One stat illustrates Notre Dame football offense still has work to do
Even fresh off a 48-20 win, the Notre Dame football team’s still needs to improve in one very key area to reach its potential.
Some might believe that any time a team scores 48 points, that there was some massive improvement in an offense that has struggled at times this year. However, the blowout score did more to mask problems than demonstrate they’ve been solved.
Gerad Parker has come under fire this year for an offense that is star-studded, but ineffective for large periods of the 2023 season. One stat shows exactly where the Fighting Irish need to improve the most and the quickest.
Third-down conversion has been a real problem in the last few weeks. And it’s been a big enough problem that Notre Dame football fans are rightly concerned that it’s becoming a pattern.
As the Twitter account College Football Watcher pointed out, Notre Dame football is just 14-for-48 on third down in its last four games. That’s a conversion rate of just 29 percent.
That looks bad all on its own. It’s worse when considering that rate would have the Fighting Irish ranked 122nd out of 133 teams over the course of the season if they continued on that pace.
It’s even more concerning considering the 3rd-down conversion rate went down precipitously once the Notre Dame football team started playing better teams. Of course, inflated stats are always going to look inflated once a team starts playing Top 25 teams, but the ineffectiveness against better opponents is concerning nonetheless.
Notre Dame football needs improvement
To underline how a 48 point night still didn’t show a great deal of improvement on offense, one need to look no further than the fact that the Fighting Irish were just 3-of-10 on 3rd down. By contrast, the USC Trojans went 6-for-13, and were only thwarted by Xavier Watts and company forcing five turnovers.
It should surprise no one that in the Irish’s big loss to Louisville, they were just 3-of-13 on 3rd down. They were just 3-of15 against Duke.
Weirdly enough, the best showing the Notre Dame football team put together in that regard in the last four weeks was against Ohio State. The Irish were 5-for-10 but still lost.
However, it’s still a safe bet that the Golden Domers are going to need to improve on 3rd down, should they want to keep the good feelings of Saturday rolling out of the bye week.