No. 7 Notre Dame did not have as much trouble in his second game of the season as he did in his first game, beating South Florida 52-0. The game was quickly completed. The Irish started with the ball and marched into the field for the first of many touchdowns.
The Irish Bull dominated all stages of the game and also took advantage of plenty of mistakes. Let’s take a look at three major takeaways from the afternoon snooze in the South Band.
1. The Irish crime looked better
It wasn’t that things were terrible last week during the 27-13 win over Duke, but it wasn’t agile. Outside of Kieran Williams, the offense felt like his first game-playing unit of the season after a one-time bizarre se fisson. That was not the case on Saturday.
After starting three consecutive weeks of three-and-a-half games, the Irish opened things up with a 25-yard advantage in the first game and never looked back. Notre Dame started the day with four straight touchdown drives. It wasn’t until the end of the third quarter that the Irish were picked up for the first time, and then Ian Book was pulled to the third-string QB Drew Pie.
Speaking of the book, its final passing line won’t get much attention. He passed 12-19 for 143 yards. When he made no mistakes and often didn’t need to throw it, he threw some. And when he made three touchdowns off his feet, the odds are Brian Kelly and Tommy Reese will continue to hurt the little things with him.
The Irish offense ends with 429 total yards, averaging 6.5 per game. Most of the damage was done on the ground, where the team ran for 281 yards and its carrying average was 6.2 yards.
And, speaking of the Irish Run Game …
2. RB has a lot of depth
Karen Williams was the main horse in the Irish rushing attack last week, and it looked like Chris Tyree would be an excellent complement to her in the run game. This week, the Irish showed that they have a lot of options to rotate.
Williams ran for 62 yards on 10 carriages, while Cebo Bo Flumister ran and led the team. He finished with 127 yards on 13 carry with a touchdown. Tyree had his own 65 rushing yards on eight carriages, and while it was almost ineffective, Jaffer Armstrong got seven carriages and a touchdown.
And, as mentioned earlier, Book made three rushing touchdowns, even though he ran for just nine yards, meaning the Irish day has a rushing touchdown of scores of four different players.
B. A lot went wrong for the Bulls
As you might expect, when a team loses a game 52-0, the only thing that didn’t go wrong for the Bulls. The offense was largely ineffective, ending with ૧11 yards at 7.7 yards per game. Defensively, as noted above, they could not do much to prevent Irish crime. Notre Dame was punted only once in the game and he was in the game with his third-string QB.
And then there were the special teams, which was the perfect dream for the Bulls. U.S.F. Punter Trent Snyder started his day with a 20-yard shank, and from there things got worse. In the next game, there was a quick reversal on his head, and Snyder managed to kick, he went nowhere. Later, another snap went over Snyder’s head, and he went to the ball once more and got a kick. Unfortunately, this time he was not lucky enough to get more than one foot on the ball as the punt was blocked and recovered to the end zone for the Notre Dame touchdown.
I think it’s safe to say that South Florida will go home to Tampa and burn the tape. However, if the silver lining is found anywhere, it will run after Johnny Ford. He scored a great run and it looked like the kind of playmaker this team needed when it came to the team conference game.
