Notre Dame Keys To Victory vs. NC State Revisited

Notre Dame remained unbeaten on the season after going on the road and beating NC State by a 45-24 score. The Irish are now 3-0 on the season and have won each game by at least 21 points. Notre Dame also scored over 40 points for the third straight game this season, and the fourth straight game overall.

Notre Dame racked up 456 yards of offense and averaged 7.5 yards per play. The numbers tell a great story, but it wasn't always pretty for Notre Dame, who struggled out of the gate offensively.

When you look at the keys to the game, Notre Dame didn't thrive in two areas, but hitting the third key helped negate the first two and fueled the Irish victory.

Let's revisit the Notre Dame keys to victory for the offense, and how they did in each area.

1. Control The Line Of Scrimmage - If you just look at the numbers the line did a solid job, but the film tells a bit of a different story. Notre Dame rushed for 170 yards, but Notre Dame averaged just 4.6 yards per carry, and 80 of those yards came on one run from Audric Estime. The offensive line did a great job opening up the hole on that touchdown run, but for much of the game the line failed to control the action.

NC State sacked quarterback Sam Hartman four times, and there were a lot of minimal rushing gains for the Irish offense, especially early in the contest. Notre Dame also got stuffed on a 3rd-and-2 run when the game was still in doubt and the offense was trying to put a drive together.

Notre Dame's line will need to clean up a lot from what we saw against NC State, and it's the second game in a row I had that takeaway. The guards were especially inconsistent, and right tackle Blake Fisher wasn't on top of his game either.

2. Protect The Football - Notre Dame has yet to thrown an interception this season, but Hartman put the ball on the ground twice on hits in the backfield. His lost fumble in the third quarter allowed NC State to take over deep in Irish territory with the game sitting at 24-17. His first fumble was also deep in his own territory, but the Irish recovered that fumble.

Notre Dame's defense was able to bail the offense out by forcing a NC State field goal attempt after the fumble, and the field goal was missed.

The Irish offense certainly didn't thrive in this area against NC State.

3. Generate Big Plays - Notre Dame was able to rack up 45 points, 456 yards and average 7.5 yards per attempt because of its ability to generate big plays. This was especially true in the pass game.

Notre Dame had the 80-yard scoring run from Estime, but an 11-yard gain from Jadarian Price was the only other run that went for 10 yards or more.

Notre Dame generated five pass plays of at least 25 yards. Tight end Holden Staes had scoring plays of 40 and 35 yards, and his 28-yard reception set up his first score.

Wide receiver Tobias Merriweather hauled in a 45-yard reception that helped put the offense in range for a field goal attempt. If not for a sack of Hartman the field goal attempt would have been more manageable.

Wideout Chris Tyree got behind the defense for a 65-yard gain with less than a minute remaining in the first half, which allowed the Irish to get a crucial score that turned a potential 10-7 halftime score into a 17-7 halftime score.

That gives Notre Dame a total of six plays that went at least 25 yards in the game. Notre Dame racked up 293 of its 456 yards on six plays. That tells a story about an overall lack of efficiency, but it also says that Notre Dame can in fact be a big play offense.

Efficiency was the name of the game in Notre Dame's first two games, but outside of a few broken plays against Tennessee State, the Irish had not been a great big play offense. Against NC State, the Irish needed to reverse that against what was a stout Wolfpack defense, and they did just that.

The key moving forward will be combining those two things a bit better, but the big plays in this game certainly check off this key in very impressive fashion.

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