Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com MARCH 2018 83 N otre Dame heads into the offseason with three new assistant coaches, and two of them will have a great deal of pressure on their shoul- ders. The Irish safeties were so un- productive all season and their play was so underwhelming in November that new safeties coach Terry Joseph won't have to get much improvement for his hire to be considered a suc- cess. That is not the case for new defensive coordinator Clark Lea and new offensive line coach Jeff Quinn. Lea inher- its the nation's No. 20 defense according to the Fremeau Ef- ficiency Index (FEI) with 10 returning starters. Quinn re- places a coach who tutored a group that won the 2017 Joe Moore Award as the nation's best offensive line. If Notre Dame wants to win at least 10 games in back-to-back sea- sons for the first time since 1992-93, it will need the defense and line to continue playing at a high level. Defense Must Get Better For Lea the pressure is even greater, at least in terms of needing to build on last season's success. Notre Dame jumped from No. 63 to No. 20 in the FEI, and it returns 10 starters plus a total of 14 players who have at least three career starts. Lea has talent and depth returning up front and in the secondary, and two of his top three tacklers return at linebacker. Notre Dame's defense must im- prove in several key areas for Lea to accomplish what he was hired to do, which is build a championship de- fense. There were times when the defense was able to effectively pressure the quarterback, but it couldn't do so consistently enough, especially late in the season. Notre Dame racked up 18 sacks and 40 quarterback hurries in the first seven games but tallied just six sacks and 23 hurries in the final six tilts. Improving the ground defense is also a must. Notre Dame had an im- pressive stretch from Sept. 30 to Oct. 28 (four games) in which it held op- ponents to just 81.8 rushing yards per game and 2.8 yards per rush. In the other nine games the defense allowed 186.8 rushing yards per game and 4.3 yards per attempt. Those two improvements go hand in hand to a certain degree. If Notre Dame can better defend the run it will put offenses in more passing downs, which in turn allows an improved pass rush to impact the quarterback more, which then results in more turnovers. Notre Dame forced 19 turnovers during its 8-1 start to the season, but just one during its 2-2 finish. That is not a coincidence. Moral of the story, Lea must get the entire defense to play at the same high level his linebackers played at in 2017, a year in which his unit combined for 402 tackles, 36 tackles for loss, 15 quarterback hurries and five forced fumbles after making just 319 tackles, 29 tackles for loss, two hurries and three forced fumbles a year earlier. If that happens Notre Dame has a great chance at playing championship defense in 2018. Quinn Must Figure Out Line Rotation No one should expect Quinn to develop a line quite as dom- inant as last year's group. You don't replace a pair of play- ers like Quenton Nelson and Mike McGlinchey — two All- Americans — and expect to be even better. What Quinn must do is en- sure that Notre Dame still has a line that competes week af- ter week and fuels the offense. When Alabama loses players to the NFL it still maintains a level of excellence the follow- ing season. Notre Dame has recruited well enough under former line coach Harry Hies- tand to do the same. In center Sam Mustipher and right guard Alex Bars, Quinn inherits a pair of play- ers going into their third sea- sons as starters, and it will be up to him to make sure they can make the vaunted "third- year leap" that was seen from former stars Zack Martin, Ronnie Stanley, Nick Martin, McGlinchey and Nel- son. Rising junior Tommy Kraemer and rising sophomore Robert Hainsey earned valuable experience while ro- tating at right tackle last season, and now Quinn must figure out how to get both of them on the field together, which should include both taking their game to a higher level. Part of his task will be determining what five-man combination works best. That isn't limited to simply finding the next best player, it also means finding out who should move to what open position. Does Quinn decide to leave Kraemer at tackle or does he move him to guard, where his game could flourish? Does he leave Hainsey on the right side or does he slide him over to the left? A major slip up along the line will only heighten questions about Kelly turning to Quinn after Hiestand left for the NFL. ✦ High Stakes For Notre Dame's New Hires CLOSER LOOK BRYAN DRISKELL Bryan Driskell has been a football analyst for Blue & Gold Illustrated since April 2015. He can be reached at bdriskell@blueandgold.com. Despite being in his first season as a coordinator, the expectation for Clark Lea is that Notre Dame plays championship defense. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND