Notre Dame Must Speed Up Its Offensive Tempo, Not Slow It Down

Notre Dame needs to eliminate the scan offense and start pushing the tempo more

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not really a tempo guy, but there is a time and place where that kind of offense is necessary, and that's where Notre Dame is on offense right now.

Notre Dame has been struggling on offense all season, with the one exception being against a North Carolina defense that has been getting gashed by most of its opponents. Saturday's 14-point performance against a Stanford offense that was giving up over 30 points per game in 2022 (and in 2021, and in 2020, and 29.8 in 2019) was rock bottom for the offense.

There are many issues going on with the offense, but from a structural problem one of the biggest issues is the "scan offense" that has been employed the last two weeks. While I understand the objective, the philosophy played a major role in the offense underperforming in recent games. Even before that became a thing the Irish offense struggled to get into rhythm at any point in games, and this is especially true early in games.

It's why Notre Dame has scored just six points in the first quarter in six games, and why the offense is averaging just 23.7 points per game. It's averaging just 19.4 points per game in the other five contests outside of the 45-point outburst against North Carolina.

Notre Dame needs to change its focus, and change its tempo.

The Irish need to pick the tempo up in a big way, similar to what we saw in the second half of last season, if not a bit faster.

Here's the issue with the "scan offense." For one, it requires that the offense put in a higher volume of plays and scheme. When you have an inexperienced quarterback, two true sophomores starting at wide receiver, two true sophomores starting at both tackle spots, and when you talk about your offense as a whole being young/inexperienced, going with a higher volume of scheme can be detrimental.

What you get is what we've seen, a bunch of players that struggle to play with confidence, struggle to play full speed and often look as though they are uncertain in their responsibilities. There has been way, way too much of that. We saw Drew Pyne look extremely uncertain of his reads on Saturday against the Cardinal, who didn't allow him to throw a high volume of balls to tight end Michael Mayer like we saw against BYU.

By going slow and executing a "scan offense" you also give the defense more time to get set, make their own checks and then move around after the scan in order to confuse the offense. That was also an issue for Pyne against Stanford. You are only making things harder for a young offense when you run this type of offense and insist on this desire to get into the "perfect play."

There is also a constant drumbeat from defenders of the poor offensive play that say that Notre Dame doesn't have the talent to be as good as folks like me think they should be. I don't embrace that notion at all, but if that faction is correct that is even more reason to up the tempo and put teams on their heels.

No matter how you spin it, this particular team needs to start pushing the tempo. That means adjusting the scheme to better fit this style of play. Maintaining the versatility of personnel is certainly okay, and desired, in a more up-tempo offense, but going with more 11 (1 back, 1 tight end, 3 receivers) and 21 (2 backs, 1 tight end, 2 receivers) personnel would be desired as the more frequent personnel usage.

Mixing up the run game is key to this (more inside-out) and adding RPOs (run pass options) back into the offense is an absolute must. More tempo would also allow Notre Dame to implement more formations, pre-snap movement and pass schemes that better utilize the specific talents of wideouts Lorenzo Styles, Braden Lenzy and Tobias Merriweather. That means not only more perimeter throws on RPOs, but also getting more movement routes post snap and going away from the static routes we've seen so much of in 2022.

It would also fit the backfield talents extremely well, especially those of Chris Tyree and Logan Diggs.

Pushing the tempo and implementing more RPOs also takes a bit of the pressure off Pyne and the offensive line by limiting the games that defense can play pre-snap, and limiting the time they can spend pre-snap disguising coverages. That helps Pyne, of course, but it also helps a receiving corps that is quite young and inexperienced outside of Lenzy.

I've spent all week trying to think of ways this wouldn't be good for the offense, and why just continuing to get better at the "scan" makes more sense down the road, but none of those reasons make sense for this specific Notre Dame team. 

Whether or not offensive coordinator Tommy Rees is willing to make this kind of change remains to be seen, but doing so would be just what is needed to finally get the offense playing with more rhythm and playing at a much, much higher level.

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