(upbeat music) - Brian, let's jump into the keys to victory for the offense. And we do this every week. We're gonna go through the keys to offense and I'll read what you wrote and we will then talk about whether Notre Dame achieved, got the good old check mark for that key or whether they did not. And here we go. So, key number one, start fast. Notre Dame had its first fast start of the season last weekend when it scored 14 points in the first quarter against Purdue and had three touchdowns on its first five possessions. Even before the Irish put away, even before the Irish put the game away with a late first half interception returned first score, the offense had put up 28 points. There's obviously a lot more written there, but there it is, start fast. Did Notre Dame start fast in this game? I can't even say it with a straight. - Big fat freakin' minus. No, they didn't, they didn't. And you know, look, the first drive, you somewhat understand they were backed up in their own territory because a muffed punt forced the defense to make a big stop and they start their first drive at their own four, okay, whatever. Still, you're supposed to be a championship team. You gotta start putting some drive. I mean, hey, you had Northern Illinois backed up even two yards closer to the end zone a couple of weeks ago and they went 98 yards for a touchdown, right? Like, you know, you wanna see something, they didn't even get a first down, they had to punt. They take, it was a great, it was like first time, you're like, okay, James Rindell might be okay, right? 'Cause he punched him in zone 10 and they flipped it to the 37 yard line. You're like, okay, all right, boom, that one. You come out your next drive, you get into Miami territory, you have some big misses, some mistakes from the O line that gets you into a third and 20 situation and you get 12 back to get in the field goal range and you miss it. And there was a play in there that, you know, that we talked about, this is why I wanna see, you know, take maybe more of a chance here. You miss a field goal, you muff a field goal, just a sloppy finish to the drive. You come out and drive three events and you go three and out. And you just third drive, after Miami Ohio just took a three yard, three nothing lead. - Right, three yards. - You go three and out. Right, now your defense forces its own three and out. Great job, D, and that's when the offense woke up and scored in their next two drives to pretty much put the game weight that point time. - Well. - And from Miami Ohio events, it was enough to win the game. This is why I said in my game, obviously, they did enough to win, you know, but again, if you're projecting forward, like that's not good enough to beat some of the better teams on your schedule. 'Cause you don't throw the ball well enough to come from behind 17 to nothing. You don't, you don't have Brady Quinn against Michigan State in '06 or '05 for that matter, where he can go throw from four yards to get you back in that game. You don't have that, you know? And so you've got to start faster and this is another game in which Notre Dame failed to start fast. - Right. - And it cost them. - I will say, and I know we're talking about starting fast and all that, I mean, the first three possessions were awful. I mean, let's be honest, they were awful. And here comes the butt, right? They had seven possessions after that. So they had 10 total possessions, but the seven possessions after that, they go touchdown, touchdown, fumble, which I'm sorry, probably would have been a touchdown, okay? Because they made it down to the Miami 14 when he fumbled it. - Yeah, he had actually a 43 yard run. - I mean, yeah, I mean, look, they would have scored on that drive. I know they didn't. And so you can't say that they did, but offensively, I feel like they would have scored on that drive. So the next seven possessions, you would have punted twice and scored four touchdowns, maybe five or four in a field goal. So they started off horribly, but then as an offense. - They both have, yeah. - Yes, correct. But the next seven, I believe they score on five of the seven. You know what I mean? So I'm not, again, it's not an excuse. It's just a fact. That's how the next seven drives went. - Right. Now what Notre Dame needs a hero, a way to do is start fast and finish strong. That's what the best teams do. - 100%. - Like that's what top 10 teams do. - Yes. - Top 20 to 25, top 20 teams do what Notre Dame did yesterday. - Fair. - Top 10 teams figured out early and put teams away. And that's why right now, I'm not a top 10 team. - Yeah. - But again, like you said, they did respond well, and I do think this offense did a better job of kind of waking up a lot sooner than they did against Northern Illinois two weeks ago. - Oh, yeah. Yeah, agree with that. - And obviously that was a positive. But, you know, you had that second drive, the first drive of the third quarter events, I was like, yeah, they're gonna put this thing away. As you see Riley taking off and you're like, he completes two balls in a row, and he takes off for a big gain, and then pops out and you're just like, this is it. This drive perfectly summarizes this Notre Dame offense. - I know, right? - 'Cause they're so close all the time to just this could thing could really go off. - Yes. - And you say to yourself, man, you said to yourself like in moments of excitement, like when the light goes on, this team's gonna be really dangerous, but you're now at the point now where it's like, you get less optimistic each week about whether or not the light is gonna go on, and if it does, is it a one game thing? Or is it okay this team figured it out, now watch out? That's what we don't know. Everybody has their opinions of what they think is gonna happen, but right now it's just, it's opinions we don't know. And that's the frustrating part of it. It's just, it's just always something, you know, and they're gonna have to figure that out. And it's leading to why they just don't get fast arts. - Yeah. - So this has been a key to victory for me for two years now. And this is the, in four games this year, it's been, you know, they've got a minus and three to four. - Mm-hmm. 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. Unlike other apps on prize picks, it's just you against the numbers. All you do is pick more or less on two to six player stat projections and watch the winnings roll in. Get in on the daily action with your friends and become part of the prize picks community today. You can now win up to a hundred times your money on prize picks with as little as four correct picks. You can turn $10 into a thousand dollars. I'm a Bears fan, so this one gets me really excited. One Caleb Williams passing yard gets you one win on prize picks every week in September. That's right. Only one yard gets you an automatic win every football weekend in September. Four weeks of free W's. 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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 'em 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. Key number two, outside receivers must step up. This key has two important aspects to it. The first is practical to this game. Miami, Ohio plays its second safety down a lot in hopes of slowing down the opponent run game. And this is especially true on first and second down. When you consider how Notre Dame's offense has been so run heavy thus far and how much the past game has struggled, it wouldn't make sense for Miami, Ohio to change this and play two high safeties. If they show what we saw in film the first two weeks, the outside receivers are gonna get plenty of opportunities to make plays. They'll need to come off the line with urgency, be sharp on their out and come back routes and complete hard and compete hard for the football in inevitable one-on-one situations they'll be put in. You want me to continue with the big picture part of it, Ryan? - I think we have the idea of it. Here's the question, Vince. How do you think this is? I have a hard time grading this one because my initial thought is minus. All right, 'cause it says what? Outside receivers have to play well. Okay, you break down the film, you look at it. It's okay, number one. You know, one thing the outside receivers did a really good job up in this game? They blocked their fricking butts off. Bull Collins, Chris Mitchell, both of them blocked really well downfield. Okay, you're still pass-catchers. All right, well, Bull had four catches for 60 yards and included a 38-yard touchdown that really kind of gave them a push. Chris Mitchell had his best game at Notre Dame so far. He had two catches for 25 yards, could, should have had two more, but the ball didn't come his way or it was thrown in accurately. He also drew a 15-yard penalty on a play where he beat it on a post-route. Bull had another post-route where he should have got a ball on a post-route, Vince, the third and 20. I'm going to show that play. He's got a, Riley's got to let that go. - You want more, he went to Great House? - Yes, yes. - It's a good throw to Great House but it was eight yards shy of the first down. - But here's the thing though, that 12-yard gain got them in field goal range. So I'm not going to crush Riley for making that throw because you get you in field goal range. But that's one of those ones. - I'm going to talk about it later because I don't want to jump on it. - No, we can quickly mention it now. But my thing is that's one of those ones we talked about. I'm okay maybe throwing a pick there because you took a chance down the field on third and 20 near midfield. - Gotcha. - You get what I'm saying? Bull has a step, launch it, give him a shot. Yeah, okay, you don't get in field goal range. But that's what I want to see though. I want to see that, hey, my guy's got a step. Let me give him a shot. So I actually think the outside receivers played relatively well. We didn't see a ton of Jordan Faison. He needs to do a much better job on that goal ball. It was good awareness by Riley. Well, actually before we move on to that, I know you wanted to say something about that throw event, so I'm sorry. - I was just going to say what I did like because we're talking about Riley Leonard taking steps and progressing the way he stepped up in the pocket and threw that ball with authority. You know, on the money, put it in front of Great House, allowed him to make that catch on the run. I liked the execution of the throw that he made, right? - Yes. - Completely agree with you that he has not made. And other like, there's two plays I've shown him right in the sense where he didn't make the read. I wanted him to make on a deep ball. He came, it was the post, it was the burst corner against A&M where he threw an in-cut to Chris Mitchell. And then there was the climb route that Jaden Harrison had last week against Purdue where he threw an in-cut to Jaden Thomas. Both times he drove the ball into the ground and missed. On this one, he stepped into pocket and let it rip and hit Jaden Great House right into money. They get 12 yards an iron field goal range. He's not the reason that they muffed the field goal. I totally agree. My coaching point to him was, hey, that's a time for us to take that shot there. - Sure, sure. - You know what I mean? I want seven, not three. I think Riley took the smart play. I want to see him be a little bit more aggressive there. - Yeah, yeah. - And I'll show it on film when I'm talking about there tomorrow, Vince. So I'm not giving him a minus for that play. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, okay, nice job, but when we've got this step, you've got to give your guys a chance to make plays. - Yep. - And so you think about it like you had the touchdown pass, your outside receivers drew two passenger fairness penalties, 15 yard passenger fairness penalties and one-on-ones. I still want to see Jordan Faze on. He got outside, Vince, but he stayed outside of the corner and then drifted when the ball left Riley's hands. Jordan Faze outside. And then as he jumps, he kind of jumps back. He doesn't compete for the ball at all. The difference between that throw and the throw to Bo Khans is once Bo got on top of that guy, Bo stayed on top of that guy and stayed vertical and Jordan faded. So it looks like, oh, it was badly under thrown ball. It was slightly under thrown, but if Jordan Faze on runs a better route there, that's a big play, you know? So I actually thought the outside receivers though, as a whole, I thought they played good football. There was misses that the quarterback had where he should have taken a couple shots and not throw the ball over Chris Mitchell's head. Chris Mitchell played better than two catches for 25 yards. Again, he also had the 15 yard PI. I felt Bo Khans played better than four catches for 60 yards. But again, you can't throw the ball to yourself. The only criticism I have of those two is Chris is still is telegraphing his top ends way too much. And I want to see Bo compete for that deep ball that he only got, he put out one hand and hit him in his hand. It's a perfect throw. He was kind of fight, I need to see him fight with that second hand to get through, or go in an Oscar. If you, you know, like, oh, you know, like I tried and he's yanking me, you know? Veteran receivers need to do those type of things. And that was my, really my only my only kind of critique with Bo in this game was that particular play. Overall, I thought Bo played a pretty good game. And I thought that Chris Mitchell took a step. So overall, I think, I think the outside receivers played well. I don't think the game plan was geared towards getting them as many touches as they maybe could have as I was my initial thought. But when you go back and watch the film, there was a lot more opportunities for them to make catches, balls gonna come their way. And that's what we say. There were some things Riley Leonard did well in this game. And there's still too many throws. He's not hitting right now. He's not even tempting. And that's gonna be the next step. And so I overall, I give it a check here Vince. I give it a plus. Like not a, not like a, I give it a check. Like, yeah, you know, they played well. - Yeah, not a plus. - Yeah, yeah. What are you, what are your thoughts? Like, I mean, how do you do them? - No, I'm right with you. I also grade them on their blocking as well. And I thought that they did a good job on blocking. You know, I think they've done it, honestly, I think they've done a pretty decent job blocking all season. But now they're starting to get some opportunities in the past game, which allow them to make some more obvious plays to people, right? And so I think they actually did play pretty well. There was a couple of times where I think the ball could have gotten to them, but Riley Leonard is running for his life at times too. - There were some of those too. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? And that's not on the receiver's fault. You know, there was a, it was the one where Riley, he drops back to pass. He steps up in the pocket and he ends up having to run. And I think, I don't think he got sacked on this one or maybe he did, but he starts running up the middle and then it gets kind of caught from behind or from the side. - Yes, he has to. - Both columns are gonna be wide open on a comeback. - But it couldn't come throughout. - But there's no, I mean, there was no way. - I felt Bo was open on the first pass of the game from your own inside zone 10. Bo was running to come back, did a nice job of getting separation out of his break. Riley was looking at him, that's where he wanted to go. But then they gave up a pressure, he has to step into the pocket and scramble. - So it wasn't, and if you look at it, he was running before Bo got out of his break. - Exactly. And that's it. - But, but, but, but that's gotta get fixed, but there's also some times where he's just gotta see it better and get the ball out. And so those are the things I say, like guys, they're close, but after a while when you start saying, hey, they're really close, but the same things keep happening, okay, are they actually gonna fix it or not? We don't know the answer to that. But for this game, they fix some things. Last week, all over the time, don't throw the ball down if you don't throw the ball, do the ball a lot down if you're a lot Saturday. And most of the time, something good happened. - 38 yard touchdown pass, 315 yard pass interference penalties. If they don't interfere with Mitchell Evans, he definitely catches that ball for about a 40 yard game. If they don't interfere with Chris Mitchell, that's probably a touchdown. You know, and then what was the other one phase on? If it, well, even still, if phase on plays that better, it's a big catch. But if they don't interfere with him, then it's, you know, it's another 50 yard game. So now it's about, okay, now do that without taking a step back on the quick game. So like that's the frustrating part. You know what I mean? - And we'll definitely talk about that too. - But I overall, I thought the outside receivers did a solid job. They didn't dominate the way I think they could have. I don't know that I put that on them though. You can't throw the ball to yourself. Nor can you pass pro for yourself. Agreed. - Light it. - 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 podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. - Cool. (upbeat music) - Hey Irish breakdown listeners, it's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor Jay Farar where we'll be talking all things sports but also so much more. We'll give you the behind the scenes stories from my days as the quarterback on an iconic college football team to Jerry's days as a star on an iconic TV series. So subscribe to Throwbacks on YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. (upbeat music) - Key to victory number three, be physical. Miami of Ohio, no Miami, Ohio is a well-coached football team and they play hard. - Those Miami Ohio lums get real pissed off when you say they play Ohio. They get real upset about that. - Sorry, Miami in Ohio, is it just a bad preposition? Like I don't understand. - It's Miami University. How about that? - Yeah, there you go, MU. All right, MU is a well-coached football team and they play hard, but they're very undersized. - You can also say Miami, I know. - People know what we're talking about. I know. The Red Hawk defensive line weighs an average of 264.3 pounds, compared to Notre Dame's offensive line that weighs an average of 306 pounds. This mismatch is even greater inside with a too deep a defensive tackle averaging 269.3 pounds against Notre Dame guards and center that weigh an average of 315 pounds. Notre Dame needs to play bully ball against the undersized Miami line and dominate in the run game. - I would call 36 carries for 270 yards, 7.5 yards per carry bully ball and bullying a team and being fit. Look, even like Sam, I thought Sam Pendleton didn't play a good game on Saturday. I didn't think he played well at all, but he was physical. I didn't think Anthony and Nat played well, but he competed, he just didn't play well. I think from the center on to the right side, we'll talk about them later, I thought they, there was some tight end blocking that was woefully-- - There's a tight end blocking that was really bad. - But offensive line, I thought, I mean, again, guys, the numbers sometimes can lie to you. In this case, they don't. 36 carries for 270 yards, 7.5 yards per carry. My new Ohio was in the heck out of the Notre Dame running backs, which is partly why Riley Leonard went off the way he did because they were keen on the offensive, the running backs a bunch and giving him pools and he took full advantage. - I want you to explain this. I think I attempted to at one point yesterday and I think I just got frustrated. People are, you know, the people that don't want Riley Leonard, okay, they're saying, okay, bench Riley Leonard and give those carries to the running backs instead. Can you explain probably more eloquently than I can why a quarterback who can run the football in the manner that Riley runs the football gives you an advantage in the run game as opposed to just giving those carries to the running backs? - Well, I'll say this. There's two answers to that question, Vince. Number one is if you were to tell me you're going to put in a quarterback that I think can rip a team up on the football, then I would say, okay, make that move. If you had a veteran quarterback backing him up that was ready to step in or a true freshman that you trusted or a red shirt freshman that you trusted to put in there and that guy was going to drop back and run the RPO game and make those throws. I said, okay, you need to consider doing that, right? Because there's things you can do with the throwing game to protect the backside. The problem is that's not who you'd be putting in the game. You'd be putting in a game that doesn't, a guy in the game that doesn't have that ability to make those plays with any consistency. And so what you're going to have is they're going to defend Notre Dame very similarly to how they did last year. So last season, the way that Notre Dame's defended Notre Dame's run game is they would load up basically what they thought was call side and then they would crash hard off the backside knowing that Notre Dame had no red zone threaded all to what they were doing. And so you give those backs, so you give those backs the ball and all of a sudden teams are going to play them kind of like what Miami did yesterday where they crash hard, whenever the back would go in direction, they'd crash hard that direction. And I mean, there was how many times do we see Jeremiah Love and Jenarian Price getting hit in the backfield as Riley Leonard's pulling the ball and running? Well, if you didn't have his about a run then they're just getting hit in the backfield because teams are keen on it and their offensive line is, here's thing some of you are going to have to come to grips with. However you feel about Riley Leonard right now, you don't have the offensive line right now to put a drop back quarterback in the game and say have that at Haas. You don't because right now that's his ability to run and make plays is what keeps teams honest against your elite running backs. That's the reality. Now, he's got to still play better but you are not getting the blocking especially from the left side with the consistency needed to just line up and run on people without the threat of quarterback because you don't have Joe Walt playing left tackle and you don't have Blake Fisher playing right tackle. Although I thought Emil Wagner, Emil last week had the best game of his career last week. I thought it was better than on Saturday. Like I think Emil Wagner's literally gotten better than every single game he's played so far. I don't know if you agree with that Vince but you know, and he plays more confidence too. I mean, you can just see it dominant. He has yet to be as dominant as Blake was last year in his best games. I've yet to see Emil Wagner be as dominant in four games as Blake was against Ohio State last year but he has been very consistent and steady. So I'll just say this, you don't have Joe Walt at left tackle where you can just run behind a star. I mean, you guys see what he's doing in the NFL. He's a star. So you need that threat of the run right now. Now the hope is, is that Riley can go out there and be better thrown in the football and 'cause you guys, you're down three starting offensive linemen. Your left tackle, your center and your right guard are gone. They're not there. If Charles Jagger's almost healthy and Ashton Craig is healthy and Billy Shroff was healthy, maybe we could have a deeper conversation about that but you're not turning to a quarterback that is going to be able to run this offense the way that Riley does. But it's also why I do think the one big mistake this offensive staff has made is when you decided that Riley was not healthy enough to run the football against Northern Illinois, that's when you should have considered putting one of your other quarterbacks in to try to give your offensive spark at some point in time in that game because if Riley can't run, right now the way he's throwing the ball, he's not good enough to lead your offense. And I think they, on Saturday they tried to kind of get the offense going without him running and it just, it didn't work. - Yeah, they realize that very quickly. - That's where you're at. So, but overall Vince, I think 36 carries for 270 yards to getting back to the point that we had is impressive. Notre Dame only had minus eight rushing yards on Saturday as well. That's another underrated point of this too. And one of the, I think the minus five from Riley, I believe was on a sack. So, if you actually look at rushing yards, take out the sack. If you actually look at rushing yards, Notre Dame rushed for 275 yards and on 35 carries. You know, that's pretty good, Vince. I'm gonna do the math. That's 7.9 yards per attempt. That's a pretty good day. Yeah, it wasn't pretty, but when you can go out there and do that to team, I mean, remember what we were talking about before the years? Like, you know, how good is this team gonna be running a ball with all these new guys and things like that. And, you know, and right now they're like, oh, you know, you can't go out there and run on people and this, that and the other thing. And I'm looking at this Notre Dame offense and I'm like, this team's average of 238 rushing yards a game and 6.7 yards per carry. Right now, Notre Dame ranks number five in college football and yards per carry at 6.7. And they're number two, number three amongst power five teams. Ohio State's one, UCF is two, Notre Dame is three. Boise State and in South Alabama are ahead of them. Like, you know what? It's a pretty good day's work. And Notre Dame also ranks, they're tied for eighth and rushing touchdowns in college football this year. One of the teams ahead of them has played in five games. So yeah, they're playing bully ball. It's not pretty all the time, but I thought they beat Miami, Ohio up. They're just warmed down. And basically when you've got Riley Leonard in the game and you've got running backs like Notre Dame has, it's pick your poison. Do you want Riley to beat ya? Or do you want the running backs to beat ya? Purdue, Texas A&M said, "We're not gonna let Riley Leonard beat us." And so Jeremiah Love and Jadarion Price beat you. They had a game playing where they were crashing. Two guys off the edge to take away Riley's running ability. So what did that leave open? Jadarion up the middle for big gains. Jeremiah up the middle for big gains, right? And you look at Purdue. Purdue had sort of a, "Hey, we're gonna play the read zone a certain way," which allowed Notre Dame to rip off some big plays. But they're also the way that they were trying to defend the run game made them very susceptible to a lot of the counter stuff, which Notre Dame ran out with the running backs and the quarterback. So when you have a quarterback that's this mobile, what it does run game wise is it gives you, it gives you the threat of you can't just say, we gotta stop four and 24. It says it's harder to gain playing a stop backs that good when you also have a quarterback that if it keeps playing the way he's playing right now, could get close to a thousand yards rushing this year. I don't want that to happen 'cause I hope he starts throwing the ball better and it'll need him to run as much as they are. But think about that. I mean, think about that Vince it just, it makes it hard to defend. It really does. I mean, if you look at the numbers, Jeremiah loves averaging, Jadarim Price leads the team in yards per carry at 7.4, 7.42, Jeremiah Love is right behind him at 7.37 and Riley Leonard's right behind those two, it's seven yards a carry. Riley Leonard's averaging seven yards a carry right now, your quarterback and those three guys have combined for 12 rushing touchdowns like, it's hard to defend that. And that's why I say if you just, if your pass game was just good, not even great, just good, you don't stop this offense. I mean, they're doing what they're doing right now with a pass game that's just substandard. I mean, we'd be honest about that. There's a lot of reasons why and a big reason why is 'cause even though the, and this is a give Joe Rudolph credit for this, there's things that he's doing right now that I don't like, but what you and I said, this whole off season, I don't want to see Joe Rudolph's offensive lines going out there playing passive like they did last year, playing soft. - They're not doing that. - Four games, there's a lot to clean up, but not once have I watched that offensive line say, they're not playing hard. - Right. - They may not be playing well all the time, but I've, like Sam Pendleton had the worst game of his career on Saturday, in my opinion. I don't know if you agree with that or no. - It was bad. - But not at no point in time that I ever say, Sam is not playing hard. He's not focused, he's not locked in, he's playing soft, he doesn't want to be here, he's overlooking my own people, never once did I think that. I said, well, he's got to fix his footwork there. I don't think he understood what was going on there. He's got to clean up his hand plate right there, but you know what you get from Sam Pendleton, every single snap? Get his playing hard. You know what you got from Pat Coogan and Rocco's been on Saturday? There's plays that they missed on, there's mistakes they made, but I never once thought, man, Rocco's got to play harder there. Coogan is not bringing it today. He's not playing hard today. And as bad as Anthony Knapp has been, he has at times looked confused, and he's not sure who to block, but outside of a couple of those snaps, the kid's playing hard. And that's why with this group of running backs events, it's not rocket science. Play hard to get a body on a body and let those flipping dudes do what they do. It's really that simple. Well, this doesn't translate to better defenses. Yeah, it does, we watch it in the opener, it gets stuck to saying them. Play hard, get a body on a body, and those three kids are going to make plays. - And that's the best defensive line that they're going to face all season. - I think so. - Now, here's the thing, I think the second best defensive line they're going to play all season is the one they're going to play next Saturday. - Agree, I agree. Okay, the final key to victory for the offense, number four, early down pass game. This is a bit of an extension of key number two. Miami is going to play a lot of heavy boxes on early downs. They did that in the first two games and neither Northwestern nor Cincinnati run the ball like Notre Dame does. That means the Irish will need to take advantage of that with the pass game and take Miami and make Miami pay for their loaded boxes. They will need a strong early down pass game plan that looks to get the ball in space, attack down the field, and give wide outs a chance to make big plays. So, I believe Vince that they went into this game thinking with the thought that they've got to be able to throw the ball on first down. And I actually think overall the game plan was good. The execution wasn't there. So, overall, I'd probably go with a, I don't know, I'm bored a line between a check and a minus because like, let's walk through it. Okay, so first drive, you don't throw on first down. You run on first down, then you're three and out. Next drive, you come out on first down. I'm actually gonna walk people through this play tomorrow but he looks right and he's looking at Chris Mitchell running an outcut. Chris slips and as soon as Chris slips, Riley comes backside to Mitchell Evans on a goal on a seam route, perfectly plays ball. Either Mitchell catches it or it's a PI and he got a PI. So, good first down play there. Next play, again, another good first down design. You're running a sprint out play to Chris Mitchell. He's opened a nice, easy five six yard game just like last week. Quarterback throws the ball over his head. Right, so the plan was there. The execution wasn't there. Right, so that's obviously, that's got to get better. Your next first down play, next drive, you run the ball on first down and you get three. The next drive, you have two first down runs. This is the first touchdown drive which will break down later. You have two eight yard runs, your third. First down of that series, you throw a go ball. This was actually a really smart play by Riley. They jump off sides. He knows he's got a free play, take your shot and Jordan Faison gets interfered with. Good first down shot. They were dropping back thrown the ball on that play. You throw a tunnel screen on the next play in complete pass. Your next first down Jeremiah Love runs for five or nine, your next first down. Riley goes for a touchdown and then your next first down. Or it means it goes for five yards. Your design run, your next first down. Riley runs it in for a touchdown. Run on first down, your next drive. First down, you get eight yards and then Riley throws the ball to Chris Mitchell. Bad ball, just misses him on first down. So again, you're being aggressive there. You just miss. Then on second and 10, he hits Chris Mitchell for a first down, your next first down play. 38 yard bomb for a touchdown. Right, so I think early down pass success, Vince, was, I mean, I give it a check. It's not a plus, you know, set third, third quarter. Your first down and 10, you throw a little quick, you know, six yard gain to Eli Reardon to move the chains and Riley takes off running the next play. You know, I mean, no first down runs in the next drive or passes in the next drive, you're running after that. I mean, you weren't running a ball. You weren't throwing a ball that much on first down after that. But, and I think overall, I think the plan early was they knew they had to get the ball outside on first down. They had some stuff designed. They hit some things in those situations. So schematically, game plan wise, I give it a plus, I mean, a check, actually I'll give it a plus actually for the game plan. - So game plan wise, yes, agree. - Execution wise, at times it was good, at times it wasn't good. So you add it all up, I give him a check. That's, that's where I'm at on this one. It was, it was a good game plan. It was overall solid. It needs to be better, but it was enough. In this particular game, it was enough to get the job done. - Those are our offensive keys revisited, Brian. In the meantime, make sure you hit the like button, the subscribe button, the notification bell, share with your family and friends. And of course, jump on the boards. Boards@Irishbreakdown.com for all of your breakdown needs. They're all there. Boards@Irishbreakdown.com. 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