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Welcome back to another edition of the hour's breakdown podcast. I have no idea why the intro music cut short, but I am still ready to rock and roll today. We're going to talk a lot of Notre Dame football today, everybody, and we're going to get into several topics in advance of this game against Miami, Ohio. A lot of it's going to be Notre Dame specific, but it's things we want to see against Miami, Ohio and starting against Miami, Ohio. So we'll jump into that. Going to talk about the Notre Dame run game on both sides of the ball, and why the run game on both sides of the ball could be the key to Notre Dame success. The remainder of the year, I'll explain why, I'll get into the pass game next after that. The Notre Dame pass game, because the pass is pretty good. We'll get into the Notre Dame pass offense. What kind of role is it going to have this season, and what can it do to get rolling and starting this weekend? Things that we'll want to see. After we talk about that, we'll talk a little game records in this conversation, and then we'll get into of course our bicell hold, because it is Wednesday, and so of course it's bicell hold time, and there's a lot of great submissions this week. Surprisingly positive, to be honest with you, I'm just going to keep it real. When I opened up the thread today to start taking the questions from the board and putting them into cards, I was like, "Oh, this is just not going to be fun. This is just going to be miserable." It was really good, even some of the questions about the pass game, and they were critical, but where we could have a good discussion about it. So I was very happy to see that. Thanks, guys, for doing all that. We'll do bicell hold. As you guys remember, bicell hold is for board members only. So if you are a premium board member, we always have a thread about it. You get that sucker up, and we'll bring it up, and then of course, if you want to get it different, you can always put a super chat up. But that is today's agenda. Tomorrow we'll go live at one o'clock again. It'll be Ryan and I going over the keys to victory for Notre Dame and get to Miami, Ohio. It'll be keys that are not just about Miami, but also forward thinking, which is not just about Miami. It's about Notre Dame in general. And then of course, we'll make our predictions for the show. And then at one o'clock, I'll be joined by Bill Bender. And we're going to preview four games from this weekend. There's some really good games on TV this weekend besides just the Notre Dame game. And he and I will preview those and make our predictions for those games as well. And then of course, Friday, I will have barring something unforeseen. I do plan on having a mail bag on Friday at one o'clock. So be ready to rock and roll for that as well. 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They should be focused on what they should be focused on Miami, Ohio, right? But we are going to focus on Notre Dame and Miami but also with the forward-looking thought process. I don't know how much Miami, Ohio can help with that but there are going to be some things that I do want to see from Notre Dame in this particular game. They're going to tell us maybe they're taking some steps in that regard because it really comes down to a lot of being the run game and we're going to start talking with the Notre Dame defense and then get into the Notre Dame offense and just talk about why this is such an important topic because as I'm going through the rest of the schedule and I'm looking at sort of the big games, you know, we were talking yesterday about, you know, what are the games that when you look at them say, okay, this is going to sort of define Notre Dame season. There's obviously, hey, look, don't pull a Northern Illinois, right? Like, don't show up in a game and just not be ready to play and just lay an egg, right? That's obviously keys for Notre Dame this season is going to be that. Just show up and be ready to roll but then you look at other aspects of the season in this. Like, and now you have to really be ready to rock and roll and get going against the better teams on the schedule and that's really where we are with Notre Dame and when you look at the schedule and you really break it down, what you're going to find is that Notre Dame's opponents opposition this year, some very good teams at running, so far from what we've seen through the first three weeks, there are some teams that are very good at running the football and some teams that have been pretty good so far at stopping the run. Well, when you look at this Notre Dame football team right now, where they've been vulnerable on defenses, teams that can run the ball effectively, where they can be vulnerable in offense and they were to a degree against Northern Illinois, although I would say Notre Dame shut down its own run game more so than Northern Illinois shut it down, but moving forward, we're going to be in a situation where if Notre Dame can't get its run game going until the past game shows up and so far it hasn't and we can't assume that it will, I'll break that down in part two of today's show. But the run game is going to be the key to this football team's success on offense, right? Whether quarterback runs, running back runs, any other type of run, it's going to be important and then everything that's built off of the run RPO game, play actual game and all that type of stuff. But when you look at some of the top teams in the schedule, they've been pretty good at shutting down the run so far this season and even a couple teams that maybe we aren't thinking about right now, that maybe we should have been so far, pretty good at stopping the run and I'll dive into that as well, so pretty good at obviously running the football, so we'll dive into that. But when you look at the big games and you look at where the Notre Dame defense is right now and you think about what we've seen from this Notre Dame football team through three weeks on defense. It's number one, their past defense is still outstanding and they gave up the one big play to the running back against Northern Illinois, but outside of that, the Notre Dame past defense has been excellent. I mean, you look at the numbers through three games, they're giving up 140.7 points per game, they've held Texas, they've played two power five teams and those two power five teams, Texas A&M and Purdue are completing less than 45% of their passes against Notre Dame, they're completing less than five yards per play against Notre Dame, they've got one touchdown pass that came against Notre Dame's backups, they've got four interceptions against them and they're holding them to an average of 112 passing yards per game. Texas A&M passed for 100 yards against Notre Dame, Purdue only passed for 124 when you think about the fact that 52 of that came on one play, it's pretty impressive and Texas A&M has not been lighting the world on fire, throwing the football, they have yet to get to 200 yards in the season, but they did average 7.8 yards per attempt against McNeese and they averaged 10.5 yards per attempt against Florida, Notre Dame held them to 3.3 yards per attempt and they're two games since playing Notre Dame, they have four touchdowns, no interceptions, quarterback rating this past weekend against Florida was 191.49, it was 156.26 against McNeese and it was 54.67 against Notre Dame. So what we've seen from Notre Dame is dominance in that part of the game, shutting down the opponent pass game. That's going to have to continue being a strength, there's no doubt about that. Notre Dame can't take a step back in that regard, but what we've seen so far from the pass offense is they've done a very good job of really limiting teams ability to throw the football and then when you look at the fact that that, I mean, really all of Northern Illinois success, most of Northern Illinois success came on one play outside of that, the only pass for 115 yards on that game, they did have a clutch third down completion in that game, which Notre Dame have to have to get settled in, but you know, look, that's a strength and when you look at Louisville and Georgia Tech and USC, yeah, they're good at throwing the football, but Notre Dame should be able to match up well. When you look at those three teams, however, what you're going to find out is the strength of those teams so far this season has been at least in the case of USC and Louisville has been excellent balance. Louisville is what we saw under Jeff Brom, this is something that I have talked about in the past, is when Jeff Brom has the talent to do so, he does want a balanced offense. He did not run the ball a ton at Western Kentucky, he did not run the ball, especially at Purdue, a lot more Western Kentucky than Purdue, but at Purdue, they didn't really run the football a whole lot and overly effectively in a lot of years because they just didn't have the horses to do it up front. Had some good backs at times, but they didn't have the horses. And when you look at Louisville last year, they were a team that really thrived on running the football. When their offense was at its best, they ran the football with great balance and you look at their two worst, their three worst rushing performances of the season, one was a 13 to 10 victory, another was their strong loss at Pitt, and then the other one was the Florida State game and the ACC title game where they were held 100 yards in each of those games, and they went one and two in those games, and the only one they won, they won 13 to 10. They ran for 185 yards against Notre Dame, 234 against Duke, 231 against Virginia Tech, they ran for 220 against USC in a ball game, 227 against Georgia Tech, 194 against Boston College. So they were clearly a team that wants to come out and run the football, and so far this year, in sub-par competition, they ran for 293 yards against Austin P, and 233 yards against Jacksonville State. They've got eight rushing touchdowns in two games. So clearly, they're a team that wants to strive and be balanced. Of course, they're throwing the ball for over 300 yards a game as well against poor competition, but you're seeing that ability to be balanced, and you saw this team run on Notre Dame last year, and so they're going to look at this game and say, "Hey, we had success against them last year. We're going to try to be balanced against them this year." When you look at Georgia Tech, the best part of Georgia Tech's offense is its ability to run the football. And in Georgia Tech's three wins this year, they're three in one. They ran for 190, 225, and 190 yards in their three wins, and their loss against Syracuse, they ran for 112. They ran for 5.3, 6.6, and 5.6 yards per carry in their three wins, and they're lost, they were 4.7. So what we've seen from Georgia Tech this year, and really last to a degree, is if you can shut down their run game, you have a pretty good shot at shutting down the Georgia Tech offense. And then what we've seen from USC through two games so far is they're not exactly letting the world on fire run into football. They didn't run it overly effectively against USC, had a couple of nice runs here and there, but they did go for 249 against Utah State. I do believe this USC team wants to be more balanced, but even in that game, it's important to stop the run, looking at Navy so far this year in two games. They've run for over 280 yards a game this season. Their pass offense is actually at 142 per game right now, which for Navy is obviously pretty good. They were at 105 last year, 85.8 the year before. We've talked about their desire to throw the ball more effectively, but they're still rushing for 280 yards a game, and they're 2-0 so far, and then Army is 2-0 also right now, and they've gone back to the triple. And they're rushing for 390 yards per game right now. They ran for 375 against Lehigh, and then they went for 405 and 7 yards a carry and a 17-point win at Florida Atlantic. Florida Atlantic, you'll remember, only lost to Michigan State at Michigan State by 6 the week prior in this past weekend. They beat Florida International by 18. So Florida Atlantic, that game army dominated on the ground. So you are looking at ahead, and Notre Dame's got nine games left. Five of those opponents are teams that are to some degree want to run the football, and are going to run the football effectively, and are certainly going to try and come at Notre Dame with their ground game. So if the Notre Dame defense is going to continue to be the unit that carries this team, and is the unit that is going to allow Notre Dame to make a playoff run on the backs of great defense this season, they're going to have to improve running the football, because what we've seen from Notre Dame is, hopefully what we saw against Purdue is a sign of things to come, hopefully. Purdue ran for 38 yards on 25 carries. If you take out Notre Dame sack yardage from the game, they had four sacks for 40 yards. So if you take that out, you know, Purdue had 78 yards rushing, still not a lot on 21 carries, barely over three yards a carry. So Notre Dame was very good against the run in this game, but that was on the heels of back-to-back games, where they weren't as good against Texas A&M against Northern Illinois. Texas A&M did not punish Notre Dame on the ground, but they were leaning on Notre Dame. They were getting a push, and honestly, there was a couple of times, I felt like they went away from the run a little bit sooner than they should have. And then of course, we saw them their name struggle stopping the running against Northern Illinois. They're going to face better rushing teams, several better rushing teams this season than Northern Illinois and Texas A&M. There's no question about it. There's not a lot of running backs that I would say are better than Ontario Brown, but there are definitely teams that as a whole, present a tougher matchup for Notre Dame. And Georgia Tech, I think, is the one team that certainly does have a running back better than what Northern Illinois has, in my opinion. As you guys know, I had Jamal Haynes on my first team, all opponent team, Ontario Brown was on my second team. But we're seeing Louisville right now, run the football with, they've got three different backs. This is crazy. You look at their, they've got three backs over 100 yards so far. This season, Isaac Brown, Duke Watson, and Kiwan Brown, and they're averaging 12.8, 13.7, and 8.3 hearts per carry in their game so far. And then you look at USC, Woody Marks is a solid running back. You know, he was more of a pass catcher at Mississippi State. He's a solid running back. Quinton Joyner is going for 6.9 yards to carry so far this season. And they have a very talented running, a freshman named Brian Jackson that's also part of that mix. But, you know, look, Notre Dame's run defense is going to have to be better. It has to get better. And they're facing a Miami team this weekend that is not good at running the football. And so what do you need to see from Notre Dame number one this weekend? And then we'll dive into just sort of a big picture what Notre Dame needs to do to improve. If they're going to handle that, is you want to see them dominate, right? I mean, that's the thing is, when you're playing a team that's not good at something, you need to dominate it. And Miami, Ohio is not good running the football folks. I mean, I'm not going to try to spin this any other way. They ran for 40 yards against Northwestern on 24 carries. And they ran for 21 yard or 24 yards on 21 carries against Cincinnati. Now, they have given up set 37 yards in sacks. But even if you add the 37 yards in sacks, this is kind of crazy. Even if you add the 37 yards in sacks, that gets them to 101 rushing yards on the season. That's not good. That's definitely not, definitely not good. 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. Hey Irish breakdown listeners, it's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor Jay Farrar, 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. So if you're a Notre Dame, this is a chance for you. I mean, look, if we're talking just perception wise or statistics or whatever, which is not the focus within our name coaches or players, but it is in this conversation. This is certainly something that can help you kind of counter what you did in the first couple games by having back-to-back games where you shut down your opponent's ground game and just take away Miami Ohio's ability to run a football. It's important in this game and from the standpoint of you want to dominate it not only for big picture purposes, but for the purposes of this game, Miami's got a good quarterback. Brett Gabbert is a really good, solid, pout, G5 quarterback with tons of experience. He has over 8,400 career passing yards, over 60 career passing touchdowns. He's again, as I said, he started at quarterback for two seasons in which Ian Book was also a starter for Notre Dame. I said that yesterday. It just kind of gives you an idea of how long this kid's been around. He's got two really good receivers to deal with. The slot receiver is very dynamic, Cole McDonald or Kate McDonald. I always do that to myself. It's Kate McDonald. Yes, I was correct. Kate McDonald, Reggie Virgil, very different players. We talked about them a little bit yesterday. If Miami is able to come out and find some soft spots in the Notre Dame run defense and get some semblance of balance to take pressure off the quarterback, then they could have more success against Notre Dame. If Notre Dame is not disciplined against Miami Ohio, if they're not able to come out and create negatives on first down and they allow Miami to get the run game going, I don't expect them to gash Notre Dame. I don't think they have the offensive line to do that. I don't think they have the running backs to do that. But if they're able to get some level of ground game going, it then takes a lot of pressure off of the pass game because if the run game can get going and put them in some second and manageables and third manageables, then the quick game for Miami can be more effective and they can do more things to get their quarterback out of the pocket. In third nine, you can't run a sprint out on third nine. On third and three, you can maybe do some things to get a leverage with a motion and a shift and sprint your quarterback out like Notre Dame did last week and create some matchups that you like. There are some things you can do in the pass game or maybe you can get the Notre Dame linebackers isolated. You can hit some check down, some swings, some screens where maybe you can move the chains. And then hopefully, if you're able to move the chains, if you're Miami, Ohio, this is your game plan, you're going to move the chains in hopes that we can catch one on Notre Dame in hopes that maybe we can get your kid McDonald and match up against Jordan Clark or against the safety where we can maybe protect long enough to get him a shot down the field. Maybe if we can get into one on one, we can throw a deep ball to Virgil on the outside who's six four and has decent speed for that level and good ball skills, who's coming off the best game in his career. There's some different things that Miami, Ohio can do. They're going to try to do things to get their running backs, the football out of the backfield. But if they're able to stay on schedule, and if you know, because they 15 catches from their backs, if they're able to stay on schedule, then that gives them a lot more opportunities to move the chains and the more that they can move the chains, the more chances there are that they can pop a big play on Notre Dame in the pass game. That's going to be their goal. That's going to be their, what they're trying to accomplish with their, their, their offense. In hopes of doing two things, number one, getting some scores, obviously, but the other part is they want to keep their defense from getting worn down by being on the field a lot in this game. They actually have a pretty quality defense. And if they can keep this a close game and allow their defense to kind of stay in what they do and keep the game down, then they may have a shot to, you know, to make this way more interesting in the second half. If they put their defense behind the eight ball early, then this game is going to get out of hand in a hurry. And, and that's, that's basically where it is. So you're going to see them come out and try to establish that. I think not, I don't know if they're going to try to establish a ground game. What I think they're going to do is try to catch Notre Dame and some different things. Where maybe they can get a couple of gas plays early and letting their name know like, hey, we're not going to just come out and throw the ball all day because I, I don't think that Miami Baha'i was good enough on the football to just come out with a pass-only game plan against Notre Dame and have success. You know, they tried that against Cincinnati last week. They really didn't seek to, to do a whole lot to establish the ground game partly because it was getting dominated. You know, so they came out in the game and they, they threw the ball a ton. And you, you look at Brett Gabbard had a 39 attempts, 25 completions due for 356 yards. It's all great. They only had 16 points because eventually you throw the ball enough. You're going to make mistakes, right? You're early in the game. You had a red zone touchdown. You're going to have some drops. You're going to have some plays where Notre Dame shuts you down. And so I don't know that they're going to be able to, to have any better success against Notre Dame getting points on the board. And they did against Cincinnati who's honestly not a very good football team if, if, if we're being honest about this and, and say, hey, look, you know, yeah, you gave up a lot of yards. Cincinnati gave up a lot of yards, but that's two games in a row that they've given up for 300 yards. Their past defense isn't very good. They're going to have to have some level of, of balance against Notre Dame if they're going to have any success. So for Notre Dame, what do we need to see in this game? A couple things that I want to see that, that are going to tell me that the Notre Dame run defenses is at least comped. I don't, I don't know that this is going to tell us that I don't know it's going to tell us that Notre Dame is ready to handle the rest of the schedule because Miami's bad, but it's at least a good step in the right direction. And number one, when you look at his defenses, the play of the defensive tackles has to be better. And we saw some flashes from Jason Onier last week, Donovan Heinrich had a better game than he did the week before. Howard Cross and Riley Mills were, you know, not terrible. Howard was better than Riley. Neither of them were great. You need that group to play a lot better. They, they, this is a matchup and they're in a matchup where they have a significant talent and athleticism advantage significant. There's going to be very few matchups that favor them more than this one against Miami, Ohio. This is a big offensive line up the middle. They're all over 300 pounds, but they don't move very well. And I don't think they're overly talented. And so you look and say, well, if the details don't dominate this matchup, it may not matter against Miami, Ohio, but it's a very bad sign for what's to come. And it's going to leave you wondering, like, man, I don't, I don't know if I don't know if this is a, a, a matchup that is going to change a whole lot for Notre Dame in future games. So I think the play, the defensive tackles is very, very important to the success of this game. Second part of it is the linebackers have to continue improving. And I think we've seen that to a degree Northern Illinois gave them a lot of problems with their motions and shifts. If Miami's smart, they have to look at that game plan and say, we're not going to make the same mistake per due did, we're not going to make the same mistake and say, Hey, we're just going to come out and kind of run our offense and not do the only thing that anyone has done against Notre Dame this year to give them any problems. I mean, you know, A&M got shut down on offense. They had, you know, three yards of play and barely over 200 yards of offense, we're at 246 of offense per due did nothing against Notre Dame. They had less than 200 yards of offense against Notre Dame. What's the one team that had any success moving the ball against Notre Dame? It was Northern Illinois. Why? Okay, we can get into Notre Dame to show up. They weren't ready, et cetera, et cetera. That's all fine and dandy. And there's truth to that. But the reality is is Northern Illinois also did things to give Notre Dame problems. And if you look at the first two game, the first game and the third game, the two power five games, Notre Dame allowed those two teams to go for 408 yards. That's it total. So barely averaging over 200 yards a game between A&M and per due. Northern Illinois by itself had 5.97 yards per plane, 388 yards of offense. Why? What was the reason? And if you're Miami, Ohio, you have to look at that. You know the personnel Northern Illinois has. You have to be able to say, hey, we're going to go in there and have success and and and do do some of those things to give ourselves a chance at first success. And hopefully Notre Dame will be able to have some, be able to get that shut, shut that down. And and and the linebackers especially need to be able to be prepared for that type of look. And this is a young group. There's going to be ups and downs from them all season. But I would say that they're sort of slowly improving week to week to week as a whole, making a lot of plays still have a lot of things to clean up. At some point in time, this unit's going to kind of take off and really take it to the next level. And hopefully this is a game where that can start to happen. Because if you're if you're going to be better against the run, this group has to be better against the run as well. It's it's right up the middle. I mean, that's really where Notre Dame's problems have been so far is been some issues that line back and then of course issues with the defensive tackle play. When I look at the the edge players, obviously, that's a bit of a question mark from that group. Jordan, here's the thing about the edge. I think the edge has been solid against the run for most of the season. I think Josh Burnham was pretty good the first two games. I thought Jordan Mattelho was very good. The first three games when it came to slowing down the perimeter run defense. I look at at, you know, Bryce Young did some nice things off the bench last week against the second team. Junior Chilimaka, I thought, was steady coming off the bench last week. Buba Carr has has improved each week as a run defender. I thought this was probably his best performance of the season on Saturday against Purdue against the run. He's going to have to play well because you don't have Batello anymore and you're probably not going to have or you may not have Burnham this weekend. And I personally for I say probably not because I'm kind of projecting my own opinion onto this for all for just to be open and honest about this. He's listed as questionable. In my view, if you have a player that's questionable going into the Miami-Vohio game, do not play them. Don't take a chance of re-injuring that because you're going to absolutely need them next week against Louisville. And so I want to see them, but you know, I would like to see them rest him. But even then he's coming off of a knee injury. So how's he going to be? How's this performance going to be? You lost Batello who's been your best edge center so far. Can Buba Carr replicate that? Can Junior Chilimaka give a better play in that regard than maybe he did last year? That's going to be a key. What can Bryce Young step up his reps and handle playing sound football on the edge on top of the flash? That's going to be a big question. And so it's not so much that unit has to get better. It's just that we don't know who they are. And then of course, RJ Open has struggled stopping the run. I mean, that's been, you know, we talked about it this summer. He wasn't used to do that a lot at Duke. He was mainly a wide nine edge rusher. And he would kind of force and he wasn't really counted on to be much of an impactful run defender. And it noted him he's going to have to do a better job of that. He has not been very good the first three games. That's a player whose emergence could be very big in this. And I'll talk more about that when I get into the game wreckers conversation. But that's the other part of it. So just really, I want to see dominance from the D line this week. I want to see the new guys that on the edge play well. I want to see Open up step up his game. And I really, really, really want to see the defensive tackles dominate. Hopefully we don't see a lot of snaps from Riley Mills and Howard Cross in a perfect world. And their name just runs away with this game early and they can play like 15 steps each. That would be a great situation for for Notre Dame if they're able to do that. And if they can, then, you know, I think that they'll be able to have some success. But when you look at last week's game, they didn't they didn't play a ton of snaps last week. I'm pulling up the the snap counts now. So last week, Howard Cross played 27 snaps. Riley Mills played 24. It'd be amazing if they could keep it below that again for this game, if not well below that. But when they're in, they need to be dominant. And that's the key. When you look at last week against Purdue, Cross and Mills had one pressure each. Riley had a hit on the quarterback. Cross had just a hurry. They combined for for only one run stop in the game. They combined for two tackles and in my opinion, two tackles. I looked the other day. I think they went back and added that tackle to Howard Cross because he now does have a tackle for loss in that game. So I think they did correct the statistical record. So you had but you had only one tackle each from those guys. And you watch the film. It wasn't like they were dominating. And their dominance is why other people put them numbers. They just weren't. I want to see more of that from them because improving in the run game starts this weekend. But it's going to really be needed next week. And if you're not sharp in the run game this weekend, and if you're not dominant in the run game next weekend this weekend, then it's going to make me real concerned about what's coming next weekend when you face Louisville. And of course, we'll get a much better sense of just how good Louisville's run defense is or run game is this weekend. Same thing with Georgia Tech because they both they play each other this weekend. And as I mentioned, Louisville has not played anybody so far. I mean they played Austin P in the opener. And the team that they played in week two Jacksonville State has now given up over 200 yards rushing twice this year. They give up to 94 to Coastal Carolina and then 233 to Louisville. Although Louisville was 1.3 yards per per per carry better than then Coastal Carolina. So yeah, they've done very well so far. We'll get a much we'll have a much better sense of how good they are this weekend when they play Georgia Tech who's who's run defense has been solid to very good at times this year. It's been it's been solid always. And at times it's been pretty good. And so they'll they'll test each other. And then of course Georgia Tech's rushing offense, which is the building block of their success on offense, we'll get tested against a Louisville team that so far this year's only given up 164 yards and two games rushing. They gave up 130 to Jacksonville State 4.1 yards per carry and and we're a pretty decent run defense last year rushing defense last season. Louisville's defense last season only gave up 99.8 yards per game rushing 3.3 per carry. They had a couple games where they got they got gashed a little bit but the most yards anyone had against them last year was 165. That was Florida State in the ACC title game. But after that it was 159. I'm sorry Georgia Tech and the opener had 175 against them last year 4.6 per carry only let's see one two through only three opponents all year. That'd be Georgia Tech Miami and Boston College averaged over four yards a carry against Louisville. So and we'll talk about that here in a second. So we're going to find out if Georgia Tech can get their ground game going again it's going to be a sign that their their rush offense is legit. So we're going to find out if what this Notre Dame team can do when it comes to stopping the run that getting better in that area is going to determine whether this is a really good defense which it is. Like this isn't if they don't get better here the defense is going to not be very good. It's going to be a very good defense no matter what the defense did not was was good against Northern Illinois. It wasn't good enough but it wasn't like they were bad. They were very good against Texas A&M very good. Yes you want to clean up this thing and that thing and they were dominant against Purdue. So this isn't a well G will well if they don't get better in the run defense they're going to not be good this year. It's okay can they truly be elite run defense because they have an elite pass defense right now even with not having great pass rush so far through three games they're an elite pass defense. Can they be a good enough rush defense to be an elite overall defensive football team that can carry this team even if like the offense is not playing well can they play can they make enough stops to say hey okay this isn't your day we got you which they couldn't do in the Northern Illinois game and couldn't do it times last year again Purdue or the Louisville game would be an example of that so we're going to have to see this group get a lot better. So if we can see that this weekend if they can dominate in that regard this weekend it tells us two things number one they're taking a step number two if the Notre Dame defense comes out and dominates Miami up front and shuts down the run game it's also going to tell us that they're more locked in and right this is what we talked about this is the issue that we've seen from Notre Dame in a lot of these games against teams like this it's the problem against Northern Illinois especially at home you overlook this opponent you're not locked in you're thinking about Louisville you know you're you're looking at the team you're saying they're 0 and 2 they're not very good they lost Northwestern they lost to Miami to Cincinnati they've only scored 22 points all season they're not good we we can just we're going to coast in this one or do they come out still have that same chip on their shoulder that we saw last week that's going to tell us if this defense is matured a little bit to where the opponent doesn't matter they're going to come out and do their thing no matter who's in front of them and so we'll also learn about the leadership of this defense which was not great in week two then we're going to find out a little bit something about them this week and it's going to be shown by whether or not they come out and absolutely dominate Miami's rushing offense and set themselves up for continued improved success and that department moving forward so so so so so [BLANK_AUDIO]
