Game Observations - Offense: Notre Dame Beats Central Michigan

Thoughts and analysis of the Notre Dame offense from the win over Central Michigan

It wasn't always pretty, but Notre Dame did what it needed to do by improving to 4-0 with a 41-17 win over Central Michigan. Both sides of the ball had plenty of sloppy moments, but the offense made enough big plays to fuel a pull away victory.

Here is my post-game analysis of the Notre Dame offense.

NOTRE DAME OFFENSE

*** From a gameplan standpoint, I liked how aggressive Notre Dame was throwing the football. The Irish had pass gains of 76, 75, 42 and 39 in the game, hitting an outside go route for a long score and another long gain, an inside seam route for a long score, and a post over the top for a big gain. 

*** Notre Dame mixed up its run game quite a bit in this game and attacked the perimeter more with the Toss play than we've seen in recent games. That inside-out mix allowed the Irish to gash the Central Michigan defense, which was geared towards stopping Notre Dame's downhill runs.

*** My biggest issue with the gameplan/play-calling standpoint was the heavy emphasis on multiple tight end sets, especially with Mitchell Evans not playing. I'd be willing to bet when the snaps are counted that tight end Davis Sherwood played more snaps than Chris Tyree, and possibly Tobias Merriweather. This isn't a knock on Sherwood, who blocked well in the game from what I could tell watching live. It's more about why stick with that heavy tight end alignment against a team like this, especially with your starting tight end out. This was especially head scratching when you consider how difficult it was for CMU to defend the athletes on the perimeter.

*** Overall, the offense used those big plays and a heavy dose of Audric Estime to continue its 40+ points scoring streak, which has now reached a program record five games. It also marks the first time since 1900 that Notre Dame has started a season with four straight games of 40 or more points.

*** Speaking of Estime, he was outstanding in this game, setting a career-high mark with 176 rushing yards. He did that despite having a 72-yard touchdown run called back because of a questionable holding penalty. Estime got off to a bit of a slow start from a reads standpoint, but he quickly got rolling in the game. He was sharp the rest of the game, he ran hard and the CMU defenders kept going low on him, so he just kept leaping over them. Notre Dame rode his impressive performance in the second half, which put the game away.

*** There was too much sloppy play up front in the game, with multiple holding calls and too many pressures on the quarterback, especially in the first half. Two of the penalties were drive killers, one calling back the aforementioned Estime touchdown run and another putting the offense in a 1st-and-20 situation it could not recover from.

*** For the second straight game, quarterback Sam Hartman used big plays to light up the opponent. Hartman completed just 15 passes against NC State and completed just 15 passes against Central Michigan, but he's averaged 308 passing yards in those two contests, and he had his Notre Dame best in this game with 330 yards. Hartman had two bad misses in the game, and early on he wasn't going through his reads as efficiently as he normally does. There were multiple times he had a receiver come open and he had already gone away from that read. On the 76-yard touchdown pass to Chris Tyree - which was a thing of beauty - Hartman hit Tyree on a route that had been open twice already, with one he certainly could and should have thrown. Notre Dame had not hit a single outside Go route all season, but Hartman hit two in this game, one for a 75-yard gain to Tobias Merriweather and another for 42 yards to Rico Flores Jr. in the second half. His willingness to attack downfield was a bit part of this victory, along with Estime's legs.

*** Notre Dame went 6-13 on third down, but it was 3-10 at one point. They converted their last three, but that 3-10 in the first three and a half quarters is partly why Notre Dame struggled to put as many points on the board as they should have. 

*** Notre Dame also went 4-4 in the red zone, scoring three touchdowns and kicking a field goal once it got to the 20-yard line.

*** I wasn't sure why we didn't see more of Tyree in the second half after what he did in the first two quarters.

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