Previously: Notre Dame Offense
The defense as a whole isn't terrifying, but SWEET JEBUS SHELDON DAY COVERING A WHEEL ROUTE OUT OF THE BACKFIELD CERTAINLY IS.
Ah, so, Brian has already posted the game preview because our schedule got weird this week. It's Notre Dame week, so I guess weird is the norm. Usually these will go up on Thursdays because that makes far more sense.
Anyway, Notre Dame pummelled Rice on the scoreboard, 48-17, and mostly limited the Owl offense outside of a couple big plays, including one that came in garbage time. There do appear to be significant holes in the Irish defense, however, and Michigan is better equipped to take advantage than Rice. On to the breakdown...
Personnel: Seth has made some tweaks to the diagram. He did his best to make it readable on this page, but there's enough packed in there that I suggest you click on the image to embiggen:
Dangermen and top-100 recruits have been properly identified; right now, Notre Dame has more of the latter than the former.
Base Set? 4-3 under. As Brian noted, the Irish stuck with their base personnel for the most part against Rice's spread, with OLB James Onwualu—a converted WR who played safety in the spring—often lined up over the slot. Sometimes they'd have one of their DEs play from a two-point stance. Here are both of those things in one screenshot:
Onwualu is over the slot to the near side.
ND did play some three-man fronts, usually on third-and-long, and also shifted to what Brian dubbed a "30 slide" in the UFR when Rice overloaded one side.
[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the breakdown, including... breakdowns.]
Man or zone coverage? A healthy mix of both principles. The Irish run a fair amount of quarters and Tampa 2, but they'll also play a lot of man free when they blitz. New DC Brian VanGorder will throw in zone blitzes, as well. The one with Day dropping onto a running back in the GIF worked out okay. This one... did not.
This would be a theme whether or not Notre Dame blitzed—crossing routes against their zones were there all day, as were most other underneath routes.
Pressure: GERG or Greg? VanGorder didn't bring the house very often, but he switched up the blitz schemes enough that it was tough to identify where pressure was coming from; it wasn't unusual to see a lineman drop into coverage while a defensive back flew in off the edge, and he also utilized an Okie front similar to Mattison's favorite third-down blitz package.
Notre Dame got a little pressure—but not much—off their blitzes, and practically nothing outside of Sheldon Day being spectacular when they left the D-line to their own devices. Speaking of which...
Dangerman: DT Sheldon Day, with a bullet. He's going to give Michigan's interior line problems, because he's going to give every line he faces problems. Day is extremely quick, splits doubles with regularity, should not be blocked one-on-one, and finishes plays when he gets penetration. He's easily ND's best pass-rusher despite coming from the interior most of the time, and he's also their best run defender. (Yes, better than Jaylon Smith, who's good but not yet great.)
OVERVIEW
Starting up front, Notre Dame's line looks like a weak point outside of Day, who's good enough on his own to haul them up to at least an average unit. Jarron Jones is a 6'5" DT who plays like he's 6'5", alternating solid plays with ones in which he gets stood up and blown off the ball; Michigan should be able to single-block him and double Day. The defensive ends didn't do much, and were complete non-factors in the pass rush. The backups, as Brian noted, are mostly freshmen—true freshmen at that—and they were responsible for a couple of Rice's best runs on the day.
Jaylon Smith is an athletic marvel who's still working his way to being a great linebacker; he'd probably look closer to that end if he had more talent around him, but right now he's flying around the field trying to cover for having an unathletic former walk-on and a converted receiver flanking him at linebacker, and trying to do that much comes with mixed results. He only finished with three tackles, all solos, in this game; much of that was because Rice largely abandoned the run and picked on the other linebackers in coverage. Make no mistake: Smith is a good player.
I'm less sold than Brian on walk-on ILB Joe Schmidt's run-stopping ability; we both agree that he's a minus in pass coverage, as he was repeatedly the culprit on those open crossing routes. Schmidt led the team with eight tackles and usually found himself in the right place against the run. He didn't always finish plays when he got into good position, though. Here he falls over—I think he clipped a lineman's foot—on a free run into the hole:
That might just be bad luck, but these missed tackles on back-to-back plays were not:
On the next play, he made a stop by catching the running back flat-footed and allowed about three yards after contact as a result; he did have a couple nice sticks on running backs, so perhaps I'm a little harsh here, but I thought he gave up a fair number of leaky yards against dudes less big and powerful than Derrick Green and De'Veon Smith.
Onwualu's placement on the edge and Rice's play distribution kept him from being much of a factor in the run game; I thought he did fine in coverage. Same goes for both of Notre Dame's corners, who were mostly untested as Rice chose to attack the middle of the field. I do think Michigan has a chance to get the screen game going; on a slip screen to the RB, corner Cole Luke got blocked by a Rice receiver ten yards downfield and never disengaged, allowing a first down when Jaylon Smith couldn't be Superman.
“With Elijah and Max back there, we needed somebody to pick it up and neither one of those guys picked up the slack,” [Brian] Kelly said during his weekly Sunday teleconference. “Whatever we have to do, we’ll get better back there between those two guys and making sure they communicate better.”
...that's not good, and it brings us to the play breakdown.
PLAY BREAKDOWN
I was going to picture-page Elijah Shumate's major bust on Rice's first touchdown...
...but One Foot Down already has it covered, in gory detail:
It looks to me like [Shumate] thinks he has the inside receiver in man coverage. Post snap, Shumate follows this receiver towards the middle of the field and then realizes too late the rest of his teammates are playing zone.
I'm not sure why Shumate switched from playing zone to man just before the snap. It may have been an automatic check that he failed to communicate. Or it might have just been a straight up mental error. Regardless, it didn't work out very well for the Irish.
Communication was clearly a problem, but the safety issues went deeper than that. Either Shumate (#22) is giving up too much room to the inside here or Max Redfield (#10) needs to get way deeper in his drop, though that would've opened up a wide open crossing route, so this is just asking a lot out of a safety manned up against a receiver:
If that's a Michigan receiver, it's at least a catch and likely a touchdown—that dude wasn't exactly a burner, and then he dropped a pass that hit him square in the hands.
Shumate also bit on some play fakes, and you can bet Doug Nussmeier took notice of this exquisite play design on a fake screen Rice used to take advantage:
A better throw gets Rice a touchdown or something close to it on that play, and Michigan will give Notre Dame a tough choice: play off to cover for the safeties and allow a lot of easy yards on screens and underneath stuff, or challenge Michigan's receivers to beat them at the line—not an ideal option when Devin Funchess is out there commanding safety help.
Rice added a late touchdown on a 53-yard bomb right over the top of backup safety Nicky Baratti, so I don't think they have a choice but to roll with the guys they've got. I'm pretty confident Michigan will be able to throw on these guys, and the underneath passing game should cover for a lack of a consistent running game if the O-line has trouble keeping Day out of the backfield. I'm with Brian on his prediction: while the Irish offense with Golson is dangerous, I think Michigan's defense is much more up to the task of stopping their opposition than Notre Dame's.