Notre Dame football: Rose Bowl offensive grades vs. Alabama

The Notre Dame football team lost to Alabama in the Rose Bowl on Friday night, and here are the positional grades for the Irish offense.

Notre Dame football was always going to need to score to keep up with Alabama, as that’s just reality. If you don’t score on almost every possession, then you don’t stand a chance of keeping it close when going up against this type of offensive juggernaut.

On Friday, Notre Dame was hardly able to score at all, as Ian Book was ineffective, and the wide receivers were AWOL. Kyren Williams was the only option seemingly available.

Coming into the game, it was clear that Notre Dame’s goal was to limit the number of possessions and shorten the game. This would be complementary to their defense and limit the number of points that Alabama could put up. In that respect, the gameplan kind of worked.

Alabama was scoring 49.7 points per game, and Notre Dame held them to 31, a minor miracle in its own right. The issue was that the Irish scored 14 points, that’s it,14 total points, and one of their two scores was in garbage time.

By trying to go slow, the Irish often found themselves in third and long situations, where Alabama could tee off on the Irish it seemed like whenever they wanted. It also made their play-calling predictable, and on the offensive side of the ball, nothing worked all night long.

Unfortunately, the grades reflect the score, as this game was ugly all around for Notre Dame. So, here are the final offensive position grades for the 2021 Rose Bowl: