Notre Dame entered the 2025 season with extremely high expectations, and one of the drivers of those high hopes was the belief that the Irish offensive line would be one of the nation's best. Athlon Sports ranked the Notre Dame offensive line as the nation's best heading into the season, while Phil Steele ranked the unit third best and Lindy's Sports ranked the unit as the 10th best group.
It's still early in the season, but the Notre Dame offensive line has been a major disappointment. Notre Dame's line has struggled in every aspect of the game through the first two games of the season, and if the Irish are going to get things turned around the offensive line will need to be a driving force. It's imperative that offensive line coach Joe Rudolph gets his unit on track in a hurry.
Simply put, Notre Dame can't play to its full potential as an offense if the offensive line doesn't improve quickly, and by a lot.
Let's look at the numbers:
The context for this ranking is that Notre Dame has played a pair of Top 25 opponents to start the season, while other schools are padding their stats with early season wins over inferior opponents. While that reality provides some context it does not at all justify the performance thus far in the season.
Consider that against six ranked Power 4 opponents last season the Irish offense rushed for 138.7 yards per game and 4.1 yards per attempt. Those numbers were disappointing and needed to be improved, but instead the Notre Dame offense has taken a step back with its ground game.
The early season struggles against good opponents continues a concerning trend we saw in the postseason in 2024. Notre Dame piled up big numbers against teams like Army and Navy, and the regular season opponents that weren't very good, but when the games got big the run game struggled. Notre Dame averaged just 108.0 rushing yards per game and 3.1 yards per carry in playoff games against Georgia (154), Penn State (117) and Ohio State (53).
Much of those struggles were chalked up to injuries along the offensive line and the fact that star running back Jeremiyah Love was banged up, but those excuses don't really apply to the early struggles in 2025. The lack of experience excuse that was used so prevalently in 2024 also can't really be used to explain away the early season troubles for the Irish offense.
The inability to consistently protect the quarterback has been an issue since Rudolph arrived, and it continues into the 2025 season. Rudolph inherited a well-coached offensive line (31st in PFF pass block grade) that also had high draft picks Joe Alt and Blake Fisher. In year one of Rudolph that unit ranked 24th in pass blocking grade, but they fell to 65th in 2024 and rank 126th to start the 2025 campaign.
Head coach Marcus Freeman has said that his program will be line driven, but that hasn't really been the case thus far in his four seasons. Notre Dame rebounding and playing the dominant football it is capable of that bounce back will have to be line driven, and it needs to start with the offensive line.
Based on what we've seen so far improvement will include four key areas:
1) Be More Physical - This should always be the No. 1 characteristic used to describe the Notre Dame offensive line, but it has not been the case so far this season. It's not that the line isn't playing yard or putting in effort, but they as a unit they are not playing with much force or physicality. The unit lacks the edge demeanor needed to be a dominant line, especially one that is supposed to be dominant running the football. This means coming off the ball with more force, better pad level, driving their feet through contact and finishing better to go with playing with more edge.
2) Clean Up Run Game Miscues - There have been way too many run game mistakes so far this season, and it's often one player making a mistake. The issue is it seems to be a different player on every run that falls short. The line isn't playing with a great deal of confidence in its ability to execute at a high level, which combines with a lack of physicality to completely stall the run game. Notre Dame's line needs to clean up their technique, play with more force and be sound. If these things happen this line should quickly get back on track and fuel a run game resurgence in South Bend.
3) Challenge Everything - One of the issues I've continued to have with Rudolph is his insistence on setting his starting line and then basically rolling with it no matter how it performs. Injuries are the only thing that have thrust other players onto the field, and in each instance the line has performed better when those injuries have occurred and forced other players on the field. It seems as though the "Challenge Everything" mantra doesn't include the starting offensive line.
For example, Notre Dame has signed three straight five-star offensive linemen in Charles Jagusah, Guerby Lambert and Will Black. Rudolph has moved each one of these three talented players to guard, and the decision to move Black to guard the moment he arrived on campus - instead of letting him learn the left tackle position his game is so ideally suited for - is one of the biggest head scratchers of all. When your young left tackle is struggling with a certain part of the game, but you fail to allow anyone to challenge him, you aren't going to see much change. It also impacts the mentality of the line, which needs to change. Knapp gets called out in this instance, but the way the line performed in the first two games no one outside of Billy Schrauth and probably Lambert should feel secure in their roles.
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