Opponent Watch: Friday Night Lights

Each week in this space, we examine two things: Notre Dame’s strength of schedule (from USA Today‘s Sagarin rankings), and who Irish opponents are facing. For those of who want to scout future opponents, I’ll give you my recommendation for who to watch when you’re not watching Notre Dame Football.

Who To Watch

Stanford at Washington (Fri 9:00 PM ET ESPN)

You may want to see a good football team with rigorous academic standards this weekend. If so, then tune in Friday night to watch Stanford. This is shaping up to be a play-in game for the Pac-12 championship and, as you can see below, Stanford has been doing it against the sixth-toughest schedule in the country. Christian McCaffrey isn’t getting the hype of Louisville’s Lamar Jackson, and he disappeared for a good stretch against UCLA last week. But as the calendar turns to October, an undefeated Cardinal will keep McCaffrey in the national spotlight. You can cheer for Stanford here, but know that you’ll be seeing this team take on Notre Dame in a couple weeks. Hopefully, the Irish defense on October 15 bears little resemblance to the defense we’ve seen thus far.

Strength-of-Schedule Rankings

Last week, ND opponents went 3-6. On the year, opponents have a combined record of 27-16 (62.8%) with an average schedule strength of 75.

Rank	Team	Record	Weekly Change
1	Southern Cal	1-3	—
6	Stanford	3-0	+1
21	Michigan State	2-1	+59
29	Notre Dame	1-3	-7
39	Syracuse	2-2	-13
50	Duke	2-2	+54
51	Texas	2-1	-8
74	Virginia Tech	3-1	-4
98	Nevada	2-2	-1
138	Navy	3-0	+6
139	Army	3-1	-16
152	NC State	2-1	-14
174	Miami	3-0	+10