- Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. - Mint Mobile unlimited, premium wireless. - Have it to get 30, 30, 30, about to get 20, 20, 20, about to get 20, 20, about to get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month, so. - Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. - $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of detail. - What's new from Apple? There's the new iPhone 16 Pro built for Apple Intelligence, and it comes with the all new camera control, giving you an easier way to quickly access your camera tools. The new Apple Watch Series 10 has our biggest display in our thinnest design ever, and this? It's the sound of active noise cancellation, now available on one of two new AirPods 4 models. So quiet. Check out all of the new products and new features at Apple.com. You can even buy yourself something new. You'll see Apple.com for product availability updates. Apple Intelligence coming this fall. (upbeat music) - All right, Jesse, get your whiteboard ready. DJ wants to know if I can post more of the snap counts on the team. I do have the team. I've got the Pro Football Focus snap counts, so I will try to put those up later tonight in the new champions lounge for the whole crew. So I'll work on that. What have we got here, Jess? - Yeah, so what I'd like to do in this next kind of series is give you kind of a play that all three linebackers made, 'cause to me, yes, the secondary did what they did. The defensive line created pressures, but to me, the unsung kind of heroes of this game was the linebacker core. They shut down Texas A&M's run game. Texas A&M's linebackers did not shut down the run game, and I think that was kind of the deciding factor in this close game. Notre Dame ran the ball better, and Notre Dame's young linebackers ultimately kind of stepped up. So this play was first quarter, and a lot of people will remember it by, Snead basically gets a handful of this guy's undershirt or tear away or, you know, if that's the kind of-- - Whatever that was. - Yeah, whatever that long piece of cloth that came off the wide receiver here, that's ultimately kind of that place. - Were they still wearing Adidas? Like, you know, maybe it's better that Notre Dame is not wearing Adidas if that's the case with the stretchy tear away undershirt in there. - Yeah. I think they are still wearing Adidas, but what I kind of have here is, and this is gonna be for all these linebacker plays, 'cause I'm just blew up the box, essentially, right? The defensive backs, the wide receivers, I'm not so much worried about, I'm worried about kind of what's going on, you know, inside the box here. And so, you know, JS over here is gonna be Jalen Snead, KVA is gonna be KVA, and then JK is gonna be Jack Heiser, right? And so-- - Gotcha. - One of the things we talked about earlier last week with clients, often-- - I don't know if you know this, but they wear numbers. That's like a cool little designation as well, is when you write these numbers. - Yeah, but some people forget the numbers, so I think this is a little bit easier. - Okay, all right, you're bored, you're whiteboard, go ahead. - So, what we talked about last week with Klein, is he kind of shows, you know, offensive line kind of going one direction, and he's trying to get out on the perimeter. He calls it kind of the four by Oluk, I guess, is one way of putting it. How can I get four guys on the perimeter? So, immediately what's happening here, and just to kind of reiterate, I always have to put some lines in here, so I remember what the heck I'm gonna be talking about. But this left tackle is blocking down, left guard is blocking down, center is blocking down, and the right tackle is blocking down. Pre-snap, the field-side wide receiver is coming in motion, which you can see, and then your right guard is gonna pull out in front of him, and then the H back and the tight end are pulling out towards the boundary as well. So, they're creating, oh, and also, I forgot about this as well. The running back is also trying to peel out and act as a lead blocker on the perimeter. So, right now, pre-snap, or at the snap of the ball, you have four guys here that are ultimately, you know, trying to get out on the edge here and make a play. But, what Jaylen Sneed does is he does what we kind of talked about last week, he ignores what's going on in his face, 'cause he's lined up over this, you know, tight end H back who are just peeling off into the boundary, and he just reads this key, and he just straight up, you know, shoots the gap and blows this play up, right? And while it almost looks like he misses the tackle, he still gets a piece of him, and he allows the rest of the defense to kind of rally, you know, to the ball. And had he missed this tackle, I mean, they've got four, he's got this- - That's going for a while. - Yeah, this guy's got a freaking four-man entourage going down into the boundary here. So if he just doesn't, at minimum, get his hands on this wide receiver, this play is screwed, but his athleticism allows him to stay in the play, he shoots the gap and he trusts his instincts rather than following these kind of, you know, this H back and tight end into the boundary here. He does more, he does a good job of just reacting off what he's seeing and shooting this gap and blowing up the wide receiver immediately. - I mean, that's what's crazy to me. Is there four blockers out there, like looking for somebody in Jalen Sne just went, boom, right by all of them. And you know, like you said, he almost blew by the receiver who took that jet sweep, but he got enough of him to slow him down and then got a little help. I think KVA helped finish him off there at the end, just a really great instinctive and athletic play by Jalen Sne. - Yeah, and that's it. I mean, his pure athleticism is what won him that play. He just shot through that gap and he got through there before anyone could ultimately, you know, get their hands on him. So just a really good, really good fit by him. But again, if he misses that tackle, this is what we talked about. You got four guys going into the boundary here. And that guy is at least probably getting 20 yards, you know, he might break it the whole way if we're being honest. - Yeah, I mean, it's basically going to come down to whether or not the safety is able to probably make a one-on-one player fight through some of those blockers on, you know, at the back of that. By the way, I wanna welcome Greg McElroy to the show. Apparently his burner account has entered the chat. - Yeah, who is Tech Panther? - Tech Panther says Greg McElroy picked Notre Dame as well. Okay, thanks, Greg. All right, what else, what's our next defensive play? - Yeah, so this next defensive play, again, kind of blown up on the box here. The first thing I want to kind of notice is, you know, it's Texas A&M kind of tried to go, you know, spread things out a little bit. So they have Notre Dame has four down linemen, or sorry, they have six players in the box. Notre Dame has six players in the box. This is kind of, you know, mano-e-mano. There's a hat for a hat, essentially, right? And so what's happening here is you have Drake Bowen for DB, and then Jaden Osbury is the other linebacker on the field at JA. And again, kind of similar concept to, you know, what Concline likes to do. He's blocking down, left tackle and left guard are doubling this defensive lineman. Center is gonna try to reach this other defensive lineman, and then the right tackle is gonna try to basically reach the end here. And then you have a right guard and the H back, pulling to, let me zoom this out. Yeah, pulling to the, to the field side here, right? Ultimately what's gonna happen is this, they're gonna let Josh Burnham go here. He's the end man on the line of scrimmage. So the right guard is gonna kick out Josh Burnham, right? Like those two have taken care of each other. So what's left here? You have Drake Bowen right here, one on one with this H back, that's basically pulling and trying to fill in this hole. So the running back can take the hand off and basically follow this H back right behind him. So in a perfect world, here's, let me change colors here so we can get some kind of freshness. In a perfect world, what's ultimately gonna happen is Drake Bowen is going to meet this H back in the hole. And he's gonna do so by taking on the H backs outside shoulder. And why that's important is he's gotta take on half this man. So Jaden Osbury can fill the inside lane over the top. So Drake Bowen is going outside and Jaden Osbury is going inside. So either way, they're gonna funnel this play to each other, right? You know what Drake Bowen says? You know what, screw that funneling situation. I'm just gonna blow up this H back. - I'm gonna be a particular dynamite. - I am just gonna absolutely blow up this H back into the back field, into the running back and just make the whole play by myself. And that's exactly what he did. He blew up the H back. He blew him up so hard that he again, knocked him into the running back. And then everyone just swarms him and it's a tackle for loss, right? Like that is an exceptional play as a linebacker. Like you cannot fill that play any better. Like if you're a linebacker coach or a defensive coordinator in the country and you watch that play, you're like, "Wow, I wish my linebackers could do that." Because again, take, screw take, you know, taking out the whole, you know, I'm gonna take on half a man and we're gonna funnel this thing to each other. I'm gonna take this into my own hands. - Let somebody else make the play. - I'm just gonna blow this guy up and I'm just gonna do it all myself, right? So again, from a young linebacker making his, you know, playing in is what we can probably consider his first meaningful game to just kind of have the ability to make that play against an SEC team. I thought that was very impressive. - Yep, for sure. That was one of the defensive highlights for sure. You told me that that play was blowing up on Twitter X as you were drawing it up and I went and found it and yep, it absolutely did. It literally and figuratively blew up this afternoon. - Prize picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over five million active members. Prize picks is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. 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Prize picks also has college picks all ready to go for you as well. Get in before game one hits and you can predict how many passing yards your favorite college quarterback will hit. For me, I think Riley Leonard's gonna go above 2,550 and a half yards. So I'm gonna take that one and I'm gonna combine it with Quinn yours to throw 2,999 and a half yards. Put those together and bang, bang, boom, baby. I'm gonna be a winner. You just wait and see. I'm coming up on my one year anniversary of depositing my first $10 and I received an instant $10 bonus. If you have the skills you can play for a shot at turning your $10 into a thousand dollars. Download the prize picks app today and use code Irish for a first deposit match up to $100. That's code Irish on prize picks for a deposit match up to $100. Prize picks run your game. You've had Wendy's nugs dipped in sauce, but have you had them covered in sauce? Wendy's new saucy nugs takes the crispy and spicy nugs that you love and turn them up to 11. Choose between flavors like buffalo, honey barbecue, garlic palm or if you're a real heat seeker, try spicy ghost pepper only on Wendy's signature spicy nugs. I dare ya. That's seven delicious ways to try the nugs you already love. Pick a flavor, grab some extra napkins and prepare to nug like you've never nugged before. For a whole new way to nug, it's gotta be Wendy's at participating US Wendy's. - So DK says it's great until the running back kicks it outside. That's what you want. You have help on the outside. You have the sideline to help you and then ultimately you have, again, I know, I don't have the defensive backs on here, but you're gonna have a corner or a safety that's gonna be coming downhill also trying to force it back inside to these linebackers. And if the running back wants to keep going horizontally, what's he gonna run into? The sideline over here. Like that's where you're trying to push things is to the sideline. - But that's a great point. I don't know what else you're gonna draw up here, but like I heard Kirk Herb Street today, he was on the McAfee show and I only saw this on social media since I have DirecTV and I still don't have any ESPN channels where I can actually watch these shows. But he was talking about like seeing Notre Dame's player just players, the bounciness, the size, the length that these guys have compared to just a few years ago. And watching Notre Dame's like those skill, whether it's the defensive backs or the linebackers and their ability to get sideline to sideline, they are closing fast. - Yes. - They're closing very fast. And you know, allegedly SEC teams are supposed to have all this. No, no one's gonna confuse Texas A&M, I don't think with one of the fastest teams in the SEC, but still, I mean, that's supposed to be a roster that is chock full of talent, but like Notre Dame, they were closing. You weren't gonna get much on the perimeter against Texas A&M. And honestly, when you look at the rest of the schedule, when you saw the way Notre Dame closed the other night, I don't see really anyone being able to win on the perimeter against Notre Dame in that way. - No. And I think a play that comes to mind, and again, I know it's nothing crazy and Uigman doesn't have the most, you know, speed in the country. He's still running a 4-8. Hynish gets knocked down, gets back up in the same play and is able to run, you know, Uigman off to the sideline. Does he still get, you know, six, seven yards, sure, but the hustle to get up, second effort, pursuit drill, every defense practices the pursuit drill. You know, if he doesn't chase him down to the sideline, that six, seven yard gain is now a 20 yard gain. And that's the entire kind of, you know, I guess you could say underlying pattern you saw throughout the game is Notre Dame just hustled and forced a lot of plays that maybe went for, you know, one, two, three yards instead of four, five, six, seven, eight yards. And again, that comes into play of, they have sideline to sideline speed now. That's the benefit of these linebackers, you know, like they Sneed, Osbury, Bowen, KVA. Those guys all have speed to go vertically and horizontally. So I think that was really impressive. - Yeah. And it's not just speed and a bunch of guys who were out of position either. Yeah, again, like I was pretty impressed with, with how well for the most part they were in position for most of the night. What do you think about, did anything Riley Mills that he did or didn't do stand out in watching? I don't know how closely you looked at him. Sportsman Philly 22 says he was kind of disappointed by his play and his lack of violence with his hands. - Haven't watched too much about Riley Mills. - Yeah, I didn't hone in closely enough there either. - What I appreciated though, is they kept, Notre Dame kept their defensive line fresh. A&M's defensive line was definitely getting wore down. And this is something that we've talked about. Notre Dame has depth, I think one through three at a lot of positions along the defensive line. Definitely one through two. You know, I saw Highness, I saw Anye, I saw Burnham, I saw Botello, I saw, you know, just how we're crossed, Riley Mills, like all of those guys had a contribution and all of them had a motor throughout the entire game. It's one thing if you get beat, but to have relentless effort, every play, is I guess what I'm more so concerned about. And that's what their defense has, is relentless effort to pursue the ball, no matter who is on the field. - And it felt a little bit to me, like, you know, again, watching the play of the linebackers and the athleticism of the linebackers and going up against a better opponent like this, it felt a little bit, like, it took a little while last year before Al Golden and Al Washington really unleashed that defensive line and just let them go. It felt a little bit like, like, they were kind of occupying some offensive linemen and the linebackers and safeties were able to make a play behind them, basically. - Yeah, I would say, you know, if we're nitpicking here, I would say the edge guys had a better game than the interior guys. I was really impressed with what-- - We'll talk about Batello and Rapid Fight. - Yeah, Batello, Burnham, Buba Car. I thought all of those guys had tremendous games on the edge. Even though they're not making every play, you can still do a lot to influence the game. - Next play. - All right, next play here. Again, I kind of blew up the box. You have Drake Bowen and Jaden Osbury as the linebackers here. What I really liked about this play is again, Jaden Osbury just kind of trusted his instincts, right? So the Texas A&M line is all blocking down, blocking down. Excuse me, one second. Quick sneeze, they're all blocking down. - You'd take that allergy pill. - The seasons are changing. I do need to take my allergy pill. So all these guys are blocking down and Jaden Osbury's eyes, okay, I'm seeing this guard tackle center in front of me, everyone's blocking down. And then all of a sudden, what does this H-back do? He peels, he's kind of going backside. And from what we know from Colin Klein's offense, this is what he likes to do, show one direction and kind of get a lead blocker on the edge the other direction, right? Jaden Osbury says, screw that. I'm going to just trust my read here. And he essentially just comes right off this center's butt and blows up this H-back right in the backfield, right? And again, it looks kind of simple on, you know, when I'm doing it here and I wish we could also play the live clip that go along with these, but we can't. Again, this is, you know, I showed a play, Sneed made. I showed a play, Drake Bowen play. Now I'm showing a play, Jaden Osbury is playing. Young linebackers kind of in their first big role on this Notre Dame defense. Everyone's blocking down. This H-back is starting to kind of do counter action. And so if you're Osbury, you could easily kind of be, you know, moving slow flow this direction 'cause you're reading what your eyes are telling you, right? But instead he kind of plays off instincts. He shoots through this gap and immediately tackles this running back in the backfield for at least a loss of a yard or two. And again, it looks simple, but it has a huge impact because what does it do? I think this was a second in 10 or maybe a first in 10. It gets A&M off schedule against the defense. They're already having a hard time moving the ball against. - I don't know how like Marcus Freeman was talking about how much the addition of the iPads helped. And that was the first game that they were able to do it. He didn't go into specifics about, you know, in what ways it helped. But like, I know you weren't thrilled with some of the early run fits by the Irish linebackers in the game. Is some of it kind of what you're talking about? Like, were they maybe slow playing things a little bit, sort of figuring out how to trust their eyes? That kind of, you know, because of what you're talking about, some of the misdirection that they're doing, you know, they're down blocking in one direction, but they're trying to run the play the other direction, that kind of thing. - Yeah, I think at some point, you know, you practice and rep things during the week and you get into the game. Like, I remember there were times where we'd literally have to get a board out on the sideline and draw up what we saw and how we were gonna fit it, right? Because how we practiced all week wasn't clearly working. And so, there's just times where you gotta say, "Hey guys, like, just trust your instincts. "Trust the flow of the game. "Trust what the, you know, what you're seeing." And the good thing about Osbury, Bowen, Sneed, like we were talking about, they had the athleticism to make up grounds, you know? Like, once they make up their decision, make their mind up, just shoot the gap and go, right? Like, just trust what your eyes are telling you and go blow up the play. And that's exactly what happened on all three of those plays I just went through. Sneed shot through, unblocked, gets a hold of that wide receiver. Drake Bowen says, "You know what? "Screw, I'm gonna be a stick of dynamite. "I'm gonna blow this guy up as fast as I can "in the backfield." And again, on that last play, Osbury does the same thing. He gets in the backfield immediately and blows up that play behind the line of scrimmage. - Nighty. - Hey Irish Breakdown listeners, it's Urban Meyer. This fall the game changes. Join me, Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and broadcaster Rob Stone as we bring you a new perspective on football and culture every week. We will be joined by the biggest name in sports and talk about everything inside and outside of the lines. Let us guide you through a new era of college football. Watch triple option on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. - Cool. Great stuff so far, you're on a roll. Is that it for the defense or are we shifting to offense or do you have any more defensive stuff before? - No, I'd like to shift into the offensive side. I'll try to be a little bit quicker here. - That's okay. Like, it's a good stuff so far. Like, if Salty's engaged, I mean, I think that, you know, you're winning at this point. - I wanted to kind of go over what I thought were some of the most important plays offensively. And I'll first start with this Titan completion to Flanagan. This was around, I think like the eight minute mark and the third quarter, Notre Dame ends up getting their first touchdown after this. So they complete this play and then they have the big run that gets called back on a penalty. And then the next run is where Jadarion Price scores. But again, to me, this play is what ultimately, you know, set it up. So Notre Dame has what you would consider a 11 personnel here two wide receiver, the ball's on the right hash, two wide receivers to the field side, one wide receiver and a Titan into the boundary. And the running back has also lined up into the boundary. And disclaimer here, I want to Notre Dame to find a way to push the ball down field to the Titan in the second half. I thought that's kind of where they had the mismatch. Texas A&M was obviously low in the box. So I just really like this play design. This play goes for about 20 yards. And again, it leads to the kind of their, it's a big chunk that gets them into Texas A&M territory and ultimately leads to their first touchdown. So I'll kind of get into why I like it. And to me, it's an excellent play call by Mike Demrock. And it's a lot of kind of what we were talking about last week. So first thing, you know, Price leaks off into the boundary here. Bo Collins runs about a five to seven yard comeback. So immediately this defensive back or this corner has to make a decision. Do I help out on, you know, the five yard curl route? Or do I, you know, basically go into the flat and defend this running back, right? And so beginning of the play, he leaks towards Bo Collins running this curl route. And then at the same time, Flanagan is releasing from the line of scrimmage and basically kind of running, you know, a 15 yard corner route is what I would say. This linebacker right here, first job, he failed it. He's got to get hands on Flanagan. He's got to get his hands on him, reroute him. And what that does is it allows the safety to kind of cover some ground. He doesn't even touch him. Flanagan goes right by him because what is he concerned about? He's concerned about Bo Collins, you know, running this essentially hook route. And so now you have two defenders kind of keying in on the same guy. So right now what the read becomes is this safety who's bailing out, you know, since no one is carrying or going with Flanagan, all he's got to do is break this route off and drop into this kind of zone, corner zone right here. And it's an easy kind of pitching catch, right? Because they vacated out and they, you know, Bo Collins is also kind of, you know, started to look like he's going to run maybe vertical as well, puts his foot in the ground and runs this curl route. And so this defensive back has a decision to make. Am I going to stay, you know, underneath in the flat? Or am I going to help out on this Flanagan route? If he drops in the Flanagan route, all you got to do is dump it off to your running back in the flat who's now got, you know, basically one alone with the linebacker. Okay, this corner decides to stay. When our Flanagan has one on one with a safety that's bailing out and it's an easy pitching catch for about 15 to 20 yards. - Big play. Yeah. And that's where the passing game kind of came to life. It seemed like when Flanagan started to get a little bit more involved in things, nice easy play. All right. - I loved it. I felt like that was there the entire game. - Yep. - Okay, so this, this to me, Salty, I hinted at this at the beginning of the show. This is the third in five on the final touchdown drive. - Ooh, okay. - This to me is what I would consider the most important play of the game. Because if Notre Dame doesn't pick up this first down. - You can zoom in on this a little bit if you want. - If Notre Dame doesn't pick up this first down, they're putting the ball back to Texas A&M and basically letting them kind of decide the end of the game, in my opinion, right? So here's what happens. Notre Dame is middle of the field. They are in 10 personnel. No, actually, I think they're, no, no, they're still in 11 personnel. This Z wide receiver is a tight end. He's just split out. So they're in 11 personnel trips to the right side, single wide receiver to the left side. And then your running back is also split out to the trip side. So immediately, this is what we talked about too. This is Mike Elko's money down here, right? Like the 505 defense. They decide they're gonna go man and bring six guys. And so pre-snap, what happens is, is Great House, he starts to go into motion, right? He starts to go into motion. And I'm sitting there thinking, I'm like, how are they gonna pass this off if they're in man, you know? Like, what are they gonna do here if they're gonna be in man? And so then immediately what I see is, let me get a different color. This linebacker starts to kind of do like a finger guns type of situation, right? And to me, that's indicating who's gonna take Great House. And because they didn't, they still showed zone, even though Great House motion, they didn't, you know, no one traveled with them. They stayed in what they were doing, but they still ran man and they still brought six. And so I think what happens is, this linebacker, I just put the circle around. I think he was originally gonna blitz, but because Great House comes into motion, he's giving this signal basically saying, I'm taking the motion man, I'm taking the motion man, right? And so they're still running man out of this. They're still running man out of this. So you're outside wide receivers, they're just vague. Oop, that's a circle. Hang on one second. - It's a very big circle. - That's a very big circle. They are these outside wide receivers, they're just vacating the zone. They're getting the heck out of here. They're running verticals. That play is not designed for them. - They're clearing things out, yep. - And the reason why this work, this is a big roll of the dice by Mike Elko on third and five here with a big drive on the line. He still wants to bring six. He still wants to play man behind it. Let me ask you something. When Jaden Great House is going into motion, right? He's got a running start. And then he runs basically a five yard out route. And what world is this linebacker gonna ever catch him? And what world is a linebacker, not even the in man on the line of scrimmage, lined up on the line of scrimmage, gonna fly out of here and catch Jaden Great House on a five yard out route. This is what you call, to me, Mike Dimbrock had to be saving this, you know, the entire game for what he saw in the first three quarters. He saw what Mike Elko was doing on third down. He saw how he had to beat it. He brings Jaden Great House in motion. Texas A&M still sticks to man. And rather than passing this thing off to, I don't know, the most outside linebacker. They asked this inside linebacker to come off the line and guard Jaden Great House one on one on a five yard out route. Again, it looks simple on paper, but it was like, it was just a pitch and catch at that point, right? Because you were never going to catch up to him. And this bringing six and only and staying in man. You're chasing, no matter what, yeah. Mike Elko was banking on the pressure, getting home. The offensive line did its job and gave Riley Leonard just enough time to get this ball out, step up in the pocket and hit Jaden Great House on to me. What was the most crucial first down pickup of the entire game? - Now, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they were what? One, four, 11, prior to that. - One for 11. - And the end up two for 12. That was their only their second and final third down conversion of the night. That was it. Like you said, he had to have been like, that was sitting in the vault all night. Like you're saying, just waiting to see what was going to happen. 'Cause like you said, Mike Elko, and by the way, like you talked about the 505 and all that different stuff, a lot of the stuff that you drew up on that 505 Mike Elko defense last week, your boy Nick Saban on college game day was doing the same demonstration up on the video board. He gets to use video because, you know, they pay rights fees and all that kind of stuff. They pay them with the big bucks to use it. We do whiteboard, they get video. But Nick Saban was drawing up a lot of the same stuff that you had drawn up two or three days prior to that. - You know what they say, great minds, think alike. - There you go, Ike. (laughs) - All right, last play that I have. This is, I love this play. Again, another big play on that last drive of the game, another chunk play that gets Notre Dame kind of into Texas A&M's plus side of the territory. And just to kind of before we get into this play, I know those runs by love and price are great, but I'm gonna be honest with you, once they got to the second level, they just made guys miss, right? Like they're linebackers, they juke the hell out of. Like that was the difference in the game. Notre Dame's linebackers are making plays at the second level. Texas A&M's linebackers had their jockstraps on the ground because they couldn't tackle the price and love and open space. I'm serious, like those plays, both of those, a lot of those runs should have been five, six, seven yard runs that the linebackers clean up. You know, price and love put these moves on them and get to the outside. And it's just game over at that point. It was poor tackling, poor fundamentals by those A&M linebackers. So last play that I have here. This was, ball was at the left side of the hash. Notre Dame is in kind of a 12 personnel look here. They got an H back or wing kind of into the boundary and they have two wide receivers. One of them being a tied in, I'm pretty, no, no. The Z here is Jaden Thomas. So a bigger, bigger body wide receiver, right? And this is the QB power here that we're about to see, right? And so this is why, this play was again, so beautiful. It is so refreshing to have Mike Dembrock as your offensive coordinator 'cause it's just the little things. And what I mean by the little things is here's what he does pre snap, right? Notre Dame has, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight guys in the box, right? Texas A&M, they got seven or eight-ish kind of in the box. But what does he do immediately? He motions Jeremiah love out of the backfield and lets him go, you know, line up as a slot. While that looks insignificant, here's what I'm gonna tell you what it does. See this linebacker right here that's in the box? What does he have to do now? He now has to cheat out and basically respect love splitting out here to the slot. So now we've removed someone from the box pre snap. We've already displaced this linebacker from the box pre snap. So now really ultimately what we're looking at is just six guys in the box here to make a play on eight Notre Dame offensive linemen. So here's what happens. - Well not offensive lineman, but offensive players. - Offens a personnel, sorry. - Right. - So what happens here? Everyone blocks down to the right. This wider receiver is gonna try to basically seal off the linebacker. This H back is now sealing off. Everyone's blocking down, blocking down, blocking down. And then what do they do after that? They bring a center and guard, double pull into the boundary. And now Riley Leonard basically has a convoy himself going into the boundary here. And he's just got to make one guy miss and he's got a 10, 12 yard gain here. But again, to me this was all set up by just the pre snap getting Jeremiah love split out to the slot here. Because ultimately what happens is this linebacker is the guy who's gonna be flowing over the top to try to clean this play up, right? Like he's the unguarded hat that is going to try to fill over top to make a play at Riley Leonard over here. And what do they do? They give themselves an advantage by making him have to displace three to four yards by putting Jeremiah love into the slot. This was one of my favorite plays. It's a play I think we're gonna see a lot is this kind of double guard center pull into the boundary here and just let Riley Leonard be an athlete, find the open hole, get big bodies in front of him. And again, just another chunk play to get into Texas A&M territory. - And I mean, it's almost like a cheat code. I think when you've got Riley Leonard back there because you're just lightning up that box and there's one less body, one less athletic body that Leonard has to deal with and you give him those kind of numbers and he's gonna go for a while most of the time. - Great stuff is always just good white board. - I think the curtain call, I think the, you know, the follow up might've been even a notch above week one. - It's always fun being able to pick out your favorite plays, you know, like that's, you watch the entire game and I just present this stuff to me where it's just like schematically, what Notre Dame did just to really dominate their opponent. - Yup. - All right, great stuff. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - At King Super's Pharmacy, care is making it easy to get vaccinated, care is helping you stay protected from flu, COVID and RSV. 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