Notre Dame Football: Grading Notre Dame’s Offensive Position Groups vs. Vanderbilt

Notre Dame football still has not eclipsed 24 points on the season. While the offense has not performed well as a whole, there still have been some bright spots.

By now, it’s pretty clear that the Notre Dame football team has some major holes on offense. While the Irish defense continues to be the backbone of the team, the offense searches for answers to simply be good enough. For now, they have achieved that “good enough” grade, as the Irish are 3-0 to start the season. As better competition looms, however, the Irish offense needs to find some answers.

Let’s take a look how each position group did on Saturday versus Vanderbilt:

Quarterback

I’m starting with this first because, well, it’s the one that everyone wants to talk about. Brandon Wimbush ran the ball well and avoided the major mistake. That’s good because that seems to be what the Irish coaching staff expects of him. However, he did not throw the ball all that well and the Vanderbilt defense was able to tee off on the Irish running game in the second half. The Irish offense only mustered 6 points in the second half.

Meanwhile, Ian Book got a few more plays as Notre Dame’s goal line quarterback. He completed 3 of 3 passes in the formation, one of which went for a touchdown to Nic Weishar.

Combining their bodies of work, the quarterback position gets a C+, but Notre Dame will need more from the position to jump-start the Irish offense against better competition on the horizon.

Offensive Line

Given the struggles of the first two weeks of the season, the Irish offensive line was vastly improved on Saturday. The Irish rushed for 245 yards on over 5 yards per carry and repeatedly gashed Vanderbilt for big plays in the running game. In addition, the Irish kept Brandon Wimbush clean, as Vanderbilt was unable to register a sack. That’s about as good as it gets, so for that reason, the offensive line gets an A.

Running backs

Notre Dame’s running backs undoubtedly played their best game on Saturday. Tony Jones, Jr. looked like a different back, running hard and with a lot of energy. Jafar Armstrong continued to show improvement as a running back, as he continues his transition from wide receiver. Best yet, Jones showed how he is able to be a weapon in the passing game. Perhaps Notre Dame’s best play of the afternoon featured Jones catching a wheel route from Wimbush, turning it in to a 32-yard gain in the 4th quarter.

The Notre Dame running backs get an A.

Wide Receivers and Tight Ends

The struggling passing game surely does not solely fall on the play of the quarterbacks. Notre Dame’s wide receivers were a hard group to judge on Saturday, but I’ll say this: I’d just like to see this group with a higher sense of urgency when playing balls in the air.

On the bright side, Alize Mack and Nic Weishar both made big catches (Weishar’s lone catch came on Notre Dame’s only touchdown of the second half) to help the Irish receivers.

The receivers and tight ends get a grade of B. 

Overall, the Irish offense simply needs to be better. On the season, the Irish have scored just 70 points (just over 23 points per game). They’ll need to score more than that to be a true threat this season. On this day, the Irish offense gets an overall grade of B-.