Notre Dame staff needs to improve offensive play calling

When it came to the Notre Dame offensive game plan on Monday, there were some head-scratching moments.

To everyone who watched the Notre Dame Labor Day match-up with Louisville, it was obvious that the offense wasn’t as successful as expected. The Irish were expected to dominate. They ended up winning convincingly, but failed to cover the spread.

This was due, in-part, to the disappointing play calling from offensive coordinator Chip Long.

To put it simply, the play calling was predictable and overly conservative. People in the stands could have guessed that a run up the middle was coming next. It was frustrating to wait nearly the entire game for Book to throw past the first down marker.

The Irish ran up the middle, into a crowded defense, on third and 1 and were stopped more than a couple of times in their tracks.

That type of play calling needs to change going forward, especially if the Irish want to beat teams like Georgia. Notre Dame needs to run more aggressive plays. They need to take shots downfield, and have plays develop faster. Otherwise, Notre Dame is making themselves one dimensional. They are making it easier to defend them.

They also need to keep Ian Book out of harm’s way. Book took too many big hits against Louisville. That’s not sustainable over the course of a long season. It’s certainly not ideal given the uncertainty of Notre Dame’s back-up quarterback situation.

Breaking down the type of plays that the Irish ran, there was a lot of RPO, and a variation on RPO called pass-run-option. In a traditional RPO, the quarterback either hands the ball of or throws a simple route, like a slant. On the other hand, in the pass-run-option routes are designed to clear out the secondary, and leave a linebacker on an island. The linebacker is then forced to choose between covering a wide receiver or spying the quarterback. If they go into coverage, the play becomes a quarterback draw.

All of these plays were super-slow developing. This made them less effective than they are when a team like Oklahoma runs them. So, either run them right, or don’t run them at all. They need to be snap decisions. They can’t be ‘Let me think about it’ scenarios.

These plays make it seem like there’s too much going on in the offense for it to be run effectively. There needs to balance in the offensive approach, and the Irish need to be more aggressive. Otherwise, this offense will be easy for good team to stop.