Notre Dame football can now rest before ACC Championship Game

The Notre Dame football team took care of business against Syracuse, and will now get time to rest up and get healthy before the ACC title game.

Thanks to the ACC adjusting the schedules of Notre Dame football and Clemson, the regular season is now over. The Wake Forest make up game, which had the potential to be tricky, is off, leaving the Irish with some time to rest up before the ACC title game in two weeks.

Notre Dame has gone undefeated during the regular season and is heading to the ACC Championship Game to take on Clemson. Clemson, meanwhile, is the cause for the extra bye week, as Dabo Swinney‘s moaning about Florida State ducking them and demanding that the Seminoles pay for Clemson’s travel is why both Clemson and Notre Dame were given bye weeks to end the season.

After all, you can’t give one team in the Championship Game a bye week, but not the other.

In the end, it’s good news for Notre Dame. They’re coming off a ten-game season schedule where they ran the table. That’s not easy to do physically or mentally. On Saturday, We could see the mental toll in how slowly Notre Dame started against Syracuse, making silly mistakes and sleepwalking through the first quarter and a half.

The offensive line, meanwhile, is a personification of their physical toll on the game. The Irish are on their third center in as many weeks, which is a challenge in getting the snaps to Ian Book and making sure the offensive line is in the right blocking scheme.

With Clemson’s penchant for creative blitzes, you need to be as solid at Center as possible, and while Jarrett Patterson isn’t coming back this season they need to get back to second-string center Zeke Correll. Correll is dealing with an ankle sprain, which sidelined him against Syracuse. Meanwhile, Tommy Kraemer needs to get back in shape following his appendectomy.