Blue and Gold Illustrated

UNDER THE DOME Malik Zaire: Reality Somewhere In Between After sophomore quarterback Terry Hanratty's remarkable 1966 debut against No. 8 Purdue in which he completed 16 of 24 passes for 304 yards with three touchdowns in a 26‑14 victory, he noted that he walked into the film review the next day with his chest pumped out. It was quickly deflated when the coaching staff pointed out his missed reads, not carrying out fakes properly, bad timing … to the point where he walked out believing he stunk. Junior Malik Zaire went through a similar experience nearly 50 years later after completing 19 of 22 passes for 313 yards with three scores and earning some recognition as National Player of the Week in his Notre Dame Stadium debut versus Texas. "The days that he's getting heaps and heaps of praise, there's a lot of things we've got to work on," head coach Brian Kelly said. "And the days where he's getting a lot of blame, it probably wasn't all on CHARTING THE IRISH IRISH DOMINATED LONGHORNS Notre Dame defeated Texas 38‑3 in its season opener. Just how dominating was the victory? The Irish outgained the Longhorns 527‑163 in total yardage, and Notre Dame averaged 7.0 yards per play to Texas' 3.1, for a +3.9 yards per play margin. According to research done by Bill Connelly at SB Nation, outgaining your opponent by a 3.0 to 4.0 yards per play margin results in a 98.9 percent chance to win. Many of Notre Dame's opponents played what are perceived to be weaker opponents in week one, but only a handful dominated their matchups to the extent the Irish did. Georgia Tech, Navy and Wake Forest were the only three teams to outgain their opponent in yardage by a higher margin than Notre Dame did versus Texas, but each of the programs those schools played are Football Championship Subdivision members (see chart below). USC came close to matching Notre Dame's effort with a +3.4 yards per play margin, but it played host to Arkansas State of the Sun Belt Conference. NOTRE DAME OPPONENTS' SEASON-OPENING RESULTS Opponent Result Yards Per Play Margin Virginia at UCLA L, 34‑16 ‑2.2 Georgia Tech vs. Alcorn State W, 69‑6 +5.6 UMass — — Clemson vs. Wofford W, 49‑10 +3.3 Navy vs. Colgate W, 48‑10 +4.0 USC vs. Arkansas State W, 55‑6 +3.4 Temple vs. Penn State W, 27‑10 +1.5 Pitt vs. Youngstown State W, 45‑37 +1.7 Wake Forest vs. Elon W, 41‑3 +4.0 Boston College vs. Maine W, 24‑3 +3.0 Stanford at Northwestern L, 16‑6 ‑0.3

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