Clemson at Notre Dame Preview: Q&A with Irish Breakdown

Tyler Davis and Bryan Bresee are two defenders back to face Notre Dame again and will look to make the Notre Dame offense one-dimensional.

by Ryan Kantor - Contributor - Tue Nov 01 07:00:05 GMT-04:00 2022

The Tigers travel to South Bend on Saturday to face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at 7:30 p.m. on NBC. To help us preview the matchup, we reconnected with Bryan Driskell of Irish Breakdown. We hope you enjoy the fresh, insider perspective. If so, please consider giving him a follow on Twitter, visiting Irish Breakdown, or giving him a shoutout in the comments section.

Ryan Kantor: Notre Dame has had an up-and-down season to say the least. After an 0-2 start, they won three straight including a blowout over the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill. They were then held to just 14 points in a brutal home loss to middling Stanford. Now they’ve won two straight including a quality road win at Syracuse to reach 5-3. How do you make sense of this team?

Bryan Driskell: Well, it’s one of two things for me. Either Notre Dame plays to the level of its competition, or the Irish struggle to play at home. The answer to that certainly impacts the matchup against Clemson. Notre Dame’s games away from home were against No. 2 Ohio State, undefeated North Carolina, No. 16 BYU and No. 16 Syracuse. Notre Dame went 3-1 against those teams, and they led the Buckeyes for over the half the game.

At home, the Irish lost to Marshall, 2-4 Stanford and struggled to beat Cal. Their only “convincing” win was against UNLV.

So, is this a home issue or a quality of competition issue that comes from a lack of leadership or overall maturity as a team? We’ll find out this weekend.

More practically, Notre Dame is a team that often fails to play clean football. Even against Syracuse, we saw many of those same mistakes, but the Irish were far too physically dominant for Syracuse. False starts, an offside penalty that negated an interception, turnovers, missed tackles, blown assignments in coverage, offensive struggles in the opening quarter, defensive struggles in the third quarter, etc. were all still there against Syracuse.

The difference now is the offensive line has played dominant football in the last month. For the most part, it has helped overcome poor quarterback play, but Clemson isn’t Syracuse, and the quarterback position will need to be better if the Irish are going to have a chance to upset the Tigers.

Kantor: Notre Dame lost Coach Brian Kelly and QB Jack Coan from last year’s team. Which departure has hurt the Irish more this season and why?

Driskell: Jack Coan and it’s not even close. It was time for Kelly to leave, as he had taken Notre Dame as far as he could and his tenure had become stale on and off the field. Notre Dame needs a quarterback in 2022 that can manage the offense, get the ball where it needs to go and limit mistakes. It would be nice to have an elite quarterback, but with the makeup of this team – a team that has excellent line play, has a loaded backfield, has the best tight end in college football, and a strong overall defense – the quarterback simply needs to be a complementary player. Coan was great at that. Put him on this team and the Irish are at worse 7-1 right now.

But alas, poor quarterback coaching from Tommy Rees has put Notre Dame in position where it doesn’t have that kind of player.

Kantor: Despite Kelly leaving for LSU, Offensive Coordinator Tommy Rees stayed with Notre Dame. Given their offensive struggles, there has been chatter that his time in South Bend could be limited. Do you believe there’s anything to that? How would you describe Tommy Rees’ offense this year?

Driskell: Honestly, I’m not really focused on that. That is more of an offseason issue. I think my focus, and of course the focus of Marcus Freeman, Coach Rees and the rest of the Notre Dame program needs to be about doing whatever it takes to make sure the offense plays to its potential in the final four games.

What I will say is that Rees has consistently failed to put together the kind of game plans or make the schematic adjustments needed to properly get this offense playing to its potential. Until that changes this team is going to struggle to consistently score points. We even saw that against Syracuse, as the offense really only accounted for 27 points. They scored a defensive touchdown to start the game and another score went for just two yards after a blocked punt.

Kantor: What matchup or position group concerns you most heading into this matchup?

Driskell: It’s really about the quarterback for me. Notre Dame won’t be able to bully Clemson like it did Syracuse, UNLV, North Carolina, and BYU. They will need to make plays in the pass game. If Pyne can play like he did against North Carolina and BYU, games where he completed 70.6% and 78.6% of his throws while passing for 289 yards and 262 yards, respectively, the Irish can play with Clemson. If he plays like he did the last three games, when he’s been a sub 50% passer, the Irish will struggle to score enough points to win.

Outside of that position, I think this is a game where the matchups are relatively even. Notre Dame has some advantages, Clemson has some advantages, it will come down to quarterback play.

Kantor: What is the biggest X-factor that Notre Dame needs to break their way to pull off the upset on Saturday? What are the odds the Irish pull it off?

Driskell: It’s what I just talked about, it’s the quarterback. Now, in order to eliminate just repeating what I just said, let me get more specific. For Notre Dame, the quarterback not only needs to play better, but Rees needs to evolve the offense a bit. They can’t keep lining up in 12 (one running back and two tight ends) and 13 personnel (one running back and three tight ends) all day and run it down Clemson’s throat. Notre Dame fans would love to see that happen, but Clemson is just too good and too deep in the front seven for that to be the 60-minute strategy.

Rees needs to figure out ways to get the ball to the perimeter with the run and pass game. He needs to figure out how to get Pyne into a good early rhythm, which will hopefully build up his confidence. If he can make the pass game a complementary feature in this game, the Irish will have a shot to pull off the upset. If Notre Dame is one-dimensional on offense, I think the game is close, but it will be much harder to pull out the victory late.