Notre Dame Was Far From Perfect Against NC State, And That Should Excite You

The reaction after the Notre Dame win over NC State has been interesting. There are plenty of Notre Dame fans that are excited about the win, but there are still others who have done nothing but pick the win apart, and we are seeing that from non-Notre Dame circles as well.

The takes have been interesting.

Notre Dame's offensive line struggled, Sam Hartman played a bad game, it's terrible that the best receiver didn't catch a pass, Notre Dame didn't get pressure on the quarterback, NC State imploded in the fourth quarter (apparently it had nothing to do with the Irish defense)..

The mental and verbal gymnastics being done to downplay the 45-24 victory have been strange to see, but the bottom line is correct. Notre Dame was definitely not on top of its game against NC State, the Irish didn't bring their A game, or anything close to it. Notre Dame did had sloppy play up front, Jayden Thomas did go 0-4 on targets and dropped a deep ball, Sam Hartman did play his least efficient game, the defense wasn't able to get as many hits on the quarterback as desired, and the offense did have to rely on big plays.

Yet Notre Dame still went on the road and beat a pretty good NC State team by three touchdowns. This is a team that spent all but two weeks of the 2022 season ranked.

That should be the takeaway about the Notre Dame win over NC State, Notre Dame is a team that can dominate a good team even when it's not near its best.

When Notre Dame didn't bring its A game in 2022 the results were losses to Marshall and Stanford, single digit wins over teams like Navy and BYU. What the Irish showed against NC State, is that what we know about this team is they can bring their B- game and still blowout a quality team like NC State.

That's not something to pick apart, that's something that as a fan you should be fired up about. It speaks to this team's talent and preparation, which is something you see from the best teams in past seasons. No one brings their A Game every week, just ask Georgia, and if you want go back and watch last year's wins over Missouri and Kentucky.

The notion that this was a competitive game that turned ugly late, like the Wisconsin game in 2011, is not backed up by what actually happened in the game, or by the data.

Notre Dame didn't come out and play lights out like it had in previous games. Notre Dame scored touchdowns on 11 of its 12 first-team possessions in wins over Navy and Tennessee State, but it didn't score until its third possession against NC State, and didn't get into the end zone until its fourth possession.

But once Notre Dame got going it was clearly the better team in all phases of the game. Despite a strong performance from the NC State defense, Notre Dame was able to do what it needed to do to control the game. For all the talk about how competitive it was, the facts are Notre Dame never trailed in the game.

Notre Dame led for 48 minutes, but that lead was double figures for over 36 of those minutes. That's not about NC State imploding, that's about Notre Dame controlling the game. What happened in the fourth quarter was the superior team putting away the inferior team and showing what it is capable of.

Every time NC State tried to make it a game the Irish answered right back.

NC State scored late in the second quarter to make it a 10-7 game. That lasted a grand total of 36 seconds before the Fighting Irish offense was in the end zone to extend the lead back to 10.

NC State scored a late third quarter touchdown to make it a 24-17 game. That was the one time NC State had a chance to make it more of a game, but in less than eight minutes of game time the Irish had put the game away and had a 21-point lead.

Notre Dame is far from a perfect team right now, but that's true for every team in college football. Georgia just won a game over Ball State in which it was held to just 99 rushing yards, as an example. Notre Dame certainly needs to improve in certain areas, but how it has played through three games is certainly encouraging and shows us this version of the Notre Dame football team is a much-improved version over last year's version.

How much? Well, we'll start to get an answer to that on September 23rd when Ohio State comes to town. But in the meantime, sit back and enjoy what has shown itself to be a really good football team.

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