Two-Minute Success Is Becoming Routine For The Notre Dame Offense

Notre Dame has played three games this season. In all three games the Fighting Irish offense has taken possession of the ball with under two minutes to play in the first half. The Irish have scored touchdowns on all three occasions. Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker would like to take credit for those three scores but he says it’s all about the veteran quarterback at the helm on the field.

"Guys, you all know this,” Parker said to the pack of media around him inside the Irish Athletic Center this week "You’ve done this longer than me. We all understand what’s going on and why. We’ve got a smart football team. Our offense knows our deal and we’ve got a guy that’s playing confidently at the quarterback position.”

That guy, of course, is Sam Hartman. He has made all three late first half touchdown drives look been there, done that. Hartman is a combined 13 for 17 for 212 yards on the three drives that have totaled two minutes and eight seconds of game time.

In true Hartman style, each of the three touchdown drives have ended in the hands of three different Irish receivers, Jayden Thomas, Holden Staes and Jaden Greathouse.

"To be fair, confidence breeds more of it,” Parker said. "I think our guys having early success in those moments has certainly bred some confidence from it. So, there’s an expectation more than, ‘What’s the situation?’ They already know the situation is, and then I think they have an expectation to play well in those moments.

"That is the first key and certainly great decision-making and being on point with what we’ve done and how we’ve been available to the ball, when to get it out of bounds, and our situational awareness of our quarterback has put us in position to be successful these first three.”

Scoring touchdowns is supposed to be tough, but Hartman, Parker and the entire offensive operation have made it look easy in those situations. It’s not dumb luck, though. There is planning that goes into it.

Parker is the one calling the plays and Hartman is the one distributing the ball, but they go into each game with a scripted two-minute plan for each new opponent. The scouting for those plans is prepared by wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey.

“Our staff, hopefully, we’ve done a good job of empowering our staff,” said Parker. “Everybody has studies through the deal. Situational studies, run game, two-minute, four-minute, second down, we divvy it up. Stuck does our two-minute study. I trust his eyes. We watch through it, do film study, kind of see what we believe is going to be the best hits for what they’re going to give us in those scenarios, put them on the sheet and call them and let our guys make them work. So, the answer is yes, you definitely have a plan.”

The other piece to the puzzle is clock management. Irish head coach Marcus Freeman has been on point when it comes to using his timeouts to give the offense the best chance to reach the end zone at the end of the half.

He has called timeouts while Navy, Tennessee State and NC State were still on offense to ensure his offense would have the time they needed once they got the ball. Against TSU, he used two timeouts before the Tigers missed a 35-yard field goal with :53 seconds to go in the half.

"It’s huge,” Parker said of Freeman’s timeout usage. "You want him to feel that way about us and our operation. We want our guys to feel it too and I think they are. Even with as little time as we had this past week, I think everybody knew there were two operations there. You hand the ball off to start the drill, to kind of see what happens. We’ve all seen that. And at this point, everything is in play and at this point, you really have the feeling of, ‘Hey, let’s go after this and see if we can put something on the board.”

Confidence in the plan and confidence in each other certainly helps the offense, but knowing the head coach and rest of the staff have confidence in them only fuels the Irish offense.

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