Week 2 Review: Notre Dame VS NIU

The data story coming out of the Irish’s gut-wrenching 16-14 loss to the Huskies.

Welp.

It’s one of my favorite words, accompanied by a shoulder shrug, to describe a lot of things (not just Notre Dame football) these days. It’s a simple but effective word that can convey disappointment in how something played out, but it really leaves it up to individual interpretation and decision-making how deep you want to go into a doom spiral.

I understand the Notre Dame fan base’s frustrations with the program coming out of the Northern Illinois loss.

And I don’t even want to try and tell folks how deep into the doom spiral they should/shouldn’t go into the doom spiral, especially because a lot of what transpired was predictable.

When I was crunching the numbers for this game’s data preview, it became incredibly apparent that there is a glaring “issue” in this season’s Irish football team that would be the deciding factor in the final outcome. The final section from that article:

“And then it’s Notre Dame offense’s game to win. Say what you want about Riley Leonard’s passing capabilities, but I imagine he’s going to have a decent day considering that Western Illinois put up 204 yards through the air. Combine the more robust rushing threat and it should be good home opener for the Irish.

Positive thoughts. Fend the intrusive thoughts off.”

A lot of us went into this game with similar if not identical takes, and that is one of the main reasons that the reality ended up being so frustrating.

So let’s just dig into the numbers.

Scoring Summary

Notre Dame dropped their home opener to Northern Illinois 16-14. Both teams got off to relatively strong offensive starts and things got kind of sporadic for both teams as the game went on.

The Irish’s two scores came via the rushing game. The first of those rushing touchdowns capped off a long opening drive for Notre Dame and the second came at the end of another long drive in third quarter.

Although it definitely felt different watching live, Northern Illinois’ offense wasn’t as prolific as Notre Dame’s. From a strictly scoring perspective. While the Huskies’ offense was particularly effective, the bulk of their scoring came on the backs of special teams. They tallied up one touchdown through the air but ultimately the three made field goals was what put Northern Illinois over the top.

Note: I don’t agree with placing the blame on Notre Dame’s special teams but the two missed field goals were major missed opportunities that could be viewed as the deciding factors in the game. And even then, I’m not including the longshot 62-yard attempt to close out the game. That’s strictly from a high-level, quant perspective and is a broad take that masks a whole bunch of underlying factors beyond special teams control.

Offensive Benchmarking

We’re only two games into the season so take any kinds of benchmarking with a grain of salt. But the offensive trajectory is headed in a grim direction. In some of the most impactful areas we are notably behind what the “significantly challenged” 2023 offense put up.

The Irish had 286 yards of total offense in Week 2, compared with 356 in Week 1 and benchmarked against 432 yards per game from the 2023 season. The team ended up eking out slightly more passing yards in Week 2 but is still way under the 2023 benchmark. And because I really don’t like to add too much insult to injury, I will leave you all to add some color to why that slight uptick in passing yards from an efficiency standpoint is actually pretty regressive.

The rushing production significantly dropped off from Week 1 to Week 2. Notre Dame wracked up 123 rushing yards against Northern Illinois, compared with 198 yards against Texas A&M. And that’s something that this team couldn’t afford under any circumstance in this game and can’t in the future. Unless there’s a shift at quarterback or in the passing game’s production. And even with that, there’s way too much potential in the running back room for that aspect of the offense to be falling off so significantly.

The passing accuracy remained “flat.” Leonard completed 20 of 33 pass attempts in Week 2, compared with 18 of 30 attempts in Week 1. Once again, I’ll leave it up to folks to figure out how deep you want to go into the doom spiral based on those stats.

Same thing with the rushing efficiency. The Irish finished the Northern Illinois game with 4.4 yards per carry, compared with 5.8 yards per carry against Texas A&M.

Rushing Details

Riley Leonard and Jeremiyah Love tied for rushing attempts, with 11 a-piece. Love produced significantly more, tallying up 79 yards and 64.2% of the team’s collective rushing yards. Jadarian Price came in at #2 in terms of production with 24 yards on the ground, 19.5% of team production. Love and Leonard accounted for the team’s two Week 2 rushing touchdowns.

Receiving Details

Beaux Collins continues to emerge as the team’s leading receiver, especially when it counts. Collins had five receptions in Week 2 and tallied up a total of 45 yards. Jaden Greathouse had pretty comparable production, with five receptions and 41 yards. Transfer wide receiver Kris Mitchell also had a notable contribution and tight end Mitchell Evans starting to work back into things this week. Overall, though, the receiving stats for Notre Dame remain stubbornly flat.

Defensive Summary

I really do want more for (not from) the Irish defense. I’m heavily biased, but they continue to be the most exciting defense to watch in college football and their depth is incredible.

The defense tallied up 74 total tackles with 32 of them being solo tackles. The key stat here, unfortunately, is that Northern Illinois’ time of possession was 34:38 compared with 25:22 for Notre Dame.

Final Thoughts

I love college football. And I love writing here because we don’t take things too seriously.

This loss sucked but I haven’t lost any love for the game, analytics, writing or most importantly: Notre Dame football. If the Irish come out and win next week I’m going to be excited and the frustrations from this game will fade significantly. That’s because the high I get from college football when it’s good is so much more powerful than the hits from the low points. At least for me.

And a lot of that is also because I don’t really much care about National Championships. That’s a lot easier because I live in the macro data world and am hyper aware of how many things have to go right in this sport for any team to win it all. Even with the expanded postseason, sure there will be 12 teams that make it into the playoff but the fact remains that there’s still only going to be one champion when it’s all said and done. We’re going to be in the same position as the vast majority of teams/fanbases that we’re looking at enviously right now come January 2025. We can fight about all of the details that happen in between but that’s still the end-game.

This Irish team still has the ability to be really successful and fun to watch this season, even if the games end up being more competitive than we’d hope for. That’ll ultimately be determined by strategy/personnel decisions that I can’t and honsetly shouldn’t have nay influence on as I write this from the table in my favorite coffee shop. I hope the righ decisions get made but I’ll still be showing up each week.

Cheers and Go Irish!!