Ryan Reynolds here for I guess my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no in Microsoft Azure, turn your ideas into reality with an Azure-free account. Get everything you need to develop apps across cloud and hybrid environments, scale workloads, create cloud-connected mobile experiences, and so much more. Discover what you can create with popular services free for 12 months. Learn more at azure.com. That's azure.com. And sign up for a free account to start building in the cloud today. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) All right, let's talk about the game records for the upcoming game against Mind the Ohio. And we're gonna spend a little bit of time, not too much time, but a little bit of time here talking about the app. And when you look at the offense, let's start with the offense, right? First thing about the offense that they're gonna have to do is they're going to need their offensive tackles to play better in this game. That is a big part of the success of this game. Is they need Anthony Knapp, and they need Emil Wagner to be on top of their game. Run game-wise, they're gonna need them to be on top of their game, but especially pass game-wise, they're gonna need them to be much better protecting the quarterback, because this is a Miami team that, as I stated earlier, is not a great team when it comes to up to middle. They're very undersized, they're quick, they're athletic guys, but they're undersized, you should be able to get a push on them. Their edge players, especially Brian Ogle, are good football players. And here's the reality of it. If you can't protect the quarterback against Miami, Ohio, you're not gonna protect the quarterback against Louisville, you're not gonna protect the quarterback against Georgia Tech, who's gonna bring a lot of different pressures, you're not gonna protect the quarterback against USC, you're definitely not gonna protect the quarterback when you get into the postseason. So they're gonna have to be better, they're gonna have to be more stout, and they're gonna have to be able to hold their own, and let the quarterback get more comfortable moving forward. That's gonna be the key, right? And so when you look at this offense, I think the game records in this game first and foremost, the tackles have got to shut down the Miami edge rush. That is incredibly important to success in this game. And so when you talk about dominating this game, winning match-ups, key match-ups, that's one right there. And the reason I use this one first is because if we're gonna talk about Miami, Ohio, who are their game records? Who are the guys that are gonna give problems for them? It's from a pass rush standpoint, it's two guys. It's tie-wise on plate pressures. He has, I think, three sacks this year, and he had eight last year. Hold on, give me a second. Let me find his specific stats from last season. So in this season, so tie-wise, who is their Mike linebacker, he has one sack this season so far. They have two as a team. He has one sack so far this year, and he had eight sacks last year, the same number as Brian Oubu. So you're gonna have to be able to handle that pressure from blitzes and bringing them off the edge, but the other one is Brian Oubu, who was an outstanding football player last year for Miami, and he's been pretty good this year as well. So when you look at what he did last season, I talked about this a little bit yesterday, talked about him last in the summer when we talked about our all opponent team because he was on the all opponent team. So last season, Brian Oubu, as I mentioned, at eight sacks, but he also had, I'm pulling this up here real quick, I think it was 64 pressures last season, 64. The year before that, he had 31. Last year at 18 hits or sacks in the quarterback, the year before he had 10. This year, in two games, he has nine pressures already, and he already has three hits in the quarterback. So this is a kid that is very, very effective off the edge. This is a dangerous matchup, all right? Very dangerous matchup for Notre Dame. And if you can't control him, then you have to kind of project, you're gonna have some issues with the other good ends that you've got coming up as well. So he's gonna have to be really effective. These two tackles are gonna have to be really effective to keep him from being a game record, because he to me is the number one guy that if you get, if you struggle offensively in this game, he's gonna be the first reason. Then there's a couple others, right? Like I said, I like their linebackers, their secondary is solid, but this is gonna be the reason why. That's gonna be the reason why. And so that's a big key. So the tackles are gonna have to be on top of their game against him. - 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. Don't miss this deal on prize picks because it's gone when September ends. 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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 parm 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 then you get into other aspects of the offense and look, you need your quarterback to be a game record. I think this is a very important game for Riley Leonard. And, you know, no, I don't care if he plays into the second half again. As a matter of fact, I kinda hope he doesn't play in the second half again 'cause you don't wanna take a chance of him getting hurt. But this is a game where I think Riley Leonard needs another impact game. That's really where you need to be. You need another game where you go out in this game and he is dominant. If it's just like last week's game, so be it. I'd like to see be a little bit different where it's not so much about him getting 11 carries in the first half of a game. More so about, no, maybe he gets five, six, seven, but makes some more plays throwing the football. If you can get Riley Leonard going throwing the football, his offense is gonna be incredibly hard to stop. Right now, the run game is rolling with him. I guess that he's on pace for almost 800 yards right now. And that's with two running backs on pace for over 1,800 yards and 13 games. You've gotta be able to get in a situation where he can be more effective throwing the ball. He does not need to throw for 350 yards a game. If he did, it'd be kind of good, right? He's gotta get better throwing the football. He's gotta be a game record in this game. And then that ties in to sort of my next key. And that is you've gotta be able to have your receivers be more impactful in this game. Now, I want to see, you know, both Collins Ketson Ball has done. If it loves you, Jake, Great House, get going. We've talked about that. But there's two guys that I really, one of them has to step up this weekend and has to get going. Because it's just kind of like, if you don't do it now, when does it happen, right? And there's this TV series I've been watching and there's a scene where the mom says, you know, if not now, when, right? It's not that Miami's secondary is bad. They're not, I've said this, but you're Notre Dame and you're gonna have much better secondaries coming up down the road. If you can't get your outside receivers going in this game, I don't know when that happens. And so when you talk about projecting game records, you need, and I don't care who it is. I mean, look, I'd love to see Chris Mitchell get going, but if it's not him, okay, if it's KK Smith, okay, if it's Cam Williams, okay, if it's Mike, I really don't care who it is, but you need your outside receivers to present more of a down the field threat in this game. I think it would be beneficial for this offense, if Coach Dembrock can come up with some ways to say, hey, look, we're gonna do some things to get those guys to football. There's several different ways they can do it. One is, as I mentioned before, just, hey, if you're getting a single high, cover one, look, take a field shot, I'm good with that. Take a field shot, your quarterback's just gotta look the guy off and throw a good ball. And then you've gotta go compete for the football and go make a play. You've got two corner, you've got two receivers and Jeff and Chris Mitchell and KK Smith, that can run past the Miami corners if they come off the line properly. You're gonna have to be able to go do that, okay? And if they're not able to do that, then, I don't know if you're gonna do that against Louisville. I mean, if you can't do it against Miami's corners, not doing it against Quincy Riley, you're not doing it against John Humphrey and USC, you're not gonna do it against, I mean, you're not gonna do it against Florida State's corners and their team is struggling. You're gonna have a hard time doing it against Georgia Tech's corners. So they're gonna have to figure out what ways to get this thing going. And just be willing to take some shots, but that can't be all. You've got it, Notre Dame is doing this thing right now with their outside receivers. They're running dig routes and they're super choppy on the top of their dig routes. And so what's happening is, they're getting the top of their dig route and they're going like one, two, three, cut. And what's happening on that particular route is every time they do that, it allows the corner back to undercut the route and they're taking it away. And there's definitely some things I think that Notre Dame can do when you're getting some of those those in routes, those dig routes, whether it's running to clear out with number one or number two and then bringing number one underneath, but they've got to find a way to be a little crisper with that technique. And it's not that the receivers are running it wrong because they're all doing it. They're all doing it the same way. And so if you're not able to kind of say, "Hey, look, we're running this route and they're undercutting it," then you're going to continue to have that problem. And so what I would like to see from Notre Dame is baby a little bit more of a sharper cut. That's a little bit rounded that you then have to say, "Listen, you've got to snap that sucker off and then kind of work level." Right? That's what you got to go with. But that's something that I think could be there is running that slot fade and then running the seam route, running your slot fade, maybe getting a little bit of a release 'cause that safety sees a slot fade, you can kind of run a release and then maybe run something like a delay slant, a delay under where you kind of look like you're doing a hitch and then come underneath that route. Do something to kind of get those guys free on in-breaking routes. And so how you get to that point is going to, I mean, it's going to determine how successful you are and if you can catch some of these balls in a run 'cause if they can get Chris Mitchell or if they can get Jaden Harrison or if they can get Chris KK Smith, the ball on the move in space, it's going to be big plays. And goal routes aren't the only way to do route, do that, post routes aren't the only way to do that. Run some crossers, run some delay crossers, run some things where maybe you clear out and bring your X, your Z underneath. As much as teams like the Blitz, their middle linebackers, there's some things you could do maybe out of bunch to get those guys on the run. That's a big play potential. Well, it's not a deep ball. Doing things where you maybe run backside clear outs with both columns in your tight end and maybe you bring your Z on a deep over route and you get it there. There's a lot of different things they can do to get the Z going. And that's why I point to Chris Mitchell and KK Smith because the Z has to be more impactful. That position has to be more impactful if this offense is going to get the past game going the way that it needs to. And hopefully this game is a game so those guys are game records and can go out there and be effective making plays because as I said, if you can't get that going against Miami, Ohio, I don't know when that happens. And it's going to need to happen for this team to be. 'Cause like right now Notre Dame is running, you're running the risk of turning into what you were last year, structurally. And what I mean by that is last year, you kind of knew you could defend Notre Dame inside the numbers. You didn't have to worry about really outside the numbers or down the field on the outside. You knew that you could kind of funnel everything back inside because that's where the past game was going to go to. They've got to find some ways to attack outside. Whether it's obviously with the outside receivers but there's also some things you can do as I mentioned in the earlier breakdown of the past game where you can run some outs, some corners, some different things to get them going. Your outside receivers have to be bigger threats. And so that's why when I talk about this offense, number 10 and number 11 are the first guys in my mind. And then if Jordan Faison comes back, he's part of this equation as well. I don't know that Jordan Faison is what I'm thinking of from the outside go ball stuff, although there's certainly some things you can do with him in that regard. But he's like crossers, overs, the end cuts, things like that. That's right up Jaden Jordan Faison's wheelhouse. But if he get vertical, then he get vertical. But the focus is on getting those outside receivers more touches and more touches in impactful situations. And that's why I'm hoping that you can add those guys to the mix and have some success this weekend with that. 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 Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Boom! (upbeat music) Hey Irish Breakdown listeners, it's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor J4R 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 Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. On the other side of the ball, when you look at the defense, we talked a little bit about it. I won't rehash it again, but Riley Lender, Riley Mills and Howard Cross need to be game records this week. Have to be. You need them to step up. It's time for your captain and your all American to step up and play like it, and they're not. And no, I do not mean to sound like the Dan Devine guy, the guy that's playing Dan Devine and Rudy, but at the end of the day, look, Riley's a captain and he's a play like it. Howard Cross is an all American and he's a play like it. And neither of them are doing that right now. Be nice to have a little bit of a coming out party this weekend against Miami, Ohio. When you also look at the defensive line, obviously you need your young defensive lineman to step up and make some plays. They need to be effective. I want to see Buba Carr kind of take that next step. I want to see Bryce Young take that next step. You know, you want to see some of those edge players, Junior Chilla Maka, which we talked about earlier, maybe getting a Logan Thomas in the game. I think, I don't know if you guys watch Logan Thomas in the second half of that game. He is skinny and he's got a lot of weight room work and he looked a little lost at times, but man, he's athletic. Wow, he's athletic. You know, maybe he's an answer in certain situations, but he'd be more of like a pass rushing specialist. What I'm talking about is the edge players in every phase of the game just dominating, dominating, dominating that, you know, that's absolutely where you need to be. Absolutely where you need to be. You need them both. You need them both in the middle to step up and you need the edge to step up. And I want to see how those young guys do. But here's a player that I really hope to see kind of having an emergence this weekend. And that's RJ Oben. There's been several disappointments so far this season for the Notre Dame defensive line. I think Riley Mills has been a huge disappointment. Howard Cross has been a disappointment, not huge, but a disappointment. And RJ Oben's been a huge disappointment so far. Started to see a little bit of flashes in the second half of the game against Purdue and I'm hoping they can build on it. Because of RJ Oben can come out and show you the guy in a Notre Dame uniform that we saw in a Duke uniform, then you're going to be okay on the defensive line. You will be. Because he has looked slow off the line. He has looked, he's never been a loose guy athletically, but he at least showed some burst off the edge. He showed some competences of the pass rush. He hasn't shown any of that. You know, you started, he'd made one really good play on Saturday where they ran a reed zone. Booba card takes out the back, Hudson card keeps it, starts running and RJ chases him down. You know, like hopefully that can spark him a little bit in so far this season. It was at least something, but here's the reality. You've got a guy that in the last three years at Duke had, I think over 70 total pass rushes or total pressures. He was over 20 every season. I'm actually going to go look at this real quick. Give me, I'm going to try to pull up his number. So in three years at Duke, he had 68 pressures in the last 65 pressures though, no, I'm sorry, he had 93 pressures the last three years at Duke. 29 in 2021, 37 and 22 and 27 last year. He had 13 sacks or hits in the quarterback last year, 90 year before in 22 and then six in 2021. Through three games this season, RJ open is yet to record a pressure all season that can't continue. I mean, you're going to need him to at least give you something. And my hope is that sort of a breakout game happens that causes him to say, okay, I got this. This is my last chance. I got it. I got to do something. And because look, here's the deal. You're getting to the point in time of the season where if you've now played two Mac teams, Purdue, who's, you know, I think Purdue's, I still think Purdue's going to be okay. I do. I think they just ran into a buzz all last weekend against Notre Dame. They're going to be fine under Ryan Walters in my opinion. But let's be honest. You're a six year defensive end that some people think can play in the NFL at some degree. You can't go through three games against Northern Illinois, Purdue and Miami, Ohio and not do anything and still justify seeing the field at all. I mean, like honestly, like if you're six year senior end, it's going to go through a fourth game of giving you nothing, then play Bryce Young, seriously. Once Josh Burnham gets back, Josh Burnham's your starter, play Bryce Young. I mean, and I hate to say that about RJ because I mean, you'd like to have him. You think you need him. But at the end of the day, you're getting nothing from him. You're getting absolutely nothing from him right now at that position. And when you watch Bryce Young on Saturday against Purdue and keeping in mind that Purdue brought in their backup, they didn't bring in their backup lineman for a while. Bryce got a chance to go against them. He looked disruptive and you know that town is there and the more he plays, the better he's going to be. So I don't understand, well, I understand it right now. It's not give up time on RJ open through three games. It's not, you know, he's making an adjustment. He's going from being a wide nine guy to a guy that's being asked to play more of a traditional end spot. And then he's having a trouble with the adjustment. He had trouble in the fall or in the spring, I should say. You're going to need him to start making plays because you can't go much further with him at end. When you've got a guy like Bryce Young sitting there on a bench, you can't, you just can't. You say, look, I know Bryce is going to make mistakes, but right now this other guy's not making any plays. I know that Bryce can make plays. That's what you have to tell yourself. And so when Burnham gets back healthy and you've got Bryce Young, it's going to be hard for me to justify putting RJ open on the field unless he gets better. And this is an opportunity for him against solid tackles. They're not, they're not great, but they're solid. So if he can have success this week, he's like, oh, he went against some bad players and he tore them up. No, it's not, they're solid. So it would, it would be good. It would be a positive moment for me. And then hopefully that steps up and he can go out there and give you some success against, against Louisville next week when he gets a shot there. Because like I said, you're at that point now where if RJ open can't start to show you something, it gets tougher and tougher and tougher to justify putting him on the field. And it's confusing because you're watching this guy and this is a guy that had four pressures against Florida State last year, had five against Northwestern, five against Clemson. He had four hits on the quarterback against Clemson. He had two pressures in the sack against Notre Dame last year. You know, it's just, and then you're watching Notre Dame, it's like this doesn't look like the same guy that they got. And that's the, that's the, that's a problem. So he's gonna have to step up and this is a great opportunity for him to do that. Ideally you'd like for Josh Burnham to not have to play again this week, as I said earlier. So hopefully this is a chance for RJ to get a little bit more snaps and finally start to show something. Okay, so if he can build on last week's finish, he wasn't very good early in the game, got a little better later in the game. He needs to build on that game and be a game wrecker. So I talked about the lineman. Here's another guy that needs to be a game wrecker for Notre Dame partly because of who he's going up against. And so in the offensive side, I talked about NAP and Wagner needing to be game wreckers 'cause they gotta make sure like, how they wreck the game is by making sure that Brian Ogle doesn't on the other side. Like that's how they do it. And the same thing is true in this game when you look at the matchup for Jordan Clark. Jordan Clark is going up against a kid named Kay McDonald from Miami, Ohio. And this is a good football player. He's been primarily a punt returner in the past. He was Miami's number two receiver last year, but he averaged 12.7 yards per punt return last season. I'm actually curious where that ranks nationally. That ranked him, would have ranked him in the top 25. Actually, that's 2024. He ranked 10th in the nation last year in punt return average. So he's a very shifty guy, can make plays after the catch. But this season, he's been a very dynamic receiver as well. So he had 28 catches for 355 yards and three touchdowns last season. And this season he's come out and he's already got 16 catches for 240 yards in two games. Now keep in mind, both of Miami's, Ohio's game so far been against power five teams and one of which was a bold team last year in Northwestern. In the opener against Northwestern, he had eight catches for 105 yards against Cincinnati. He had eight catches for 135 yards in a touchdown. This is a kid who's a very dynamic player in that offense. He's built kind of like a running back. He's got a, he's got a little bit of a stout lower body. He's 5'11, but he's listed at I think 200 pounds. Very good route runner. He had a couple of routes on deep routes last week again, Cincinnati's guys where he had them in circle, running in circles. I mean, caught a big pass play on an inside post route he just completely torched with his route and his speed, the Cincinnati defender. So this is a kid that Miami is going to design a game plan to get him big plays. They know that if they're going to beat Notre Dame they're not going to be able to methodically go up and down the field. Do you know why I know that? 'Cause they're going to watch Northern Illinois say Northern Illinois couldn't do that. The only reason the Northern Illinois was able to use their grind out the clock run game to maintain a lead and then get a lead back late in the game is because of the fact that they generated an 83 yard touchdown pass or any game. If they don't do that, they don't have the opportunity. They're going to have, they would have had to open things up and then that would have given Notre Dame's pass rush a chance to be more impactful, would have given Notre Dame's pass defense a chance to be more impactful. But because of that early 83 yard touchdown they were able to stay in that game. The chances are that Notre Dame's offense isn't going to be held to 14 points again by a Mac team. Chances are pretty good that that's going to happen. But if you're going to put Notre Dame's offense in a bind and you're going to have to generate big plays and I've talked about the two receivers that have a chance to do that with him and the Virgil kid on the outside, the six four kid. But this is the kid that to me concerns me the most. This is the kid that I look at and say he could make some plays after the catch and vertically that could give you some problems. And it's a very tough matchup for Jordan Clark. It's a big opportunity for Jordan Clark who I think has played solid football so far. He's certainly been, I thought he was okay against A&M, didn't, had a huge pass break up against Northern Illinois and then of course was pretty good last week as well in my opinion. So if he's able to come out and really win this matchup then Miami has no chance. The only chance Miami, Ohio has on offense of coming even close to scoring enough points to win is that in my opinion, is there A, Notre Dame doesn't show up or B, they can find ways to get Kade McDonald in the football. He is their one to me, their game record on offense. If you shut him down, I don't know if they have much of a shot in my opinion. And right now him and Gabbard have a very good report. Again, he's got 16 catches in two games. He's got eight in each game against power four teams. So Notre Dame's gonna have to be on top of their game and that makes Jordan Clark right in position to say, "Hey, man, it's up to you. It is up to you to go out there and handle that matchup, win that matchup, don't let this guy, you got to tackle well, you got to be sounding coverage. When he catches the ball, he's got to go down. You've got to be sharp on your vertical stuff, don't overplay, be sharp, be precise, be really smart kid in the game. You've got to know he's trying to set you up for something and you just can't give up the big plays. That's going to be the key for Jordan Clark. So the last game record for me for Notre Dame's defense is got to be Jordan Clark, who I think could be the ultimate decider and whether or not Notre Dame can completely shut down Miami. If he can hold a zone against Kane McDonald, maybe even win the matchup, then Miami's going to have a very tough time scoring points against Notre Dame. So that's it for the game records. We're going to go buy so hold next. We got a ton of great buy so hold submission. So we're going to get to those next, but before we do, hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell, share this podcast, give us a five star review. And as always, if you have not done so, sign up for the message board at boards.arcbreakdown.com. 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