How The Notre Dame Defense Stacks Up As A Championship Contender, And How It Doesn't
The 2020 college football season is over, and it was another season in which Notre Dame was pretty darn good, but not good enough if your standard is winning national championships.
There are two things every objective fan should be able to accept. One is that Notre Dame is light years ahead of where it was when Brian Kelly took over as the head coach. Two is that Notre Dame has hit a road block when it comes to taking yet another step under Kelly.
What needs to be done now on the Notre Dame end of things is looking at the strengths and work to make them better, and then figure out areas where the program isn’t where it needs to be and focus on getting those areas up to par with what it takes to be a champion.
There are areas where Notre Dame is already at a championship level, areas where they are close but still work to be done, and there are areas where they are still quite far away from being on the championship level. As we fully jump into the offseason, let’s take a look at where Notre Dame stacks up in these areas. We already broke down the offense, and now it's time to take a look at the defense.
It looks at where the program has been in recent seasons (last four seasons) and where it looks to be projecting future teams (next three seasons).
CHAMPIONSHIP LEVEL
Defensive Line - This position can be debated, but when I watch how the defensive line has played the last three seasons, how it played against Clemson in 2018, how it played against Clemson in November, how it played against Georgia in 2017 and 2019, how it played against Alabama in the Rose Bowl, I see a group that consistently goes toe-to-toe with the best teams. And when it faces good but not elite teams like North Carolina (2020) or Syracuse (2018) they dominate.
Obviously losing Daelin Hayes and Adetokunbo Ogundeji leaves a major question mark on the edge, but Notre Dame lost Jerry Tillery after 2018 and didn't miss a beat up front, and it was even better this year than it was last season when it had Julian Okwara and Khalid Kareem.
Notre Dame has gotten to the point where it simply reloads up front. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely, especially when it comes to rushing the passer and finding more elite edge rushers. If Isaiah Foskey and Jordan Botelho can't become impact edge rushers it could present problems, but there are areas to be excited about when it comes to the future of the Irish line.
Notre Dame is loaded on the interior. No, they don't have any future first round draft picks, at least none have played that way thus far, but the production is top notch and the unit can throw waves of talented defenders at opponents.
Coaching - Notre Dame has had top notch defensive coaching ever since head coach Brian Kelly hired Mike Elko and Clark Lea prior to the 2017 season. Now, Kelly has made another huge splash by hiring Marcus Freeman. There's also a chance to see an upgrade with the new staff, depending on how Freeman and Kelly fill the opening with the safeties coach.
I've had my issues with calls here and there in the big games, but that will always be the case in a game where a team loses. The defense has played well enough to compete with the "big boys" in all but one game, and that was the ACC title game loss to Clemson. The staff has shown an ability to get its players ready to play at a high level in spotlight games, and Freeman has done an even better job with his Cincinnati defense the last two seasons.
In each of the last two seasons, Cincinnati has held UCF's explosive offense to its season low in yards and yards per play. It did the same thing this season with SMU's offense, which scored 41.4 points per game against opponents not named Cincinnati this year. The Mustangs scored just 13 against Cincinnati this season, and its next lowest total was 24 points.
WORK TO BE DONE
Linebacker - This is a position that has top-notch athleticism and has certainly landed a couple of outstanding linebacker recruiting classes (2018, 2019), but the production from those two classes has been well below its recruiting rankings and athleticism.
A case could be made that linebacker should be up in the championship level category based on the previous seasons, but the linebackers outside of Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah haven't been nearly as consistent against the best offenses as we've seen from the defensive line.
The talent is there for this position group to be outstanding in 2021 and 2022, but recruiting misses in both the 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes has the depth chart a bit shakier beyond those two years. That will be one thing Freeman will need to immediately correct.
Cornerback - A case could be made that this position group deserves to be in the far away category, and based on what the depth chart looks like moving forward that would be a legitimate comparison. There are three reasons I'm putting the cornerback position group in the work to be done category.
1) History - The cornerback position was outstanding in 2018 and really good in 2019. Losing Julian Love and Troy Pride Jr. the last two seasons combined with poor recruiting to put the position on shaky ground moving forward, but the recent past is part of this discussion, and the fact is the cornerback position has been a strength in recent seasons.
2) Mike Mickens - I have a lot of faith in Mike Mickens as a coach and believe he can get the most out of the talent he will have in upcoming seasons. He did an excellent job getting Clarence Lewis ready to play this season, and he won't lack athleticism and length in future seasons.
3) The 2021 recruiting class - The four-man incoming class is really, really good. SI All-American ranked the secondary class as one of the ten best in the country, and it was due to the outstanding cornerback class. Combine that class with Lewis (and hopefully Ramon Henderson is as good as the staff thinks he is) and there is hope for the future if the unit gets good coaching (see point No. 2).
FAR AWAY
Safety - Yes, the position group with Notre Dame's best returning defensive player (Kyle Hamilton) is also the position group that is the furthest away from being a championship caliber unit. The problem is beyond Hamilton there are major, major question marks at the position, and Hamilton is probably done after the 2021 season. Poor development and recruiting by Terry Joseph has left the position group in a tough spot beyond the 2021 season.
If Freeman convince Houston Griffith to return it would help, but the Irish need to add another strong safety recruiting haul in 2022 and 2023, which would follow a quality 2021 class.
To comment below be sure to sign up for a FREE Disqus account, which you can get HERE.
———————
Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content, our premium message board and gets you a FREE subscription to Sports Illustrated! Click on the link below for more
Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!
Join the Irish Breakdown community!
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes.
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel.
Follow me on Twitter: @CoachD178
Follow me on Parler: @BryanDriskell
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook
