First, caveats:
- Mant Te’o played a hell of a game, and he’s credited with 21 tackles from Saturday’s game because he went and made 21 tackles. It’s an absurd number of tackles. He’s inordinately talented.
- Notre Dame “contained” Stanford’s rushing game pretty well, holding the Cardinal to 166 yards on the ground – 78 yards below their average. And that should, generally, be a positive thing for the Irish.
But…
Weird things come out of numbers. Manti Te’o recorded 21 tackles against Stanford on Saturday, and after everyone was done talking about how poorly ND played and how Stanford has magically become a “premier” football team, they all taked about Te’o. And rightfully so, but one thing kept nagging at me after I learned of his tackle tally: Why did he have to tackle the ball carrier that many times?
I mean, one thing is for sure: If you’re sentient, and you’re calling plays, and one defender keeps making defensive stops that stone-wall your offense, you sure as hell don’t call plays that attack that defender directly.
So why did Manti Te’o get to make so many tackles?
Let’s look at the when and how of each tackle:
Notre Dame’s defense had a very hard time getting off the field against Stanford’s offense. They just did not have a lot of success putting the opposition in tough 3rd down situations and then keeping the opponent from converting. After Saturday, the Irish rank 62nd in 3rd down conversion defense, giving up 37.88% of the opportunities to conversion. That’s 25 out of 66 opportunities to get off the field that the Irish defense has failed to utilize to their advantage. Surprisingly (or not) much of that is due to this last game against Stanford. Stanford accumulated 11 successful 3rd down conversions out of 16 tries (69%). Before that, the Irish had allowed 3rd down conversions about 28% of the time.
Anyway, notice how many 3rd down plays resulted in a tackle by Te’o? One. Just one of Te’o’s 21 tackles happened on 3rd down. My guess: even with as much ground as Manti can cover, Stanford ran away from him, or, really, attacked elsewhere. On 1st and 2nd downs, however, either Stanford allowed themselves to go in towards Te’o, or, at least, Te’o was able to move around on the field well enough to make a lot of tackles. Unfortunately for the Irish, when Te’o was making a tackle, it was often after the Irish had already yielded a lot of ground.
5 of Te’o’s tackles ended plays that still resulted in 1st downs. And another one of Te’o’s tackles resulted in a first down due to a face-mask penalty. But even more worrisome: 14 of Te’o’s 21 tackles ended plays that resulted in a “lost down” for Notre Dame. For our purposes here, we defined a “lost down” for a defense as 1) On 1st down, any play resulting in more than 33% of available yards between the LOS and the 1st down marker, 2) on 2nd down, any play resulting in over 50% of available yards being gained, 3) on 3rd down and 4th down, any play resulting in a first down.
Also worrisome: On average, if Manti made the tackle on a rush, that rush had already gained 4.5 yards. You can glance over the spreadsheet to glean some other averages too. None of them are terribly encouraging. And most of them make me wonder further, “why did he have to make all of those tackles,” and “why were they usually for pretty good gains for the opposition?” I have a feeling I know the answer: Big chunks of the rest of the defense aren’t doing their jobs, and Manti is cleaning up their mistakes/failures, but it would take further analysis to verify that. And I’ve not got that time.
Still, in order to end on a positive note, note this: Manti did record 7 tackles that, all by themselves, would have resulted in “wins” for the defense. Meaning at least 7 times on Saturday, you and your buddies were probably cheering him on with “Manti!” or “Te’o!” or “Hawaiian Punch!” And that number by itself is pretty damned incredible. 7 very positive plays by one defender is a really strong day of work. Shame it couldn’t glow by itself a little more, what with those other 14 “clean up” tackles he had to make.
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SDI
Not sure what to make of this. Stanford only averaged 3.8 yards a carry, only had one run of more than 10 yards (on a Luck scramble), Luck was never or rarely sacked, and they didn’t take a bunch of knees at the end of the game to kill the clock. They did have 19 running plays where they gained 3 or less yards. Maybe it was either feast or famine–either the D line did their job and stuffed the run, or they didn’t and Stanford’s O line go to the second level, thereby slowing up Teo long enough to let the back gain some yards before contact.
ActionPak1
Not sure that 4 yards is the benchmark that you want to measure success against the run. If you’re running the ball and average 4 per play, you’re making 1st downs every time. Other than that, stellar post-game analysis.
domer.mq
Not sure where you’re seeing that I call a 4 yd gain a “win” for the ND D, other than the 2nd and 17, in which case 4 yards gained by the offense leaves them in 3rd and 11, which should be a high-percentage oppty for ND to get off the field.
SDI
Kelly shot holes in my theory today at the presser. He said that he thought the DL did a good job of keeping the OL off of Manti and thereby kept him free to make tackles.
TLNDMA
You would think that there had to be oppurtunities for other LB’s to make tackles. Carlo (4) McDonald(3). You’d think it would be more balanced.
Pat
Good analysis. There were plays where Teo was coming from the other side of the field (when they would run away from him) and he’d still (or be forced to) make the tackle. We don’t have the defense we need to compete year in and year out at the highest levels. Perhaps that’s why we see Kelly recruiting defensive linemen en masse.
I think our defense is getting better, but go back and watch when either MSU or Stanford would run the stretch run against us and the deficiencies are especially apparent. We get completely out-manned, no DE or OLB, let alone a safety coming in to blow it up (though Teo did come across field Sat. to deliver a big blow on a guy during one of these type of plays; too bad he already had gained six yards).
The Biscuit
This post is evidence of your forfeiture of “Debate THIS”. It shows you had time to create a response, but you knew you were defeated, and you have given up. 1-0 Biscuit WHATWHAT?!?!?!?!?!
domer.mq
I’d already noted that in the shoutbox when you asked. Though I still suspect Kelly wants to run the ball.
The Biscuit
I know. I am just rubbing it in.
Pat
We had better start running the ball more. It’s time again to run our offense, which includes a real read option where Crist is actually a credible threat to run the football — so be it if he gets hit, that’s how the system works.
irishjh2
Like last year the defense is on the field so much the guys run out of gas at the end.If the coaches couldn`t see that wherever 41 lined up that`s where the play was going,we are in serious trouble.Rudolph and Floyd read too many stories about how great they are.They seemn pretty nonchalant alot of times. On 3rd and short triple team Rudolph.It appears all Crist looks for.
Mark G
Good breakdown.
Despite getting gouged for yards, the fact still is that our defense held Stanford to only one touchdown as late as halfway through the 4th quarter. If someone had told me we would have held them to one TD halfway through the 4th quarter, I would have said we had a better than 50% chance of winning.
We have a problem getting the other team’s offense off the field. Our bigger problem, however, is keeping our offense on the field. This is wheere Kelly’s focus needs to be.
The Biscuit
Agree, re: Stanford. I think the issues were a little more on the defensive side in games 2 and 3, although Crist being down in Game 2 is really what did us in…
Mark G
Agree. Even against MSU, however, we had a tie game in 4th quarter, our defense gets the stop and we get the ball late in the quarter with chance to drive down and win the game, and we do – nothing. Arghhh! Let’s hope we role up some yards and points on Fredo.
BTW, I will be in Boston on Friday and Saturday with youngest daughter, but flying back before game. She is looking at Backup College just in case she does not get into ND. Let’s hope it does not come to that.
OderName
I was at the game, and I couldn’t have been more reminded of 2007. Perhaps the overall statistics don’t show it, but I’m really encouraged by our defense. Similar to 2007, we had an offense in this game that felt borderline incapable of moving the ball, putting a ton of pressure on the defense. While the defense gave up a ton of yards and struggled to get off the field, they did appear to make some stops and at least slow down the Stanford O, and most importantly gave up only one offensive TD while the outcome had any sense of uncertainty.
Overall this was one of the biggest beat-downs I’ve witnessed in ND Stadium – and I’ve never seen the stands so empty with 7 minutes left. However, I think this defense has guts and some talent (if very little depth); once the offense starts to give them some help this may turn around in a big freaking hurry. Here’s hoping that happens in Boston this week.
canuck75
I guess it falls in the woulda shoulda category, but if we made the 4th and 1 who knows? That is what is so frustrating that without even being a wide-eyed optimist, you can see we are close.
As an aside, I saw at least 3 instances on TV games where the play clock wound down and the whistle was instantaneous.