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It certainly was not as easy as many had hoped, but in the end, Notre Dame's number 9 was able to comfortably dispose of Louisville when it opened the season, winning the 35-17 win Monday night at Cardinal Stadium.
Louisville, in his first match with new coach Scott Satterfield, came out hot and played well. The Cardinals took a 14-7 lead at the end of the first quarter, but did not hold it for long. Notre Dame scored four minutes later to equalize at the end of the first goal, then the talent advantage of the Irish won out over the last 45 minutes of play by outperforming the 21-3 Cardinals.
The Irish offensive was led by Tony Jones Jr., who had 112 yards and a touchdown. Chase Claypool caught five passes for 94 yards. Quarterback Ian Book took a slow start but finished with a fine line, recording 193 yards, 81 and a total of two touchdowns.
Jawon Pass, Louisville, had 134 passes, 67 rushing yards and two touchdowns in total.
Here are the three main takeaways of it.
1. Our Lady seems to be able to run football. Book has struggled to find a rhythm in this game early, and the truth is that he never really found it. He finished with 193 passing yards after completing only 14 of his 23 attempts. Fortunately for the Irish, they did not need to move the balloon in the air in this one.
Notre Dame finished with 232 rushing yards with 42 attempts for an average of 5.5 yards per run. If you withdraw the yardage per bag, this average goes to 6.3 yards per race. Jones and his 112 yards led the game, and Book finished with 81, but Jahmir Smith also scored two touchdowns. Notre Dame has also collected nine passes of at least 10 yards, including two more than 30, which bodes well for the Irish, especially against an offensive line that should be good. This line has had some difficulties, however, but this is not unusual for an opening game.
2. But will the Irish stop the race? Even though the Irish managed to run the ball, they did not succeed in stopping it. Louisville finished with 249 rushing yards, averaging 5.3 yards per race. The average of Louisville points reaching 6.4 yards per stroke when removing the bag, and the Irish defense was also bleeding a lot.
If you think the nine races of Notre Dame more than 10 yards out of 42 races (21.4%) gave a lot, Louisville had 12 in 47 attempts (25.5%). Notre Dame did not hurt tonight and it's a safe bet that it will not hurt during the home opener against New Mexico next week, but the Irish will be heading to Athens in two weeks. If the race defense is not settled by then, the day could be very long against the Bulldogs.
3. Even in defeat, Louisville looks like a much better team in 2019. To be honest, Louisville gave up Bobby Petrino during the second half of last season, as it was obvious that he had already stopped. This led to many unbalanced losses to finish the year and a record of 2-10. Well, there is a new staff of coaches in town, and the change was evident from the start.
I do not know how many games this team will win under Satterfield in 2019, but there was energy and determination in the Cardinals on Monday night that were nowhere to be found last year. In the end, they did not have enough clashes to face the Irish, but Notre Dame is in the top 10 and few of them can. In a fairly open CAC after Clemson, this is a team that could suddenly be more dangerous than expected.
However, they will have to clean things up a bit. The Cardinals returned the ball three times Monday night, not counting the two other fumbles they were able to recover. It's hard to beat anyone when you lose the ball five times in a game, not to mention a top 10. Yet, if it had happened last year, it was the result of a team that did not care. This was not the case on Monday.
Thank you for being past.
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