On paper: Breaking down Notre Dame vs. NC State

This Notre Dame football article was written last week in advance of NC State’s 24-14 victory over UConn and the Fighting Irish’s 56-3 win over Tennessee State. It was packaged and included in the most recent edition of Blue & Gold Illustrated the magazine, which you can subscribe to or buy single issues of right here.

NC State Running Game Vs. Notre Dame Run Defense

If you want to know more about a team’s running game and whether or not it’s getting the job done, start with Sports Info Solutions’ “points earned per play” metric. There is one for the running game, and one for the passing game. If you’re a golfer, think of it like strokes earned. You either gain strokes on the field in certain areas — driving, approach, putting — or you lose strokes to the other players in those facets.

NC State lost .033 points per play every time it ran the ball in 2022. That ranked 113th in the FBS.

For reference, Texas and Doak Walker Award winner Bijan Robinson led the country in points earned per play in the running game at positive .206. Arkansas led the country with total points earned on the ground at 104.89. NC State, meanwhile, lost 14.66 points in the running game throughout the course of the season. That was No. 111 in the country.

Two of the three running backs NC State leaned on the most in 2022 are back in 2023. Jordan Houston and Michael Allen combined for 189 carries last year. None of those rushes ended up in the end zone. Houston averaged a modest 4.0 yards per carry on 136 attempts. Allen was at 5.1 yards per tote on 53 tries.

Notre Dame should be able to corral those rushers, especially against an NC State team that ranked 99th in points above average in run-blocking last year. NC State was 13.55 points below average in run-blocking according to SIS.

Advantage: Notre Dame

NC State Passing Game Vs. Notre Dame Pass Defense

This is an interesting category. The NC State passing attack should look a lot different with a new offensive coordinator in Robert Anae and a new quarterback in Brennan Armstrong. The Wolfpack also brought in Rice transfer Bradley Rozner to bolster the wide receiver corps. Rozner is a Biletnikoff Award watch list member who has 101 catches, 1,676 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns in his career. Ten of those scores came in 2022.

This all comes down to whether or not Anae can get Armstrong to look like he did in 2021 when the two were paired up together at Virginia.

Armstrong threw 417 catchable passes on 499 total attempts that year according to SIS. That was good for a rate of 86.4 percent, which ranked 31st in the country. His catchable ball percentage plummeted to 79.3 percent without Anae as his offensive coordinator in 2022. That ranked No. 142 nationally. Armstrong is a different signal-caller when Anae is around.

Is the combination of the two enough to get the best of a Notre Dame secondary led by preseason All-American Benjamin Morrison and team captain Cam Hart at cornerback, though? Sophomore Jaden Mickey and freshman Christian Gray are not slouches as Notre Dame’s No. 3 and 4 corners, either.

This will surely be Notre Dame’s toughest test defending the pass in the first three games of the season. Armstrong might make a few plays that Navy and Tennessee State’s quarterbacks simply could not. But when it comes down to it, Notre Dame’s defensive personnel on the back end should be good enough to hold up against NC State’s new-look passing attack.

Advantage: Notre Dame

Notre Dame Running Game Vs. NC State Run Defense

NC State allowed the 11th fewest rushing yards in the FBS in 2022. The Wolfpack nearly reached the rare air of teams that gave up less than 100 yards per game. The number was 100.69. That’ll be tough to match in 2023.

Top tackler Drake Thomas is no longer with the program. He had 101 total stops and 19 tackles for loss last year. Both of those were team highs. Linebacker Isaiah Moore is gone as well. He had 82 total tackles and 15 tackles for loss. Payton Wilson, who had 82 total tackles and 12.5 tackles for loss, is back though. He’s the new face of the linebacking contingent.

NC State had the best stuff percentage — meaning hitting ball carriers at or behind the line of scrimmage — in the country in 2022 at 28.5 percent. As much as linebackers can help against the run, that tends to fall on the defensive line. NC State has veterans returning across the board in defensive ends Davin Vann and Savion Jackson and tackle C.J. Clark.

It feels like NC State caught some lightning in a bottle in 2022 against the run. The Wolfpack allowed a team to eclipse 200 yards on the ground only one time. Florida State gashed the Pack for 206 yards on 7.36 yards per carry.

Notre Dame doesn’t need to do that much damage to win this game. It just has to have another efficient game — between 150 and 200 yards and five or more yards per carry. With this Irish offensive line blocking for the five-headed monster of scholarship running backs, that is doable. Notre Dame gets the edge here even against a unit that had the advantage against the run in almost every game it played in 2022.

Advantage: Notre Dame

Notre Dame Passing Game Vs. NC State Pass Defense

NC State allowed 225.8 passing yards per game in 2022. That ranked 71st nationally. Quarterback Sam Hartman threw for 397 yards and 2 touchdowns for Wake Forest against NC State last year, but he also threw 3 costly interceptions. Two of the three players who picked off those passes are back as starters for NC State.

Good news for Notre Dame: players who accounted for 3 of the 4 sacks the Wolfpack put on Hartman in that game, a 30-21 victory for NC State, have moved on. Thomas had 2, and  Moore had 1.

NC State averaged 2.2 sacks per game in 2022. That ranked 61st in the country. Notre Dame should do a better job of protecting Hartman than Wake Forest did. Even then, Hartman was 4-of-4 passing for 77 yards with 2 touchdowns when pressured against Navy in Week 0 according to SIS. He can make plays even in the face of tumult at Notre Dame because the Fighting Irish have weapons as pass catchers. Not all pressure looks the same, either. Hartman will find the pressure doesn’t come barreling in on him as quickly at Notre Dame as it did at Wake Forest.

Give Hartman and receiving threats like junior wideout Jayden Thomas and freshman slot man Jaden Greathouse the edge here. Hartman will pile up yards against NC State like he did at Wake Forest without committing the back-breaking turnovers.

Advantage: Notre Dame

Special Teams

NC State had the best kicker in the country in 2022 in Lou Groza Award winner Christopher Dunn. It’s a huge loss for the Wolfpack to be without him in 2023. It’s a huge loss for Notre Dame to be without former special teams coordinator Brian Mason, though, too. We are still very much in the feel-it-out stage of the Marty Biagi era in South Bend.

In the opener against Navy, Irish kickoff specialist Spencer Shrader booted touchbacks on all of his kickoffs except for one. That’s a plus. He missed his only field goal attempt from 42 yards out, though, and that is after he only made 69.2 of his field goal attempts last year at South Florida.

Chris Tyree did not show much as a punt returner in Week 0 versus Navy, and Gi’Bran Payne didn’t get many chances to show what he’s got in the kick return game. Until we know more about those two, and more about who Shrader is going to be — the guy who made less than 70 percent of his field goals in 2022 or the guy who made 84.6 percent of them in 2021 — special teams is going to be a stalemate for Notre Dame.

Advantage: Even

Coaching

It’s hard to believe Dave Doeren has been at it for 11 seasons in Raleigh now. He turned those remarkable seasons at Northern Illinois into a stint lasting more than a decade at a Power Five institution. His record of 72-54 entering the 2023 season isn’t so bad, but NC State hasn’t won a bowl game since 2017. A COVID outbreak within the UCLA program prevented the 9-3 Wolfpack from playing in the Holiday Bowl in 2021. That could have been Doeren’s first 10-win season at NC State and the program’s first since 2002.

Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman is still searching for his first 10-win season, but he’s only in his second year. For the Fighting Irish to get to 10 wins in 2023, they have to win games like this one on the road. Ohio State, USC and Clemson are looming. Losses to middle of the road ACC teams do not do Notre Dame any favors in the chase to double digits.

We’re giving the nod to experience here with Doeren, offensive coordinator Robert Anae and defensive coordinator Tony Gibson all having been at this a while. Freeman is a newbie, and Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker still has much to prove in what is the biggest opportunity of his coaching career. Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden is in the same category with the NC State trio as having been there, done that, but the slight edge goes to Doeren’s side.

Advantage: NC State

Intangibles

It’s really difficult to shake those shaky Hartman games against NC State from the memory bank. His 1-2 record against the Wolfpack is concerning. In those three starts, he had 6 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. He completed only 55.0 percent of his passes.

NC State has Hartman’s number. That’s an intangible that is tough to look past. But Notre Dame has ACC teams’ numbers. The Fighting Irish have not lost to a team from the ACC in the regular season in the last 28 tries. The Miami Hurricanes were the last ACC team to topple the Irish in the regular season way back in 2017.

There is also the element of this being Notre Dame’s first road game of the season, but the Irish actually fared decently on the road in Freeman’s first season. The only road losses were a pair of 11-point defeats to highly ranked Ohio State and USC. This game more fits the mold of the North Carolina game versus Mack Brown and Drake Maye, and the Irish won that one 45-32. The NC State defense will have something more feisty for the Notre Dame offense than the Tar Heels had, and the crowd might even be a little rowdier in Raleigh than it was in Chapel Hill.

The good news for Notre Dame is it cannot get caught thinking ahead to Ohio State in this one. The Central Michigan game breaks the gap. So, this isn’t a trap game by any means. It is just a straight up road game against an ACC foe, and Notre Dame has won plenty of those in the last half dozen years.

Notre Dame gets the advantage here, slightly.

Advantage: Notre Dame