Notre Dame LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah Outlines Secret to Stopping Alabama Offense
Notre Dame senior linebacker and 2020 Butkus Award winner Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah spoke with the media on Tuesday morning regarding his team's upcoming matchup against No. 1 Alabama in the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Rose Bowl.
Owusu-Koramoah, who leads the Fighting Irish in total tackles with 56, was quick to break down the the talent on the Crimson Tide's offense.
"All great guys, all great players," Owusu-Koramoah said. "Every great player can be contained, every great player can be limited. Their ability — you just have to find their weakness. That's been our challenge all throughout the week is to find each and every guy that is explosive, which is nearly everybody they have on their offense, man. The linemen, you have 22, you have 4, 6, 19, 8 — all of them are great players.
"Our challenge is to find a weakness in each on of them. I don't think I should get into specifics on how we are going to stop them, but we just have to find the weaknesses and make sure we execute on those."
Finding weaknesses in Alabama's offense has been something that the defenses of the SEC have struggled with all season. However, the Fighting Irish field one of the best defenses in the country and will most likely provide some resistance against the Crimson Tide's prolific offensive attack.
According to Owusu-Koramoah, one of the secrets to setting the pace and beating Alabama is to start the game running.
"[The secret is] to start fast," Owusu-Koramoah said. "Whether we're talking about at the beginning of the game or whether it's first down, second down, just trying to get them behind the sticks. If you get them behind the sticks then they're looking at a harder, more limited playbook rather than third and three, third and five, where they can open up the entire playbook.
"The key is just to stop them on first and second down and get them behind the sticks to make it even more difficult for them to dive into their playbook and just run whatever they want to run. I think the issue here or the challenge here is just to control the narrative."
