Kelly Needs To Simplify Notre Dame Defense

Something has to change on the defensive side of the ball for Notre Dame to have a successful 2016.

Notre Dame completed their 2015 season with a loss to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 10-3. Their two regular season losses to Clemson and Stanford by a total of four points showed how close the Irish came to making the College Football playoffs.

Injuries

One of the biggest stories was the amount of injuries the Fighting Irish faced especially on offense. They lost Malik Zaire, Taren Folston, Durham Smythe early for the year and others for parts of the season. Defensively, the Irish lost Jarron Jones and James Onwualu for most of the season. To this writer, the most disappointing part of the Notre Dame team was the defense coached by Brian VanGorder.

The Numbers

The Fighting Irish defense ranked 65th nationally in yards allowed rushing, giving up 166 yards per game. The defense also gave up 24 runs of 20 yards or more during the regular season. Giving up this many yards rushing per game allowed the opponents offense to control the ball and run time off the clock and also helped the opposition gain field position.

The Notre Dame pass defense did well statistically, ranking 28^th nationally in yards allowed per game with 195. The Fighting Irish defense ranked 77^th in yards per catch (12.5) and they intercepted only eight passes during the entire regular season. Lastly, the Fighting Irish allowed 20 points or less only three times to Texas, Wake Forest, and Boston College, which finished 85^th, 120^th, and 121^st in scoring offense respectively.

It’s hard to forget Notre Dame scoring what appeared to be the game winning touchdown against Stanford with less than one minute left in the game, then having Stanford move the ball 50 yards to get the game-winning field goal. Also, it was hard to watch Ohio State moving the ball up the down the field the entire game, scoring 44 points and defeating the Fighting Irish.

VanGorder

Brian VanGorder has an impressive resume having been a defensive coordinator with Auburn and Georgia at the collegiate level and coached in the NFL as the Atlanta Falcons defensive coordinator for five years.

When VanGorder was hired, he changed the defensive set from a 4-3 to a 3-4. He also said he would make the defense much more aggressive. This past season, he had five players that were four star recruits in Isaac Rochelle, Sheldon Day, Keivarae Russel, Cole Luke, Elijah Shumate and two five star players in Jaylon Smith and Max Redfield. Even with these players, the Irish defense gave up too many yards and too many points.

I believe there were two factors that indicated that Van Gorder’s defense was much too complicated for the collegiate level.

First, Joe Schmidt was called upon both last season and this season to align teammates on the field. When he was injured and unable to play the last four games in 2014, the Fighting Irish defense gave up 40 points or more in all those games. The Irish defense did have many injuries that year, but too much was expected of Schmidt.

Second, Max Redfield, the free safety who majors in International Studies and minors in Chinese was asked to compare the Irish defense schemes versus learning Chinese. He said learning Chinese was much easier than learning the Fighting Irish defense.

Defensive players need to react quickly to what the offense is doing. It appeared that this season, the Irish defense, because of its complexity had to think rather than react. The defense seemed a step too slow in most games. I believe the defense should be made less complicated and less complex, which would allow the defense to react much more quickly to the opposing offense.

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Kelly

I believe if Brian Kelly has Coach VanGorder make the defense less complicated and complex, the 2016 version of the Fighting Irish defense would resemble some of the great Notre Dame defenses of the past and help the Fighting Irish make the college playoffs next season.