Notre Dame Must Get Past Its Red Zone Woes

There can be no debate, Notre Dame officially has a red zone problem. The numbers are jarring. The Fighting Irish are dead last in the nation in red zone scoring defense and red zone touchdown defense.

Notre Dame's opponents have scored on all 17 of their red zone trips, and 14 of those trips have ended in touchdowns. They’ve allowed both seven rushing touchdowns and seven passing touchdowns and held teams to just three field goals.

"It’s frustrating, because it isn’t like we do a whole bunch of different things on the red zone,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said of his team’s red zone woes. "As you look at the UNLV game, a couple self-inflicted wounds in terms of mistakes that we shouldn’t make.”

The Rebels reached the red zone against Al Golden's defense three times and all three trips ended with touchdowns. All three times they were able to punch the ball into the end zone on short yardage situations. A pair of two-yard runs and a one-yard run. Not a good look for a bigger, stronger team to get bullied off the ball by a smaller Group of 5 opponent.

"You’ve got to look at yourself as a coach and look at the players and say, 'Okay, where’s the miscommunication coming from',” Freeman said. "This is what we want you to do and you’re not doing it. So, is it a teaching error, an understanding or execution error. We’ve got to make sure we know exactly what we want to do. If they beat us doing what we want to do, then take your hat off to them. But we can’t have unforced errors in the red zone, especially with the simplicity that we really pride ourselves in with what we do in the red zone.”

The positive for the defense is the fact it has only allowed opponents to reach the red zone 14 times, which ranks 14th in the country. That is how the Irish are able to rank 35th in the nation in scoring defense despite being so bad in the red zone.

Notre Dame has had its share of red zone woes on offense as well. The Irish rank 82nd in red zone offense and 54th in red zone touchdown percentage.

They’ve been in the red zone 26 times through seven games, scoring 11 rushing touchdowns and six passing touchdowns. They’ve settled for Blake Grupe field goals four times and come away without points after five red zone trips.

Notre Dame's offense ranks just 73rd in red zone trips, which combines with poor red zone touchdown success to play a key role in the Irish offense ranking just 80th nationally in scoring offense.

The UNLV game was very telling of Notre Dame's offensive red zone problems. Notre Dame started with the ball in UNLV territory seven times, including on four of its first six drives. They scored just three touchdowns and made three field goals, while missing a 42-yard field goal attempts as well.

Had they maximized their field position on those seven possessions they could have scored at least 49 points, but they managed just 30 points after being gifted the ball in plus territory.

Notre Dame started at the Rebel 20-yard line after Isaiah Foskey's first blocked punt and at the UNLV 14-yard line after his second blocked punt. The Irish were able to turn the first trip into a touchdown but had to settle for a field after his second block. That has been an issue all season, and we saw it against BYU when the Irish got the ball at the Cougar 44-yard line after a TaRiq Bracy interception, but the offense had to settle for a field goal.

The schedule gets tougher the rest of the way. This week’s opponent, Syracuse, along with Clemson and USC are all ranked in the top-16 in the country. Notre Dame will have to finish drives if they are to have a chance at upsets in any of those games.

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