Notre Dame Football Still In Search of Identity 3 Games, 8 Years In

The 2017 Notre Dame Fighting Irish are very much a microcosm of the Brian Kelly era.  Three games into the season – Brian Kelly’s 8th at Notre Dame – the Irish are still in search of an identity.  Questions still loom large on offense and defense as they work through the growing pains of implementing new offensive and defensive schemes.  Where the Irish go from here will ultimately decide the fate of this season.

We’re only a quarter of the way through the season, but at this point there are some things that are obvious about this team amid the many question marks surrounding it.

What We Know

We know that Notre Dame can beat the teams they should beat and run the ball down their throats when they want to.  This should be a given, but that has not always been the case.  Just look at last year when Notre Dame lost to Duke, NC State, and Navy.  It wasn’t always the case before Brian Kelly arrived at Notre Dame either.  Still, beating the Temple’s and Boston College’s of the world shouldn’t be celebrated at Notre Dame.  It should be expected.

We know that Notre Dame can run the ball really well against bad teams.  The Irish went over 400 yards on the ground against Temple and then racked up 515 yards this past weekend.  That latter figure was the most any Notre Dame team has compiled in nearly 50 years.  Meanwhile Josh Adams and Brandon Wimbush became the first duo in Notre Dame history to both top 200 yards individually in the same game.  When facing a much more talented defense in Georgia, however, the Irish ground game was shut down and they didn’t top the century mark on the ground.

Defensively, we know Notre Dame can play solid defense against teams without great offenses.  Neither Temple or Boston College have the kind of offense that will strike fear into any opponent and while Georgia has two stud running backs, they have a suspect offensive line and a true freshman quarterback right now.  Still, Notre Dame has shown that it is a more fundamentally sound defense through three games and that this defense will create turnovers.

Notre Dame has already forced six turnovers through three games.  Last year the Irish defense managed just 14 all season long.  At current pace the defense will end the season with 24.  That would be a vast improvement, but we also saw a bump in turnovers in the early goings of the Brian Vangorder experiment.

What We Don’t Know

We don’t know if Notre Dame can pass the football with any sort of consistency yet.  To say that Brandon Wimbush has struggled throwing the football through his first three games is putting it mildly.  Against Temple Wimbush just missed a couple of big throws that would have made for a pretty stat line.  Against Georgia and Boston College, Wimbush wasn’t just missing throws, he was wildly off target most of the time.

We also don’t know what Notre Dame has at wide receiver just yet.  Equanimeous St. Brown was expected to take the leap from good to great this year but the problems in the passing game have caused a regression.  Three games into the season St. Brown has less than 100 yards in aggregate on the year.  That lack of production isn’t just on the quarterback though.  St. Brown hasn’t come down with passes he clearly should have and he still has not shown an ability to win the battle for contested balls.

St. Brown isn’t the only Irish wide receiver struggling though.  Notre Dame hasn’t had a #2 receiver step up.  Chase Claypool was given a bigger role against Boston College but it resulted in just a single catch.  Freddy Canteen was a starter in weeks one and two but he is out for the season with a shoulder injury and wasn’t lighting it up before the injury.  We found out Sunday that Javon McKinley will likely redshirt this season for some reason as well.  Notre Dame has had a steady stream of good wide receivers during the Brian Kelly era but this year the group is looking highly questionable three weeks in.

We also don’t know if the Notre Dame defense is going to be able to keep elite offenses off the scoreboard.  While the early returns are positive, Notre Dame hasn’t really been tested just yet defensively.  After some early promising returns in the pass rush, Notre Dame took a step backwards against Boston College as well by registering just a single sack.  Notre Dame has six sacks through three games which is a vast improvement when you realize that Notre Dame had none at this point last season.  It’s still not at an ideal level though.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, Clemson had 11 sacks.  In their week two contest alone.

Will Notre Dame be able to hang with a high flying passing attack?  We won’t know for a few weeks yet until the Irish face Sam Darnold and USC though the latest wunderkind from Southern Cal also has already through six interceptions through three games playing Western Michigan, Stanford, and Texas.

Lack of Identity Nothing New for Notre Dame

The fact that we don’t know what kind of team this is yet shouldn’t be a surprise.  Eight years into the Brian Kelly era we still don’t know what kind of program this is.  Notre Dame has had teams that tried to be high flying, pass first offenses; they’ve had years where they actually tried to run the ball more; they’ve had years with great defenses and years with down right dreadful defenses.  If you asked someone what kind of program has Notre Dame tried to build over the last eight years you’d get a lot of different answers.

Not every season is going to work out as planned, but let’s take a program like Stanford.  It is very clear what kind of program they want to have year in and year out.  They want to be a team with a stout defense that runs the ball first and is more physical than everyone they face.  It’s not really working for them this year with a 1-2 start, but it’s still a program with an identity.

The reset that Brian Kelly and the Notre Dame football program underwent this year has had many positive developments thus far, but we still don’t know what kind of team and program this is right now.  We know Notre Dame has to throw the ball better but is this a run first, power team by design or by default right now?  Notre Dame came out and threw the ball three straight times to start the Boston College game on Saturday but was that to try and jump start Brandon Wimbush or because Notre Dame wants to be a passing team with a good running game.

Defensively Notre Dame switched from Bob Diaco’s successful 3-4 defense to BrianVangorder’s train wreck of a 4-3 scheme and now to Mike Elko’s 4-2-5 all in the span in five years.  That isn’t just three defensive coordinators, it’s three completely different defensive schemes so the Irish defense is still trying to figure out who it is.  Mike Elko has been known to bring a lot of pressure, but we haven’t seen that much of that to date given the hand (and talent) he was dealt.  So far it appears that Elko is going with the Diaco approach of bending but not breaking early on.

This weekend’s game against Michigan State will be quite telling actually.  The Spartans are coming off a disastrous season as well and have the benefit of an early season bye week to spend two weeks preparing for Notre Dame.  The Spartans will undoubtably try to take away the run game but if Notre Dame is trying to establish itself as a run first team, that shouldn’t matter.   A team that wants to have the identity of a run first team will run the ball anyway.

Everyone knows that Stanford wants to run the ball and the Cardinal come out and do it with success most of the time anyway.  This year they look like they are headed for a down year, but that hasn’t changed who they are as a program.  If Michigan State stacks the box on Notre Dame and the Irish fall back on a passing game that hasn’t clicked to date, we’ll know that being a power running team is not this team’s identity even though it should be given the success Notre Dame has had running the ball.

Defensively we are still weeks away from really know what the identity of this defense is and this weekend likely won’t show us that much since the Irish face another team that wants to run the ball.  When USC comes to town though will we see a defense that brings pressure or one that tries to keep everything in front of them?

It’s normal to adapt a team to its strengths each year in college football, but if the off-season reset for Notre Dame is to truly be effective it’s about time that the reset leads to a real identity for Notre Dame, not just another gimmick.