The Notre Dame defense will again have its work cut out for it when the Fighting Irish visit Arkansas this Saturday. After opening the season by beating Alabama A&M and Arkansas State by a combined 108-21 total, the Razorbacks have dropped their last two games to Ole Miss and Memphis but they scored 66 combined points in the process.
Arkansas is No. 8 in the nation averaging 552 yards of offense after picking up 500 total yards in its 32-31 loss to Memphis last week. They outgained Ole Miss 526-475 in their 41-35 loss to the Rebels a week earlier.
Quarterback Taylen Green makes the Arkansas offense go. The 6-6, 224-pound senior already has 1,191 passing yards and 12 touchdown passes through four games. But dual threat ability makes him even more dangerous. He leads the Hogs with 360 yards on the ground on 44 carries (8.2 ypc) with two more scores. He’s also only been sacked three times.
“In the run game, his ability to read and pull it,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said of what makes Green dangerous. “You’ve got to be definitive in how you want to defend that. You can't be gray, you’ve got to be definitive on how you want to defend that, but in the pass game, you can't let him escape vertically. “That's where our issues were with the A&M quarterback and even last week. It's not the lateral escape, it's the vertical through the B gap, then lateral, then he can extend plays or he can run. That's where the issues are.”
Notre Dame ranks No. 100 in total yards per game allowed, No. 117 in scoring defense and No. 103 in pass efficiency defense through three games. They also have just three sacks through three games after picking up two last Saturday against Purdue.
Freeman has watched from the sidelines as his front has struggled to pressure quarterbacks and his secondary has struggled to cover. Those two important aspects have struggled to come together so far this season under first year defensive coordinator Chris Ash.
“When I say the front and the coverage have to work together, I'm using philosophy that if we're going to play coverage, then our front has to beat some one-on-one blocks, and we’ve got to at some point affect the quarterback,” Freeman explained. “We'll rush four, but usually they're protecting five or six, somebody's getting one-on-one. “We’ve got to be married up in our rush lanes and somehow affect the quarterback because we’ve got seven guys in coverage. If we are going to bring pressure, we have to know that there's a certain amount of time that quarterback can have because we're expecting our DBs and our back seven or back six, however many you bring, to cover for this amount of time.
“Because when you're playing man or zone pressure defense, you can't have a lot of time, you're down a defender,” Freeman continued. “We have to do a better job in that area. We're rushing four, we cannot let the quarterback extend plays. We can't. We have to make sure we marry up that rush so that we're keeping him in the pocket but also affecting him. We have to get pressure, and we bring pressure and we have to get home and we have to affect the quarterback because the DB's can't cover for that long.”
Green is the second dual threat quarterback the Irish will see this season. The first was Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed. He managed a season low 37 rushing yards against Notre Dame, but he converted a big fourth quarter 3rd down with his legs to help the Aggies score their decisive touchdown.
“It's going to be a great challenge, right,” Freeman said of facing Green and his dual threat skills this week. “I wish we could say we can just do one thing and we're going to impact them and affect him. But you're going to have to do multiple different things. They're in the top five offense in the country for a reason, you know? So, we've got to continue to show different things, play different things. When you play zone coverage, you can't just tell them exactly what you're playing pre-snap either, right. That's the other thing we've got to continue to enhance that.”
“But I don't want to play spy,” Freeman continued. “I think we've got into a little bit of too cautious versus A&M where we're trying to play spy and we're not being aggressive and then maybe versus Purdue, there's too many times where we're behind the quarterback and he escapes in the B gap. It's obviously a good mixture of both, but we can't let him get vertical in the passing and extend plays with his legs, because that's what's going to be an issue.”
Notre Dame and Arkansas kickoff at Noon ET this Saturday at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville. It will mark the first ever meeting between the two programs and will also mark the sixth first-time opponent the Irish have faced during Freeman’s four-year tenure.
Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more.
BECOME A MEMBER
Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!
Join the Irish Breakdown community! Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@irishbreakdown
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irish-breakdown/id1485286986
Follow me on Twitter: @SeanStires Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/irishbreakdown
Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/irish-breakdown-newsletter