Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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14 NOV. 23, 2019 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY ANDREW MENTOCK C oming into the season, junior running back Jafar Armstrong was expected to be the heir apparent to the Notre Dame rushing crown won by Josh Adams in 2017 and Dexter Williams in 2018. His emergence hasn't gone quite as he or the coaching staff planned. In the first series of the season opener against Louisville, he went down with an abdominal injury that re- quired surgery. "When it first happened, I was just hoping it wasn't going to be a long- lasting injury," Armstrong said. "It eventually was, but I feel like that's just the way life goes. Sometimes stuff's not going to go your way. "I've been hurt before, and I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to rehab hard, get treatment and, as a football player, that's the life you live sometimes." Up to this point, Armstrong's Notre Dame career has been plagued by injuries. In 2018, he missed time with an infection in his knee, a setback that required two minor surgeries to ad- equately clean out, plus an ankle sprain. Armstrong was still able to play in 10 of the 13 games that year, but he was significantly limited in many of those contests. "It was frustrating," he said. "You want to be out there and play, but you can't let your frustration dictate how you feel and have that cause your confidence to shift or cause your mood to go down." He saw his first game action since the season opener when USC made its semi-annual trip to South Bend Oct. 12, and has struggled to return to his old form. Heading into to the Navy game Nov. 16, Armstrong had run the ball 28 times for 59 yards, an average of just 2.1 yards per touch. That's more than three yards less than his 2018 season average. At a glance, his lack of success run- ning the ball doesn't appear to have hurt the overall productivity of the Notre Dame running back room this season, which seems to be on par with last year, if not better. This shouldn't come as a surprise, but numbers can be deceiving. Prior to the matchup with Navy, the Fighting Irish rushing attack ranked 41st in the nation in yards per carry at 4.9 (per SportsReference. com). Those numbers are slightly better than the 2018 edition that fin- ished the season with 4.5 yards per carry, which was good for 54th. The slight uptick in the 2019 Irish ground game has more to do with other skill positions than it does the running back unit. Take out rushing attempts from the Notre Dame quar- terbacks and wide receivers, and this season's running backs are averaging 4.75 yards per carry, which would have them just barely in the top 50. But do the same for the 2018 running backs, and their production jumps up to 5.46 yards per carry, which eas- ily would have been in the top 20. More than anything, this minor yet significant dip has to do with injuries and inconsistent play at the position, which creates more uncertainty at the future of the position. The standout running back on this team has still been senior Tony Jones Jr. He was actually on pace for a 1,000-yard rushing season before the entire team no-showed against Michigan Oct. 26, and he left the game early with a rib injury. After sitting out against Virginia Tech, he played roughly half of the offensive snaps against Duke, but finished the game with only 14 yards on seven rushing attempts. "He was kind of getting back to where he was. He wasn't certainly the Tony Jones that we saw run- ning against USC," Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said. "I think PRESSURE TO PRODUCE Jafar Armstrong returned to health, but is still searching to regain form as a rusher while continuing to impress as a receiver