Gerad Parker Looks To Get Notre Dame's Offense Back On Track

Notre Dame offensive coordinator discussed some of the issues facing his offense heading into Saturday's game against USC

Notre Dame enters Saturday’s game against Southern Cal looking to get its offense back on track. After running the ball for a solid 159 yards against Duke two weeks ago, The Fighting Irish ground game was stonewalled in last week’s loss to Louisville, gaining just 44 yards and averaging a quicksand’s average of 1.6 yards per carry.

The passing game didn’t do much better. Sam Hartman threw his first three interceptions of the season and completed 22 of a season-high 38 pass attempts for 254 yards. The offense looked flat-out broken and the job of fixing it falls on offensive coordinator Gerad Parker.

"You have to analyze, look at all of it, drown it all out and figure out why we didn’t execute our best,” Parker said this week. "You all know these narratives can go a lot of different ways. At the end of the day, starting with me, we didn’t execute some of our base plays that we feel strongly about, and when you don’t do that on critical downs or down that led up to critical downs you get results you all don’t want to see, and we don’t want to see. 

"That, really at its core before anything else, is it," continued the Irish coordinator. "That’s the whole premise of who we are and the number one goal is the ball, right? If you don’t take care of the ball it’s hard to win, against good opponents, especially. That, at its core, was the start of it. So, to answer your question, you got to have enough to make sure you can attack people, which we did a really good job, especially early, of having multiple schemes. But then you got to be able to execute them, no question. That’s measured week in, week out.”

Notre Dame’s offense became very predictable against the Cardinals. They ran a total of 55 plays and used motion just 18% of the time. Hartman went under center 11 times and the Irish ran the ball nine times (82%) while facing an average of 8.6 defenders in the box on those plays. The average net gain was 1.9 yards per play. The Irish used shotgun formation 44 times and threw the ball 75% of the time on those plays.

The game started well for Hartman. He completed three consecutive passes for 28 combined yards before throwing his first interception on his fourth attempt. Early drives have generally gone better for the Irish, leading to the assumption that Parker may have a good script to start things off.

"We don’t do that many,” Parker said when asked about scripting early drives. "I’ve been a part of some that do a bunch. We kind of try to do an opening rack of per drive, like the first two drives to kind of get us going. That goes with Sam Hartman, Gino (Guidugli), and me just to say, 'Hey, these are the things we really want to see.' Of course, Joe (Rudolph), Deland (McCullough), are all in on the run game as well. But it always goes to the quarterback position. What does he need to see early? What do we need to take to get him going and all those things. So, we kind of stick on a first rack of plays on the first two drives to get us going.”

The Irish are still averaging 171 rushing yards per game. With that kind of effectiveness, and given the aforementioned formational tendencies, play action passes would seem to be a good recipe for success if they were utilized more. Notre Dame only used play action six times against Louisville.

"Oh yes, we want to use it more,” Parker proclaimed. "When you get into a throw mode when you’re 2 to 1 throw and you’re behind, you lose your play action. It becomes a drop back pass game. We believe in our offensive line and everybody, but when you get in a drop back pass game against good opponents, that’s hard. It makes it hard on everybody. You’re trying to move the pocket enough, but when you’re in a throw mode to get back in a game, it takes away a little bit of who we are and your play action game. So, we’ve got to get it back and keep it. And the best way to do that is to run the football and play with leads. So, yes.”

Notre Dame’s offense averaged 46.0 points in the first four games of the season, while scoring at least 41 points in each game. They’ve averaged just 18.3 points over the last three games with a high water mark of 21 points in the win over Duke two weeks ago.

USC’s defense should give Notre Dame’s offense a chance to get going this weekend. The Trojans rank No. 90 in rush defense, No. 89 in pass efficiency defense and No. 109 in total defense entering the game.

Maybe returning home this weekend will be the kickstart Hartman needs. He’s completing 72.5% of his passes with six touchdowns and no interceptions at Notre Dame Stadium, while completing just 56.5% with six touchdowns and three interceptions in road games (he also had four touchdowns and no interceptions in the neutral site game against Navy to open the season).

Be sure to check out the Irish Breakdown message board, the Champions Lounge

Irish Breakdown Content

2023 Scholarship Chart
2023 Football Schedule

Notre Dame 2024 Scholarship Offers

2024 Commit Rankings - Offense
2024 Commit Rankings - Defense

2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Offense
2023 Recruiting Class Grades - Defense

———————

Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more.

BECOME A MEMBER

Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!

Join the Irish Breakdown community!
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes
Follow me on Twitter: @SeanStires
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook

Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter