TD come on the ground from a running back (in addition to whatever points come from field goals), whichever quarterback can account for at least 2 TDs (running or throwing) will likely win the game … as long as they have 1 turnover or less. For Allar, 3 TDs to 1 INT will likely mean a victory. For Leonard, running for a TD and throwing for another with no INTs or fumbles will likely mean a victory. Unless Jeremiyah Love is healthy, it is more likely that Penn State will get a touchdown on an explosive play, so the margin of error for turnovers is less for Riley Leonard.

Key #3: Coaching intangibles

While fans typically clamor for high octane passing offenses with scoreboards lighting up like a pinball machine—does anyone still have a pinball machine, by the way?—the quality of coaching is usually more obvious in a low scoring defensive struggle where there are more running plays than passing plays. Kirk Ferentz has literally made a multi-million dollar career out of playing great defense and getting his punter to beat the opposing punter by about 10 yards on every possession. Unless the opposing offense has a good enough offensive line to unleash the high-flying parts of their offense, Iowa football games are usually brutal slugfests with a final score that looks like a Tigers-Rangers baseball game from thirty years ago. The current Penn State and Notre Dame teams represent a higher tier of Ferentz football with better athletes and better offensive schemes. The goals are the same, though: 1) win the line-of-scrimmage, 2) run the ball effectively, 3) stop the run, 4) don’t turn the ball over, 5) win the game with special teams. Notre Dame effectively beat the SEC champions by first forcing a strip-sack before halftime, then returning the 2nd half kickoff for a touchdown. The rest was more or less a draw. Penn State made their game with Boise State closer than necessary by throwing the ball more than necessary when their running game had already proven to be effective.

Situational coaching is when coaches prepare teams for specific game situations by simulating them in practice and then executing them in the game. Dan Lanning purposefully placed a 12th man on the field in order to draw a penalty to run time off the clock to beat Ohio State in their first matchup this season. After the game it came out that they had actually rehearsed that exact scenario in practices. It was so ingenious and effective that the NCAA almost immediately amended the rule book to remove the advantage that had been gained. In a similar though not as dramatic a fashion, Notre Dame sent out its offense as a late substitution to go for it on 4th down late in the game against Georgia. It discombobulated the Bulldogs’ defense enough that they jumped offsides, giving the Irish a key first down. Kirby Smart is a details-oriented coach, so seeing him get outmaneuvered in a chess move like that was eye-opening. It takes more than a head coach to execute at that level. He needs coordinators and assistants who are likewise at the top of their game, as well as the players to execute. Thursday night’s Orange Bowl has the potential to be decided by those sorts of coaching details.

Bobby Bowden famously said that he wanted to be the dumbest coach on his own staff because that would mean that all of his assistants were smarter than him. The Penn State-Notre Dame matchup has some top-notch coaching talent that will be put on display. When Tom Allen was fired as Indiana’s head coach at the end of last season, James Franklin hired him to replace last year’s DC (Manny Diaz), who had been hired away as Duke’s head coach. The defense has been firing on all cylinders. Franklin also poached Andy Kotelnicki from Kansas after the 2023 season. While Kotelnicki doesn’t have the head coaching experience of Allen, he had notably turned Kansas into a potent offensive power after decades of Jayhawk impotence. Franklin has been shuffling through offensive coordinators ever since he took over at Penn State, but it seems like Kotelnicki is on the cusp of cutting through the last of the gordian knot.

While Notre Dame is the first head coaching position for Marcus Freeman, he also hired a former head coach to be his defensive coordinator: Al Golden. Golden was head coach at Miami (including when they played Nebraska in 2014 and 2015) following a successful stint at Temple (where he had hired a young assistant named Matt Rhule). He is currently being mentioned for potential NFL positions. He has built Notre Dame’s defense into something more athletic and more aggressive than any Irish defense that I have ever seen.

It will be interesting to see how the opposing defensive coordinators attack their opponents’ offenses. Will Notre Dame trust their cornerbacks to shut down Penn State’s outside wide receivers so that their safeties and linebackers can fully focus on stopping the run and containing Tyler Warren? Although Penn State shut down Boise State and Ashton Jeunty, how will they stop a (potentially) healthy Love behind one of the best offensive lines in all of college football? How much is Tom Allen willing to gamble on the strength and accuracy of Riley Leonard’s arm? Defensive coaches are typically risk averse, meaning that they only prefer to take chances in situations that are low-risk/high-reward types of outcomes. It has become part of this year’s Notre Dame defensive DNA that they will force turnovers (including 6 INTs from Xavier Watts of Omaha), but that could be a lot harder against a run-based offense with as good of players as Penn State’s. Will they gamble more to force a turnover? If Penn State forces Riley Leonard into obvious passing situations, how do they pressure the passer without opening up opportunities for him to hurt you with his scrambling? Will they assign a defender as a spy? Let the chess games begin!

Nebraska is currently tied with Georgia for 8th on the list of football programs with the most all-time wins. It seems appropriate that the four teams left in the semifinals happen to be ranked above them. This is a gathering of some of the bluest of the blue-bloods. Enjoy it for what it is, and look for the key matchups above to see if they determine the outcome.

My prediction: Penn State wins. I don’t think Jeremiyah Love will be able to play very much, and I think the combination of losing him and using precious plays to figure out that he’s not full-speed is going to put Notre Dame behind the 8-ball to start the game.

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