Notre Dame football: Irish should attack Clemson with man coverage

It’s time for Notre Dame football to show they can hang with Clemson, and one way to do that will be to show aggressiveness on defense.

Trevor Lawrence might be out, but Clemson is still one of the best offenses in the country. Luckily for Notre Dame football fans, the Irish bring an elite defense to meet that Tigers offense.

Throughout the game with the Tigers, there will be individual battles that decide the game as a whole. Can a guard get to the second level? Does a defensive end let themselves get chipped by a running back? Does a wide receiver run past the safeties?

Just one person getting beat on any given defensive play can mean disaster. This makes it easy to want to play conservatively. Fall into a soft zone and let the game stay in front of you. Make the freshman quarterback DJ Uiagalelei prove he can consistently make the right decision and earn every yard.

That simply won’t work for Notre Dame in this game, though.

If you sit back and let Clemson come at you they will win. They’ll move the ball and score because they almost never shoot themselves in the foot. You need to take it to them and force the issue. This means using blitzes to make Uiagalelei uncomfortable and get rid of the ball before he’s ready. This means challenging the Clemson receivers in man coverage.

Clemson normally has such elite talent at wide receiver that it’s a fool’s errand to try and play man coverage against them. Justyn Ross, Tee Higgins, and the like would easily blow by the best corners in college football. Except, that really hasn’t been the case so far in 2020.

When Trevor Lawrence was healthy, he was struggling against man coverage. This comes down to the simple reality of man coverage. If you can’t shake the coverage to get open, there’s no one to throw to, whereas in the zone you can always settle into a soft spot.

Zone is often considered a way of evening the playing field against a more athletic team. It takes away one on one matchups where you can get beat. It forces the quarterback to go through their progressions and can trick them into making bad decisions.

It doesn’t work against smart teams, though. They can feel out the soft spots and attack up and down the field. This is where Clemson traditionally presents such a big issue for defenses. They’re too athletic to beat in man and too smart to beat in zone.

However, knowing that their receivers aren’t athletic enough to consistently beat Notre Dame in man coverage, based on their struggles with Syracuse and Virginia in man coverage. Let Nick McCloud and the other corners play press zone and challenge the Clemson wide receivers. Two or three seconds of tight coverage is all it takes for blitzing linebackers to get home and force a bad throw.

Kyle Hamilton, as always, is the key for the Notre Dame defense if they were to man up against Clemson. He’d often end up as a single high safety who would need to keep the game in front of him. It would be his responsibility to cover up any corner being beat deep or missing a tackle. He’s more than capable of winning in Cover 1 and preventing the big play threat that comes with man coverage.

It may be riskier, but you won’t beat Clemson on your heels. Notre Dame needs to smack them in the mouth, challenging them in man coverage.