Notre Dame vs. Clemson week is finally here. The No. 4 Fighting Irish (6-0) will host the No. 1 Tigers (7-0) inside Notre Dame Stadium Saturday night under the lights. Kickoff is at 7:30 pm ET on NBC.
Ahead of the matchup, 247Sports National Director of Video and Late Kick host Josh Pate shared a preview and prediction of the game for the Fighting Irish fans at Irish Illustrated. You can check out the video at the top and/or read the entire transcript below.
"Big Game in South Bend, Ind., Saturday night. Been waiting for this one ever since that ACC 2020 only schedule was released. Clemson on the road, a six-point favorite currently as it sits in Vegas against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. We've got a lot to get to here.
"It's another shot for Brian Kelly. Think about this, think about the narrative that surrounds Notre Dame, some of it I disagree with by the way. I'll give you the portion I disagree with in a second. The portion I do agree with I think is kind of principle, it's kind of common sense, Notre Dame has been a good solid program, but they haven't been able to get over the hump of beating one of the games elite. Therefore they've got to be resigned to a second tier. Well, that's not the worst thing in the world, because what I get to now that I disagree with that people say about Notre Dame a lot is, 'Oh, they're overrated. They're so overrated.' And I take a deep breath there, because I wonder by whose ratings, by whose metrics? I always ask and they say, 'Well, they can't beat Alabama.' Well, noone is rating them ahead of Alabama. 'Well, they can't be Clemson.' Who's got them ahead of Clemson? By the way, they get a shot this weekend. But be that as it may, even if they lose Saturday, who's rating them ahead of Clemson? Who's rating them ahead of Ohio State? I don't see anyone doing that. So, if you find someone who's telling me Notre Dame is the second best team in the country, yeah, I may go along with you, but from what I can tell, people like me and others look at that top tier and say, 'Yeah those teams, those programs may be on a different level.' Outside of that, when you get to the second tier, I don't know very many programs or teams that are ahead of Notre Dame right now. So it's a really good shot, nevertheless, for Brian Kelly Saturday. Even without Trevor Lawrence, I think one of the more underappreciated aspects of this is if Notre Dame were to win, would be what it does for the perception of Brian Kelly. Now I know you may have some outliers who say, 'Well, he couldn't beat someone with a No. 1 quarterback.' Whatever. You could argue Clemson still has a quarterback edge in this game Saturday. We'll get into that in just a second. How much weight does the result of this game carry? That's the question we won't really have answered. It'll be irrelevant if Clemson wins. If Clemson loses, still pronouncing that 'z' for some reason, if Clemson loses, I am of the opinion that if they were to take care of business the rest of the way with Trevor Lawrence back and if they lose a close game Saturday, tough to see Notre Dame blowing them out, so if they win a close game Saturday, I'm of the opinion, whether I would agree with it or not, that the committee is still going to give them strong, strong consideration. The reason I think they would probably do something that I don't think a committee has any business doing, which is guessing how a game would have gone if a player would have played. So, let's get into this.
"Biggest question, we always go this route, when we're looking potentially at an upset, we ask, Can the upset happen? Of course Notre Dame could be Clemson. So, how would that happen? That's our formula. That's how we do our game breakdowns. Well, it's obvious to me. If you're Brian Kelly, you got to make someone not named Travis Etienne beat you. They are capable of it, but you let the chips fall where they may. You tip your cap if they do it at that point, but you got to make someone else beat you. Etienne, I think you could argue, is the most important college football player in America Saturday. You can make arguments for a number of other people. Listen, I'm telling you the reason why I say Etienne, not just in this game but maybe in the entire country, is because this is a big game. It's going to have a ripple effect throughout the entire country and he's the best football player on the field Saturday. How many touches vs. how many targets? How many targets may even be the better question. If you were to talk to Clemson folks, people who cover the program, fans, those of you who watch every game, how many touches would you expect? Etienne, in a big game for Notre Dame, I think you would float somewhere between like the 18 to 24 touch range. That's big-time. That's talking rushing and receiving. It's not going to be on the low end. I wonder how much on the high end that could skew. Last week, he bailed them out and he's bailed him out before. He had 84 rushing yards and I think 135 or 140 through the air against Boston College. You could see some kind of scenario, especially if Notre Dame does a pretty good job against Amari Rodgers, you could see a scenario where you're watching the game midway through the third quarter, it's tight, it's 20 to 17 either way, and you're saying, 'Man, the best running back on this field is Etienne and the best receiver on this field is Etienne.' You could say that. That's the kind of football player he is. However, having said that though, this Notre Dame defense is very good and we have seen many, many times if you want to commit to stopping the run, you can limit a running back. What do you do it at the expense of, that's the reason you don't see it done a whole lot, at least to that degree. But maybe the equation is different with Clark Lea when he looks at this Clemson offense, because of what I'm about to get into, which is my biggest concern with Clemson in this game and maybe kind of moving forward.
"I think a lot is going to be made, rightfully so, about DJ Uiagalelei getting his first start and you're gonna hear, 'true freshman quarterback, inexperienced, on the road,' you're gonna hear a lot of this stuff kind of hyperbolically thrown around and it's not that it's not true, but it doesn't really have such a granular, tangible impact on the game as specifics. So, what specifically are we talking about there because true freshmen win games all the time. Senior quarterbacks lose games all the time. So, what are we talking about here? Well, I'll give you my concern with Clemson. If they were to have the bailout theory in play and bailout pieces in play, it'd be a little bit less of a concern, and that would be basically a receiver core the likes of which Clemson's had over the past four or five years. Well, they don't have that there and the bailout is 3rd and 9, 3rd and 12, a critical amount of third and longs where you can afford and you know as an offensive play caller or as a quarterback in improv settings, you know you can afford to either call a play, or make a throw, where it's in normal conditions, a not even a 50-50, like a 30-70 ball, but yet your talented receivers turn into a 70-30, 80-20 proposition on your end. It's not necessarily something that you would draw up on a grease board and it's not something you would ever go to a clinic and coach kids to do at the peewee or high school level, but yet you know, because of the talent you have unique to you at Clemson, you can get away with it. They don't have that right now. Now, what does that mean?
"It could mean that it doesn't matter. It could mean Uiagalelei is just that good and he wins a game, but I'm gonna tell you right now, in order to win that game, and this is what concerns me, this is where the inexperience and the true freshman and seeing an experienced veteran defense that's really good against Notre Dame, here's where all that hyperbolic stuff really rubber meets the road on. That is the accuracy and the poise that it's going to take under pressure and really, I'm not so much worried about the pressure, I'm worried about the poise and accuracy. He's gonna have to fit it in windows, he's gonna have to hit receivers in stride, and he's gonna have to do it consistently. All it takes is one or two batted balls in the air to fall in the arms of the defender and that could swing a game like this. If the bailout options aren't there to the degree they normally are and I don't believe they will be, and if you've done at least somewhat of a decent job of limiting Travis Etienne and you're getting Clemson into a critical amount of third and longs, that's a really big deal for Notre Dame. That's where you're looking to, if not steal possessions, flip field position, and this is one of those games where it's actually going to matter by the way.
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"The other aspect when we go Notre Dame offensively, everything that could be said about Ian Book has been said. It's their ground game that's gonna have to win it for them. I don't think Clemson has seen a legitimate run offense, but I always stopped short because there's a big gap between saying you haven't faced something and you can't deal with that thing. I'm in Columbus, Ga., right now. I'm in Harris County right now. So, if the New England Patriots or the Chiefs, let's say the Chiefs were to descend into Harris County Peewee Football League tomorrow, well, they wouldn't have faced an NFL team, they'll go the whole schedule, they wouldn't have faced an NFL team, it wouldn't mean they're incapable of playing against NFL teams, they just wouldn't have faced them. So, Clemson may not have faced a legitimate rushing attack. For all we know they're equipped to deal with it. But I sure do want to find out and I think if you're Tommy Rees, you sure do want to find out. One of the biggest potential opportunities Saturday is for Tommy Rees, who won't even play it down, he's the offensive coordinator for Notre Dame, and you're talking about a perceived mismatch, him vs. Brent Venables, who's been around for 100 years, and is widely regarded including in this circle as the best defensive coordinator in the country. Think about what you could do here. If you're Notre Dame with the run game, think about what you could do. If you're just staying on schedule, okay, I'm not asking Ian Book and Tommy Rees to dial up Ian Book to have the game of his life, I'm just asking for him to make enough throws, screen game I think will be very effective here if there is a portion of this offense that is, but staying on schedule, and that doesn't mean tilting the field heavily in your favor, I mean the difference between maybe going 8 of 14 on third down vs. 5 of 14. That's the kind of difference in this game. You're not looking at some wild swing. You're probably not getting to the fourth quarter saying, 'Oh my goodness, Notre Dame has done something I could never have envisioned in 100 lifetimes.' Just little incremental differences in various portions of this box score could make the difference. The other difference, as we work around to the game capsule and prediction here, uncomfortability. That's the key. How many areas can you make them feel that? One of them would be what I just talked about. If Notre Dame is able early on to start controlling the line of scrimmage, which they have the offensive line to do and there could be some vulnerabilities in that Clemson defense that maybe have been on display if you have picked through the film with a fine tooth comb, but since they haven't lost a game, no one's really focused on, they got a lot of talent. It's young in their front. I don't know that necessarily you're going to stress their secondary either way, but maybe you find some mismatches there at tight end, for example, and it's just a few extra move the chains, new set of downs type deals where you could flip that field position, you could flip time of possession. Some people value it more than others, but total plays. How uncomfortable can you make Clemson when you're midway through the third quarter. What if you've run 50 plays to their 31? What if time of possession is two to one? Here is why time of possesion is important to me, because it's kind of synonymous with limiting the opponent's possessions in a lot of cases in a game like this. This is not a game where Clemson is probably scoring a lot in three play drives. LSU used to do that last year, like they would have time of possession against them, total plays against them, it didn't matter because they were so explosive. I don't think Clemson's offense is going to be as explosive here, so I think those kind of factors matter.
"Colin, let's dial up the capsule here and let's show you what Vegas thinks and let's show you what we think. Again, we generate our own in-house line and we simulate the games ourselves independent of Vegas and anything else. We like to show ours vs. Vegas. So, in Vegas currently the line is Clemson -6. We have it a little bit shorter than that. We've got Clemson -5. I do this sometimes in principle, I think I'm gonna roll right with our model. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take Clemson to win, but because our model is shorter than the Vegas number and I don't really have a strong feel either way, on principle alone I'm going to take Clemson to win but I'm going to take Notre Dame plus the six. Understanding all the while, this is not me telling you I'm betting this game. This is certainly not me telling you to bet the game. When I don't have a strong field, I default to our model, no matter if it's a one point gap that I'm trying to hit. So, Clemson -6 and we're going to take Notre Dame +6. We're going to take Clemson to win outright and Irish plus the points. Looking really forward to this game though.
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Late Kick Previews and Predicts Notre Dame vs. Clemson - 247Sports
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