Notre Dame football has pronounced the offensive line shuffling, dead
Marcus Freeman said that the Notre Dame football team isn’t going to be shuffling it’s offensive line moving forward, and a chorus of Hallelujahs followed.
Outside of Joe Alt, the Notre Dame football team’s offensive line play has been bit up and down this season. But the Irish front was never worse than it was against Louisville.
In hindsight, it’s not hard to point to at least one reason why Notre Dame football’s offense had so many problems against the Cardinals. It was a game where Marcus Freeman, Gerad Parker and the rest of the offensive staff believed the best approach against a leaky defense was to constantly rotate the offensive line.
It didn’t work.
At all.
Luckily, it appears that Marcus Freeman and company have realized the error of their ways. During Monday’s press conference, Freeman said in very simple terms that there won’t be any more shuffling or rotating of the offensive line this season.
Joe Alt, Pat Coogan, Zeke Correll, Rocco Spindler and Blake Fisher are it. They’re the men. For the rest of the season. And that is certainly a better approach that whatever it was we saw against Louisville. It’s hard to put into words how badly the offensive line performed in that game.
Notre Dame football makes right call on offensive line
Against the Cardinals, in a game Notre Dame football lost 33-20, the Irish offensive line allowed five sacks, three quarterback hits and eight quarterback hurries. 16 quarterback pressures in all.
Yes, that’s also a statement on how poorly the Irish’s defensive front played that night. But those 16 pressures stand out.
Against Ohio State, Notre Dame allowed five pressures. Against USC, they allowed three.
While it struggled against Duke as well (18 pressures), the Notre Dame football offensive line has performed quite a bit better this season as a whole when it’s stable and everyone knows what job they’re doing.