Key Takeaways Of The Notre Dame Offense From The Win Over Navy
Notre Dame improved to 7-3 with a 35-32 victory over Navy. It was a tale of two halves, and the Irish allowed a big lead turn into a narrow victory, but it was a victory nonetheless. Notre Dame will surely move up in the rankings with the win, and there were definitely some positives to take out of the game. There were also plenty of lessons to learn from a need to improve standpoint.
Let's discuss the key takeaways from the win.
Finally Got A Fast Start - Notre Dame came into this contest with just 43 first quarter points, and much of that came in the win over UNLV. The Irish have been notoriously underwhelming coming out of the gate, but that changed a bit against Navy.
Notre Dame scored on each of their first three drives, scoring a touchdown on five of their six first half possessions, and on the only possession where the offense failed to get points they got into scoring zone, only to miss a field goal.
The hot start from quarterback Drew Pyne was the driving force. Pyne went 4-4 for 58 yards on the opening scoring drive, hitting running back Audric Estime for a 30-yard touchdown for the opening score. On the next drive, Pyne completed all three of his attempts for 47 yards, including a 38-yard touchdown pass to Braden Lenzy, who made a remarkable catch on the throw.
Pyne went 5-7 for 86 more yards and yet another touchdown on the next drive as the Irish jumped out to a 21-6 lead. Pyne finished off the first half scoring with a gorgeous seam throw over the top of the defense for a 37-yard touchdown to Jayden Thomas, giving the Irish their best first half out-put of the season, and giving Pyne his fifth touchdown of the half.
Wideouts Shine - With Navy focused on shutting down the run game and limiting Michael Mayer, the Irish wide receivers were finally given a chance to shine, and they stepped up in a big way. Lenzy's brilliant catch to open the scoring was just one of his strong plays in the game, and Thomas had two big plays in the win, showing once again that when he is used to work the middle of the field he is very, very dangerous.
Sophomore Deion Colzie also had two huge plays in the game, with both of his catches converting third-and-long situations.
Notre Dame's receivers combined for 12 catches, 211 yards and a pair of touchdowns. It's the most combined catches and yards from the wide receivers all season.
Third Down Ascent - Notre Dame continued its third-down improvement in the win over Navy ... at least in the first half. The Irish finished 6-13 on third-down, but the 5-7 performance in the first half was the driving force behind that success.
More impressive than the totals in the first half was the degree of difficulty. Notre Dame converted a 3rd-and-12 when Pyne hit Colzie over the middle for a 29-yard gain. It converted a 3rd-and-10 with Pyne hitting Thomas over the top for a 38-yard touchdown, and the first score of the game was Pyne finding Estime for a 30-yard score to convert a 3rd-and-8.
Obviously that performance being sustained for an entire game would have kept this game from being close, but the first half excellence cannot be dismissed.
Second Half Disaster - Notre Dame's offense ripped Navy apart in the first half, racking up 323 yards while averaging 9.2 yards per play. Pyne was outstanding in the opening half, completing 14-16 passes for 234 yards and four scores. It appeared as though the Notre Dame offense had finally found its way.
Then the second half happened.
Notre Dame racked up just 12 yards in the entire second half. I repeat, Notre Dame had just 12 yards of offense in the second half. As good as they were in the opener, they were equally as bad in the second half.
Notre Dame couldn't run the ball, it couldn't throw the ball and it couldn't stop the Navy pressures. The Midshipmen essentially decided they were going to go down swinging, and the Notre Dame offense never took advantage of that. Navy's overloaded pressures rattled Pyne, who went just 3-5 in the second half for 35 yards, but he took five sacks in the final two quarters, often times failing to see check downs or wideouts coming open against the edge pressures.
There were several reasons for the struggles, beginning with protection problems. Notre Dame's backs had arguably their worst pass pro game of the season. The Irish line also had its fair share of issues picking up the stunts, which allowed too many run throughs in the game.
Pyne, for his part, failed to recognize the unblocked defenders. When a team brings more rushers than your offense has blockers, the quarterback is responsible for knowing who they can't block and being able to throw hot off that player, and Pyne didn't get that done. Simply pulling and throwing some run game RPOs would have softened Navy up and got the chains moving, but the ball wasn't delivered.
There were open receivers at times, but Pyne seemed to focus more on the pressure and not enough on what was behind it. The accuracy he showed in the first half was lacking in the second half. After Navy made it 35-23 in the fourth quarter, OC Tommy Rees called a wheel route to Mayer that came open for what would have been a huge play, if not a score, but Pyne was off target and took a hit as he threw it.
I also would have liked to see some more empty releases with free releases from the backs to get outside of the pressures, or some quick perimeter screens with spread out personnel instead of trying to force 13 and 14 personnel runs into loaded boxes. Any good coordinator will and should look back and have what ifs, and I believe those need to be the what if situations for Rees. But the reality is there were a lot of open receivers in the second half, but for a number of reasons the ball just never got there.
One thing I would like to see more of against cover zero are calls and plays where the quarterback simply drops back, hits his drop and lets it rip deep. No read, no thought process, it's cover 0 and you have outside 1-on-1s, just hit your drop and let it rip, give the wideouts a chance to make plays.
Run Game Woes - The biggest frustration of the game was the running game. Navy was dead set on not letting Notre Dame run the ball, which is what opened up so much of the pass game in the first half. In the second half the pass game was unable to capitalize and it bogged down the offense.
Notre Dame's line didn't play with the same focus and ferocity it did against Clemson, and there were some issues handling the line games and stunts that Navy brought throughout the game. The RPOs that I mentioned above could have helped attack the edge pressures and forced Navy to back off, but the ball didn't come out enough in those instances.
I also need to see the Irish staff be able to have some go tos when Duo isn't working. Finding ways to get the ball outside quickly is a must, and the need to incorporate a pin-and-pull concept to combat this is also needed down the stretch. We saw this in 2017 when Notre Dame was more of an inside-outside zone team. They would focus mostly on zone back then, but Duo and zone aren't dissimilar in most ways. Back then, however, Notre Dame had counter plays with the zones, especially a highly effective Buck Sweep concept that really hurt teams who got too box oriented.
If Notre Dame can get that rolling in the final two games and use a concept like that to protect the inside runs you'll see this run game be much, much harder to stop.
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