Notre Dame, Ind (UHND) - Notre Dame was without two of its starting defenders in Gerome Sapp and Cedric Hilliard on Saturday and their presence was sorely missed by a Notre Dame that yielded over 200 yards on the ground to Navy. Early on navy ran the ball up the middle with ease and the outside pitch was open all game long. Sapp was injured Thursday in practice while Hilliard has missed the last two games with a knee injury.

With Sapp going down on Thursday, the Irish didn't have a whole lot of time to practice with him not in the lineup. Sophomore Garron Bible started to fill the void Sapp left. With a complicated offense to prepare for the Irish found themselves unprepared. Against Air Force, Sapp was huge and made the right reads. He helped contain the outside run and stretched the offense to the sidelines instead of allowing them to cut back in. Against Navy the Irish defense waited for the Navy QB to make his decision as to whether pitch or keep it as opposed to forcing him to give up the ball.

Navy was able to gain more yards on the ground than any other Notre Dame opponent this season because the outside was open with the loss of Sapp and early on they took advantage of the absence of Cedric Hilliard in the middle Hilliard has been huge all year long is the Irish's best run stuffer. He gets penetration and clogs running lanes. Boston College also took advantage of his absence upfront last week by gaining a lot of yards on the ground.

The loss of Sapp and Hilliard shows a glaring weakness of this Notre Dame team and that is a lack of experienced depth. Notre Dame has some talented backups but they do not have much experience. When Holiday went down in the Boston College game Pat Dillingham came in and made some mistakes that were due mainly to a lack of experience. He started the Stanford and finished the Michigan State game, but he is not a seasoned QB by any stretch of the imagination.

At runningback, all of the contributors are all sophomores and with the recent fumblitis that has hit the backfield, it will be interesting to see how they respond. Notre Dame is deep at some positions but the cupboard is somewhat bare for the Irish. Not necessarily in talent, but in experience. The Davie regime played the older guys more and didn't give the young guys much of a chance and that is coming back to haunt the Irish now.

With the upcoming bye week for Notre Dame, the Irish will have time to heal and refocus on their final two games against Rutgers and USC. If they win out they will be in a BCS bowl game. Getting healthy and back to where they were for the first 8 games of the season will be key for Notre Dame.

There were a lot of missed tackles on Saturday - something you didn't see in the beginning of the year. I also didn't notice the defense hitting as hard this weekend either. Notre Dame's defense looked average for most of the game and needs to reassert itself and play like the dominating defense it is. Notre Dame will be an underdog at USC and can make a real statement if they take care of Rutgers and then go into Southern California and play like the did in Tallahassee.