Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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14 JANUARY 2023 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME Tyler Carpenter — Hockey The sophomore forward from Palatine, Ill., re- corded the first multi-goal and multi-point game of his career in a 5-2 win at Boston College Nov. 25. He tallied a goal to even the score at 2-2, then he assisted on the go-ahead goal before finding the back of the net for an insurance goal. Through 18 games, Carpenter was tied for fifth on the team with 7 points (3 goals, 4 assists). Paige Grant — Track and Field The sophomore from Portland, Ore., opened the indoor track and field season in grand fashion at the Blue & Gold Invitational Dec. 2, winning the 800-meter race with a time of 2:14.61. She was also a member of Notre Dame's 4x400-meter relay team that finished sixth. Grant, a former first-team all-state performer in high school, beat her previous best 800 time of 2:14.81 set at the Notre Dame Invi- tational last year. Chris Guiliano — Swimming The Douglassville, Pa., native made program history Dec. 2, when he be- came the first Irish male swimmer to ever qualify for the Olympic Trials. The Notre Dame sophomore punched his ticket by winning the B Final at the 2022 Toyota U.S. Open in Greensboro, N.C., in a time of 22.46, well under the Olympic Trials cut time of 22.79. The trials will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in June 2024. Kaylyn Winkler — Volleyball The graduate student mid- dle blocker from San Antonio capped her fine 2022 season with a terrific individual per- formance in a 3-1 victory over Virginia Tech Nov. 25 in Blacks- burg, Va. She led the team with 6 total blocks and also recorded 13 kills on 30 attempts, both second- best marks on the Irish. For the season, Winkler led the squad with 91 total blocks and finished third with 189 kills. TOP TOP OF THE CLASS OF THE CLASS Irish student-athletes excelling on the field and in the classroom ✦ GIMME FIVE Drew Pyne's lone season as the starting quarterback at Notre Dame might not be remembered by numbers. Several were not good enough for Irish fans to want to reserve space in their brains for them. Take 183.7 passing yards per game, for instance. That ranked 86th nationally. There was a number, however, that is right up there with the best of the best in program history. Pyne's season-long passer rating of 155.3 slotted him 21st in the country, one spot behind Michigan's J.J. McCarthy — a player who earned much credit for leading the Wolverines to a second straight College Football Player berth — and two spots ahead of Georgia's Stetson Bennett IV, a 2022 Heisman Trophy finalist who has the Bulldogs in a position to win the national championship for the second consecutive season. Only three quarterbacks in Notre Dame history have had a better passer rating than that of Pyne's this year: Jimmy Clausen's 161.4 in 2009, Bob Williams' 161.4 in 1949 and Brady Quinn's 158.4 in 2005. Pyne's mark is even better than John Huarte's fig- ure of 155.1 in 1964. Huarte won the Heis- man that year. — Tyler Horka CHARTING THE IRISH SPLASH PLAYS The last three seasons, I have tracked what I call "splash plays," which are an expanded version of havoc plays. A splash play is a sack, tackle for loss, tackle for no gain, pass broken up, interception, forced fumble, fumble recovery, third- or fourth-down stop, or a goal-to-go tackle stop (a play that is less than half the yards needed to score). Half-sacks or half-tackles for loss count as a full splash play. Despite missing one game due to injury and parts of a couple others because of targeting penalties, senior linebacker JD Bertrand led the Fighting Irish with 32 splash plays during the 12-game 2022 regular season. For comparison, Foskey led the team with 27 splash plays in 13 games last year. There were eight players with at least 17, though, compared to just five this year (albeit in one fewer game). Unsurprisingly, Notre Dame's havoc play production has dropped with the slight dip in splash plays. The Irish's havoc rate — the percentage of plays in which the defense recorded a tackle for loss, forced a fumble, intercepted a pass or broke up a pass — this year is 14.7 percent, down from 16.5 percent in 2021 and 20.8 percent in 2020. This season, they have more games under 9 percent (three) than they do above 20 (two). Last year, they were under 9 percent once. All told, Notre Dame is tied for 38th nationally in tackles for loss per game, tied for 91st in forced fumbles per game and in a three-way tie for last in passes defended per game (2.5). Those respective rankings were 51st, 18th and 68th in 2021. They were 18th, 64th and 31st in 2020. It can't be a coincidence Notre Dame is 130th in red-zone touchdown rate allowed (78.79 percent) after finishing the last two seasons fourth and 23rd. The Irish do enough well to rank 15th in oppo- nent red-zone entries, which is far better than 74th in 2021 and 52nd in 2020. But they're lacking the disruption needed to turn those forays into field goals or takeaways. — Patrick Engel Rk. Player Splash Plays 1. JD Bertrand 32 2. Isaiah Foskey 26 3. Marist Liufau 18 4. Jack Kiser 17 Justin Ademilola 17 Rk. Player Splash Plays 6. Jayson Ademilola 15 7. Howard Cross III 13 8. TaRiq Bracy 12 9. Benjamin Morrison 11 10. Rylie Mills 10 Cam Hart 10 NOTRE DAME'S SPLASH PLAY LEADERS IN 2022 BEST SINGLE-SEASON PASSER RATINGS IN NOTRE DAME HISTORY Rk. Player (Year) Passer Rating 1. Jimmy Clausen (2009) 161.4 Bob Williams (1949) 161.4 3. Brady Quinn (2005) 158.4 4. Drew Pyne (2022) 155.3 5. John Huarte (1964) 155.1 Junior quarterback Drew Pyne put up one of the best single-season passer ratings in Irish history with his mark of 155.3. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER