Blue and Gold Illustrated

IRISH ANALYTICS BRIAN FREMEAU to be shared among the Irish punting, defense and punt return units. After coming up short on fourth down on the Notre Dame 47‑yard line two possessions earlier, Tyler New‑ some dropped a 52‑yard punt on the UMass 1‑yard line. According to my game splits methodology that iden‑ tifies the offensive, defensive, and special teams contributions to scoring margin, that punt set up the whole scoring sequence. The defense chipped in 1.3 points of value by not allowing UMass to move the ball, the possession itself was worth 2.1 points (for instance, if Sanders had simply fair caught the ball and not ad‑ vanced it), and the rest of the credit (3.6 points) for the score belongs to Sanders and his blockers. That kind of sequence is a great ex‑ ample of the relationship between the offensive, defensive and special teams units in their contributions to victory. Notre Dame has earned 70.7 points in scoring margin in non‑garbage pos‑ sessions this year based on the per‑ formance of its offense, 0.2 points in scoring margin on the performance of its defense and 9.2 points in scor‑ ing margin on the performance of its special teams. Among the 30 undefeated teams en‑ tering October, the Irish are one of only three of those teams that hasn't gener‑ ated positive value on turnovers on the year (minus‑4.2 points), and they rank first among those teams (and fourth overall) in non‑garbage time offensive production. The Irish rank ninth na‑ tionally in points per possession (3.3) and sixth in points per long drive (4.1), which are possessions that started in‑ side their own 20‑yard line. I'm also tracking something I call "yards per stop" — the number of yards earned offensively on average before the opponent stops a team from reaching the end zone. Notre Dame is averaging 75.4 yards between stops this year in non‑garbage time, the 10th‑best rate in the nation. All of these numbers are good signs for the months ahead, but the tests are about to get significantly tougher. Back in June, I projected that the four games the Irish would play in Septem‑ ber were the second‑easiest four‑game set to start the season in the Brian Kelly era, and I gave Notre Dame a 56 percent chance of running the table to start the year. In that same piece, I gave the Irish a 28 percent chance of winning all four games in October (at Clemson, versus Navy, versus USC and at Temple), and I'm dropping that likelihood down to 18 percent coming out of September. The Irish have looked good, but so have each of their October opponents compared with preseason expecta‑ tions, and running the table through Halloween will be a daunting task. Irish fans couldn't have asked for a much stronger start to the 2015 season, but Notre Dame won't have proven itself as a playoff contender for several more weeks. ✦ Brian Fremeau of ESPN/Football Outsiders has been a statistical analyst at Blue & Gold Illustrated since January 2015. He can be reached at bcfremeau@gmail.com.

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