Stacking Up: How The Notre Dame Offense Matches Up vs. Pitt
Notre Dame goes on the road for the first time in the 2020 season when it travels to Pittsburgh this weekend to take on the Panthers. The matchup between the Notre Dame offense and the Pitt defense should be tremendous.
We continue our coverage of the Notre Dame/Pitt contest by looking at how the Fighting Irish offense stacks up on paper against the Panther defense.
Notre Dame Scoring Offense vs. Pittsburgh Scoring Defense
Advantage: Pitt
The Notre Dame offense has been mediocre for much of the first quarter of the 2020 season. It dominated a very bad South Florida defense and looked great in the first quarter against Florida State, but there has been a lot of average to below average play from the unit for much of the season.
To make matters worse, Notre Dame has underachieved despite facing a soft schedule. Irish opponents are just 5-6 this season, and two of those wins are against FCS opponents.
Notre Dame has been good on third-down, but its red zone offense ranks 58th out of 77 teams, and 54th in red zone touchdown percentage. Notre Dame ranks 13th nationally in the number of red zone opportunities, so if this part of the offense finally gets rolling the unit should take a big jump forward.
Pitt has one of the nation's best defenses. The Panthers rank in the Top 20 of all seven scoring defense categories discussed here, and inside the Top 10 in four other categories.
Pitt has bent a little bit more in recent games, with NC State and Boston College both getting close to 400 yards, and both going over 5.0 yards per play.
The Panthers have been outstanding in the red zone all season, which makes this a very intriguing matchup.
Notre Dame Rush Offense vs. Pittsburgh Rush Defense
Advantage: Even
This is a matchup of great on great. Notre Dame has one of the nation's best rushing offenses and Pitt has arguably the nation's best rushing defense.
Notre Dame has steamrolled its last three opponents, averaging 288.7 rushing yards per game and 6.4 yards per rush during that stretch.
No, none of Notre Dame's opponents are good rushing defenses, but the Irish have done what a great running team is supposed to do against teams like that, they've dominated.
Running back Kyren Williams is on pace for 1,337 rushing yards in the regular season, and freshman Chris Tyree is on pace for 605 yards on the ground.
Notre Dame's 261 rushing yards per game through the first four games of the season is the third best of the Kelly era, trailing only the 2015 and 2017 offenses through the same stretch.
Pitt has also not faced any great rushing teams, but like the Irish offense, they've done what great units do, they dominated. Not one offense has topped 116 rushing yards in a game, and only two have even topped 100 yards.
Even if you take out the performance against FCS opponent Austin Peay, who gained just one yard against the Panthers, Pitt has allowed just 73.6 rushing yards per game against five Power 5 opponents, which would still rank third in the country.
Notre Dame Pass Offense vs. Pittsburgh Pass Defense
Advantage: Pitt
Pitt has the slight statistical edge on paper, but it's a close matchup. This is also the matchup where Notre Dame must show the biggest improvement.
In Pitt's three wins, opponents are averaging just 121.0 passing yards per game and 4.7 yards per attempt.
In Pitt's three losses, opponents are averaging 305.3 passing yards per game and 8.3 yards per attempt. Boston College quarterback Phil Jurkovec passed for 358 yards against the Panthers and averaged 10.2 yards per attempt.
This would be a great time for the Irish pass attack to get on track, and for quarterback Ian Book to catch fire.
———————
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.
Follow me on Twitter: @CoachD178
Follow me on Parler: @BryanDriskell
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook
