Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 18, 2025 5 I f you thought Notre Dame's offensive output versus Boise State was on the un- acceptable side just because the Fighting Irish only put up 28 points, exactly half of the to- tal they reached in consecutive appearances against Purdue and Arkansas, think again. It was actually an elite offensive day for the blue and gold. Er, on that day, the gold and green. Notre Dame averaged 7.2 yards per play. If that was a season-long average for the entirety of 2024, it would have ranked third in the FBS behind Miami and Ole Miss — and right ahead of Ohio State, the eventual national champion. The Hurricanes were quarter- backed by the eventual No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft in Cam Ward, and the Reb- els are coached by one of the most brilliant offensive minds of his generation in Lane Kiffin. Not bad company for ole Notre Dame. So, how in the heck did the Irish only score four touchdowns in a game in which they were moving the ball at a clip only attainable by the very best of- fenses in the country? Penalties. Notre Dame's quartet of touchdown drives did not feature one offensive penalty. The Irish had four penalties on that side of the ball at other points in the game, and those setbacks debilitated the offensive operation to the point of preventing further points from being put on the board. It started with left guard Billy Schr- auth's false start on third-and-goal from the 1-yard line. That turned into third-and-goal from the 6, and the Irish still gained five yards on the ensuing play, but on fourth-and-goal from the 1 Notre Dame was stuffed on a rushing attempt for Jeremiyah Love out of the wildcat package. What would have happened if Schr- auth hadn't false-started? Impossible to say. What we do know is he set the offense back five yards and essentially made it so that Notre Dame had only one chance to gain one yard for a touch- down instead of two. That's a costly flinch. "There's aggressive penalties and undisciplined penalties," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. "Un- disciplined penalties are lack of focus. I don't think it's the flow of the game. It's just a lack of focus in that moment. If you false start, I'm just not locked in. If I jump offsides, I am not focused on what I'm supposed to be focused on that play. That's one of the great challenges." Right guard Guerby Lambert was also called for a false start. Left tackle An- thonie Knapp was nailed for holding. Tight end Eli Raridon got tagged for pass interference, though that was probably one of the more acceptable "aggressive" penalties Freeman alluded to. An example of one that wasn't, which doubled as an indicator that the flag-in- ducing infractions weren't unique to the Notre Dame offense? Safety Tae Johnson clearly throwing a Boise State ball car- rier to the ground after he had already made multiple steps on the white out-of- bounds turf paint on the sidelines. "Tae-Tae's got to know bet- ter where he's at on the field, and we've got to make bet- ter decisions in that situation there," Freeman said. So m e t i m e s, tea m s j u s t get unlucky with calls. And coaches don't agree with them. See: defensive tackle Jason Onye making what ap- peared to be a clean, on-time tackle of the Broncos' quarter- back and still getting flagged for roughing the passer. Free- man vehemently argued with the refs in response to that. Or linebacker Kyngstonn Vil- iamu-Asa making a routine pass-rushing play and acci- dentally hitting the quarter- back in the head, which is also an automatic roughing the passer penalty, possibly due to — as Freeman insinuated in his Monday press conference — Maddux Madsen's stature being on the shorter side. He's only 5-foot-10. But the bottom line is, 11 penalties for 112 yards comes down to more than just bad luck. Notre Dame could have beaten Boise State by way more than 21 points if the Irish reined in some of their uncharacteristic mistakes. There's a fine line between doing that and all of a sudden playing too timid for the fear of being called for penalties, but Free- man is confident his guys can pull off an attacking style of play without racking up instances of illegalities. Whatever the Irish's response is to the way they went overboard against Boise State, one thing is certain: it cannot be more of the same. Freeman won't toler- ate that. "We can't put ourselves behind the sticks because of a negative-yardage play or a penalty," Freeman said. "That's called beating Notre Dame. If we don't beat Notre Dame, we'll be hard to beat. But we can't put ourselves behind the sticks because of penalties." ✦ Notre Dame had 11 penalties for 124 yards against Boise State in Week 6, uncharacteristic of a Marcus Freeman-led team. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER Irish Must Cut Out Penalties To Reach Full Potential Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA