Key Takeaways From Notre Dame's Victory Over Duke

Key Takeaways From Notre Dame's Victory Over Duke

James Guillory, USA TODAY Sports

It has been a rough month for Notre Dame, but last night the Fighting Irish turned it on both offensively and defensively, blasting Duke by a 38-7 score.

There were several important takeaways from the victory.

This Defense Can Take Over Games — For the second straight game, the Notre Dame defense absolutely dominated an ACC opponent, holding it to season lows in a number of key categories. We saw that again last night when the Irish completely thrashed the Duke offense, and the outstanding play was on all three levels.

Notre Dame held the Duke offense to season lows in first downs (10), rushing yards (95), yards per pass attempt (3.3), yards per pass completion (6.4), total offense (197 yards) and yards per play (3.2). All but the 95 rushing yards were the lowest since at least 2017, and the 6.4 yards per completion was Duke’s lowest since 2016. Duke’s 102 passing yards was its second lowest of the season, behind only the 97 yards from the opener against Alabama.

If the defense continues playing the way it has the last two games this team will be extremely difficult to beat down the stretch.

There Isn’t A Lack Of Speed On Defense — One thing that continues to stand out when the defense plays well is just how athletic it is. Head coach Brian Kelly continues to talk about how his team lacks elite speed, with the focus seeming to be on offense, but this certainly isn’t an issue on defense.

Notre Dame overwhelmed Duke with its speed, and the Irish have athletes on all three levels. Duke’s blockers could not handle Notre Dame’s quickness up front, especially from Myron Tagovailoa-Amosa and Jayson Ademilola. The Irish linebackers were all over the field, and both Asmar Bilal and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah were just too fast for Duke to handle.

On the backend, Notre Dame’s safeties played the alleys extremely well and the Duke wide receivers were blanketed all game long by the Irish corners.

There Is Still Hope For The Offense — While the defense has been outstanding for the majority of the season, the Irish offense has been a major disappointment. Last night we saw glimpses of this group finally getting close to playing to its potential. Watching the Notre Dame defense dominate the Duke offense wasn’t surprising when you consider how good the Irish defense has played this season and how average the Duke offense has been, especially in recent games.

But Duke’s defense has been quite good this fall, but Notre Dame made them look average on all three levels. The biggest surprise was how effective the Notre Dame line - which was lacking two starters - was for much of the night. Duke wasn’t as aggressive attacking with its front, and Notre Dame took full advantage.

We saw Notre Dame attack down the field with its pass game, the ground game mixed up inside and outside runs effectively, and we finally saw the quarterback run become a bigger part of the game plan. All of that adds up to a recipe for success on offense. The question is can the unit continue this trend down the stretch, but if it can the Irish will win out, of that I have no doubt.

Chase Claypool Is A Truly Dominant Player —When Notre Dame makes Chase Claypool the focal point of the offense, and when quarterback Ian Book gives Claypool even remotely catchable passes, the senior wideout is virtually unstoppable. We saw that again last night.

It seems Claypool makes at least one or two acrobatic, highly-contested catches every game. He won at the line of scrimmage with his routes last night, he worked all parts of the field and when the ball was close to on target he made grabs. Claypool’s most impressive catch might have been an incompletion in which he made a brilliant catch, but the throw took him out of bounds.

When it became obvious early on that Claypool was going to be a focal point of the offense it forced Duke to pay extra attention to him. When defenses do that it opens up other parts of the offense, which is why his impact goes far beyond just the numbers he produces. Last night that was obvious.

Chris Finke Is Getting Back To Form — For the second straight game, fifth-year senior Chris Finke looked more and more like the 2018 version of himself. When Finke is on his game he’s a first-down machine, but we have not seen that version of Finke for most of the season. He flashed it last week against Virginia Tech, but last night was vintage Finke.

Through the first seven games of the season, just five of Finke’s 15 receptions went for first downs. In the last two games, Finke has picked up a first down or touchdown on seven of his 10 receptions. Four of his five receptions against Duke went for a first down or a touchdown, and he reached the end zone twice. Finke had just one touchdown reception coming into his game, and that came back in September against New Mexico.

Finke worked the middle of the field effectively, found soft spots in the zone and when he got room to work he did damage after the catch. He had an 80-yard catch-and-run called back by a penalty. If Finke and Book can play the next three games in similar fashion to what we saw last night the offense will finally get rolling.

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