Let's Fix Notre Dame's Offense
Ian Book has to be worked around, but it can be done with creative play design
There’s no college football player more common than the “talented but limited quarterback” archetype. Seemingly every year, the vast majority of quarterbacks fall within that purview, able to succeed but still deficient in some regard that holds them back from being truly transcendent.
There’s an easy answer to explain why so many quarterbacks hit that archetype: it’s really hard to play quarterback at any level. Only a few guys a year are going to elite relative to their peers, just as only a few guys (though more than the elite group) are going to be awful. It’s just a matter of averages and most quarterbacks are going to fall somewhere on the spectrum of below average to above average.
The trick for college football coaches and coordinators, more often than not, is figuring out how to build around their limited quarterback’s strengths while hiding his weaknesses, or at least minimizing them. The degree of difficult again depends on where that quarterback falls on the talent spectrum, but it also depends on what those limitations are. Slow quarterbacks are easier to work around than quarterbacks with a bad arm, for example. Both can be done, but you’re going to have to get more creative depending on how significant the weaknesses are.
I’m not sure where Ian Book lands on that spectrum. He’s a three-year starter and captain for one of the best programs in America, he’s 22-3 as a starter and his stats are largely either good or very good. He doesn’t throw many interceptions, his yards per pass numbers and completion percentage both look normal and his quarterback rating has been among the best in college football for each of the last two years.
So, why is it that every time I watch him play, I have no choice but to wonder if this is really the best that a national title contender like Notre Dame can do at quarterback. I’m sure I’m not the first to make this comparison, but it has a distinctly J.T. Barrett-esque feel to it, where you know that he should be good and that everything indicates that he is good, but when you watch him play, he always seems to underwhelm.
Part of that could be lofty expectations around a big program. Notre Dame wins a lot of games and is on TV all the time, so you would expect that the quarterback of that kind of team would be making huge plays and lighting up the scoreboard. Book doesn’t. He hardly throws the ball more than 15 yards down the field at a time and often looks completely unwilling to even test those limits. Not to go back to the Barrett comparison too frequently, but again, it’s a lot like what he was doing in Columbus. You know he’s helping his team win games, but you really wish that he’d throw the ball down the goddamn field just for the sake of your own sanity. I don’t have any non-anecdotal evidence for this, but if Twitter is to be believed, he drives Notre Dame fans completely nuts pretty much every game.
A lot of Book’s issues come right back to that arm. He’s not strong enough to get the ball down the field with accuracy and that really can’t be taught, making things pretty hard on new offensive coordinator Tommy Rees (speaking of limited Notre Dame quarterbacks). He’s cool in the pocket when he actually stays there, but loves to leave it for little reason. Put simply, he’s limited. We know that he can make plays and manage a good offense, but he’s never going to be a good focal point. Notre Dame has bumped up against that a lot in recent years and Rees seemed to be grappling with it in the first half of ND’s first game of the season against Duke.
The Fighting Irish improved offensively with each passing quarter, but there were some really rough spots, especially early. I think that Rees has the right idea when it comes to building out this offense, but in watching this game again, there are some pretty obvious strengths that pop off the screen that Notre Dame would benefit greatly from embracing.
Firstly, this offensive line should be awesome, and was pretty much as soon as the first quarter ended. They’re experienced, athletic and move well together. Second, new running back Kyren Williams is awesome and should be seeing upwards of 25 touches every single game from here on out. He’s strong, fluid and fits the offense perfectly.
Lastly, there’s some really, really good talent on this offense and pretty much all of it is packed into some absolutely freakish athletes. Tight ends Tommy Tremble and Michael Mayer are both well over 230 pounds and catch the ball well while serving as perfectly capable blockers. Seemingly every halfback on this team can block too. There’s not a ton at receiver, but there’s a distinct theme among these players that Notre Dame really hasn’t seemed to lean into yet.
If you’ve read this newsletter at all, I’m sure you know where I’m going with this: the power spread baby! With all of this talent up front and two massive playmakers at tight end, building an offense around a strong rushing attack and a heavily planned out passing attack with easy and obvious options for Book feels like the best fit for this team.
Now, building an offense entirely around limiting your quarterback’s weaknesses is inherently risky, because rather than leaning into a strength, you’re just looking to minimize what he can’t do. However, Book is without an elite strength in his game. He’s solid at a bunch of things, pretty bad at a few things and unusable on deep balls. Because of that, it’s a lot easier to just look to keep him out of trouble and lean into Book as a game manager rather than as a driving force of the offense. The driving force is Williams and his blockers.
Take this play as an explanation for that thinking. Quite a few of Notre Dame’s best plays came from personnel groupings like this one. This is actually only 11 personnel, but the tight end (Tremble) is 6-foot-4, 248 pounds and the bunched receivers on the play side (Joe Wilkins Jr. and Javon McKinley) are 6-foot-1 1/2, 190 pounds and 6-foot-2, 215, respectively. When grouped with Tremble on that side of the field, all within just a few yards of the line of scrimmage, that’s a pretty massive personnel grouping. Notre Dame is basically forcing Duke to put eight guys in the box to match it, which is going to make things a whole lot easier when Rees wants to dial up a quick play action pass on third-and-short later in the game. Running and running well out of formations like this one and then running play action out of them later in the game, even on passing downs, is going to clear up lanes for Book to throw the ball more than five yards down the field. The more open his receivers are, the better.
There’s no harm in utilizing single-back looks like this one too, especially if Book is comfortable taking snaps from under center. Williams benefits from the chance to get up to speed and the offensive line can use that extra time to get a better push, which they should be able to do in just about every game this season. This isn’t an every down type of play by any means, but being able to do this consistently gives Notre Dame a pretty obvious advantage.
None of this is particularly groundbreaking, especially given that Notre Dame already seems happy to run like this in short yardage situations. There’s not much to fix in this run game, other than making Williams the primary running back and leaning on outside runs more than inside runs.
The issues with this offense come before short yardage situations, on passing downs like this one: Book is put into obvious passing downs far too frequently and it’s only partially his fault. This team falls behind schedule because it’s largely afraid to do much of anything on first down. Most first down plays are either a run up the middle or a quick passing play that gains almost no yardage. That sets Book up in third-and-medium or long situations and there are very few plays in the playbook that are designed to pick up that yardage, because Book can’t throw the ball very far down the field. Most of Notre Dame’s passing plays are built for yards after the catch and that just isn’t the right approach in a spot like this one, especially if Book can’t consistently hit his targets.
That has to change. I was encouraged by what I saw as this game progressed, because Notre Dame appeared to agree that it needed to change.
This isn’t even the best example because I don’t think the throw has to be this far down the field, but more plays like this on first down would make a big difference for this offense. When you have a talent like Mayer in your offense, using him on passes down the field is pretty much always going to create a mismatch, especially in man coverage like on this play.
The responsibility for sticking with Mayer falls to a safety, who isn’t going to be able to contend with him physically. If a linebacker draws the job instead, Mayer is quick enough to win with his route running. When you have a player like this, there’s no good reason to limit them to traditional tight end routes. A concept like this one, with one tight end running a seam and the other on a 12-yard out route is going to be able to exploit any call that the opponent makes in coverage. You have the flood concept to beat zone, being executed by two freakish athletes that can’t be matched up with by any one defender. This is what Notre Dame’s identity should be in the passing game.
That isn’t to say that Book has to be launching the ball down the field like this, either. You can make use of these tight ends in all sorts of ways on early downs, not just as bailout options or checkdowns. Even a play like this one, with a super easy throw for Book, still gets one of those freak athletes into space and it does so without risking any sort of negative yardage from Book taking a sack while waiting too long to throw the ball down the field.
The key here is the motion, which will lead me to a larger point about this offense in just a minute, but this play is worth breaking down further. Mayer’s motion against man coverage forces the defense to either quickly swap responsibilities or track him with a defender, either of which is going to open up a window for mistakes. Duke chooses the latter here and safety Lummie Young IV is rewarded with a massive crackback block from the play side receiver, who is “running a slant” in theory but is really just looking to hit whichever defender picks up Mayer in coverage.
That block leaves Mayer uncovered and gives him a huge lane to pick up yardage.
Notre Dame can do pretty much the same thing with Williams out of the backfield too, and when I say play action this is what I mean. Book isn’t going to be the guy to step into bombs downfield, but creative misdirection in the passing game is going to make things a lot easier on Book and clear a lot more room for those quick passes.
I think that approach can be taken to building pretty much the entire offense. Notre Dame is limited on the perimeter because it lacks elite wide receivers, but that shouldn’t stop the Fighting Irish from stretching the defense, they just have to do it horizontally, rather than vertically. Plays like this and frequent pre-play motion is the best way to do that, especially with defenses forced to play with seven or eight in the box to match these heavy personnel sets.
Again, Notre Dame seems to have a grasp of this, I’d just like to see more of it. This neat motion package and other like it would do well to get more play in this offense moving forward, because it forces linebackers to keep their attention in the backfield and adds an extra layer of thinking needed from the defense. With a line like this, that extra second to find the ball is all that Notre Dame needs to create a hole and spring linemen into the second level, where they need to be on pretty much every running play for this offense to really work.
This stuff is all there for Notre Dame. It’s in the playbook and the players know how to run this sort of offense. The difference between national title contention and another good-but-not-great offense held back by its quarterback is going to be in how willing Rees and Brian Kelly are to fully embrace the identity of this group. If Notre Dame can accept that this offense is best served as a physical, dominant group rather than one built around finesse, it’ll be a whole lot better for it when higher caliber competition comes up on the schedule.
Up next: Miami-Louisville is going to tell us so much