Ohio State comes to South Bend this weekend, and if you polled the greater Notre Dame ecosystem on whether the Buckeyes are a rival, you’d get a variety of answers. A few—likely with strong Ohio ties themselves—would definitively say yes. More—especially among the institutionalist crowd—would definitively say no. But most would hem and haw. We aren’t exactly rivals, but we don’t exactly like each other.
The Buckeyes are, like Notre Dame, a program whose fans often didn’t go to the school. This is rare across college football, but it’s common with teams of this stature. Notre Dame is iconic for Catholic Americans. Ohio State is iconic for Ohioans. Each represents a bloc broader than the corners to which its formal ties extend. Because of this, the relationship between the programs isn’t as simple as the relationship between the schools. This would be different from Notre Dame vs. Michigan even if the history was the same, because Notre Dame and Michigan recruit their student bodies from the same high school pool (as the punchline goes, every Notre Dame and Michigan student has an acceptance letter from Michigan). This isn’t to disparage Ohio State, but Ohio State has a different purpose than Michigan, and it’s further from South Bend, and it’s less a player in the ‘elite national institutions’ game even if a good share of its students are every bit as smart as ours. Ohio State is a traditional state school. Michigan is a little different. That brings Notre Dame and Michigan into more serious conflict.
Instead of rival universities, then, the Notre Dame–Ohio State rivalry, if it exists, mostly constructs itself as a cold war. There are plenty of little fracases, but they’re isolated, either entirely personal (two friends in Cincinnati who went to opposite schools) or entirely general (members of each fanbase hating the idea of the other). There’s little substantive fuel for a feud. But, as with any cold war, things could erupt with a moment’s notice. Were these programs each a little better in 2021 and 2022, both last year’s game and this one’s would have more resembled the Catholics vs. Convicts era than the 2017–2019 Notre Dame home-and-home with Georgia.
There’s also that matter of Michigan. Michigan is not Notre Dame’s biggest rival, but it is—or at least it deserves to be—Notre Dame’s most hated rival. USC is a bigger rival, but that partly speaks to the hate at play with Notre Dame and Michigan. There has been no trouble historically scheduling Notre Dame vs. USC, whereas we do not currently play Michigan every year. With Michigan both Ohio State’s biggest and most hated rival, that leaves Ohio State as the enemy of our enemy, a position sometimes defined as a friend. There was nothing unnatural about Marcus Freeman coming to South Bend. It would be a strange thing to see Mike Hart wearing blue and gold.
Still, Notre Dame and Ohio State are, historically and today, two of college football’s four historic premier Midwestern programs, and two of the Midwest’s three best today. We play in bordering states. We compete for recruits. Thanks to an ill-fated pair of Fiesta Bowls and the home-and-home at the end of the Lou Holtz era, we’ve played enough in recent memory to have familiarity and—in our case—a bitter taste. Notre Dame hasn’t beaten Ohio State since 1936. None of the five games since have finished within one score.
In the biggest picture of college football, the one where programs look more like geopolitical foes or warring dynasties in a medieval age, the Ohio State Buckeyes are Notre Dame’s second or third-most direct competition, there with Michigan and USC. There isn’t serious bad blood yet. But this game is big, and not just in the context of this season. This is one of those battles for the future of Notre Dame football. This is about asserting a claim on the Midwest. This is about asserting a claim on perennial playoff contention. This is, once again, about Notre Dame trying to return to what Notre Dame once was.
The Game Itself
Ohio State is, as always, one of the three most talented teams in the nation. There are numbers for such things. As Joe wrote yesterday, Notre Dame might be closer to the Buckeyes on talent than appearances hold, but Ohio State’s best players are more numerous than our best, and given how proven Marvin Harrison Jr.’s ability is by now, it’s fair to say their best players are better. Harrison and Emeka Egbuka are two of the best ten receivers in college football right now, and it could be argued that they’re two of the top three. JT Tuimoloau is a potential first round pick on the defensive line. There is talent at every position.
Last year, Ohio State’s defense was supposed to be a major liability. In 2021, they’d allowed 30 or more points five times and been bullied in the trenches in Ann Arbor in the snow. Our hope, entering the game, was that Notre Dame could win a shootout. Instead, we learned just how bad Notre Dame’s receivers were and just how unwilling Marcus Freeman was to subject Tyler Buchner to the possibility of a four-interception game. Over the rest of the season, though, we found out the Ohio State defense was no longer such a problem. They did allow 30 or more points three times, and Donovan Edwards broke a pair of long runs to put them away in the regular season finale, but the defense was much improved, and it enters this weekend ranked 5th in the country by ESPN’s SP+. Through three games, the Bucks have allowed only twenty points, total, and while Indiana and Youngstown State aren’t much to stuff, Western Kentucky is respectable, a heck of a lot better than Central Michigan or Navy.
Protecting Sam Hartman is the biggest thing Notre Dame’s offensive line must do, and it isn’t just Tuimoloau the corps will have to worry about. Jack Sawyer is a former five-star. Mike Hall Jr. is one of college football’s best defensive tackles. There are weapons at linebacker when second-year defensive coordinator Jim Knowles decides to blitz. Hartman must be upright to make plays, and Hartman must be in the game, and Hartman’s knee must be intact, especially if he has to flee the pocket, which at some points in this game we’re going to want him to do.
If Hartman is upright, Notre Dame’s receivers need to be open enough. It’s nice to be able to say “open enough,” and not “so wide open they have time to tie their shoes,” like we’ve sometimes had to say, but this secondary is playing a different sport from NC State’s. Hartman himself is going to make throws if the throws are there, but they have to be there, and at Wake Forest he showed a concerning willingness to force it if they aren’t, something he’ll ideally temper on Saturday.
The run game is a curiosity. It’s not been quite as much a strength as the passing game, and the line hasn’t appeared to be fully in sync just yet, but Audric Estimé brings so much heft to the equation that the big guys have another asset there when they have to move the pile. Hartman and Estimé are both grown men, in such different ways. They will both need to play like the adults they are, in those different ways. Hartman needs to be poised and mature and pick his spots. Estimé needs to run people the fuck over.
There was concern about Ohio State’s offense after the season’s first few games, especially with the more restless among the Buckeyes faithful having a convenient foil to look towards in the form of backup quarterback Devin Brown, whom some have highly touted. Kyle McCord had no trouble against Western Kentucky, though, and now the Buckeyes are humming, with SP+ pulling the offense up to 4th in the country and ranking the team as the best team overall. (One note on this: SP+ tends to risk overreacting to early results, while our Movelor system risks underreacting. SP+ has Ohio State 1st in the nation but only a one-point favorite. Movelor has Ohio State 2nd but favored by seven.)
The thing about McCord is that it’s very hard to separate him from the guys catching his passes. Three of his eleven pass attempts longer than twenty yards have gone for touchdowns, but is that because McCord has made good throws or because Harrison has left a defender trying to find his jockstrap back around the line of scrimmage? The hope is that Notre Dame’s secondary—probably the best this program has ever had, with Benjamin Morrison receiving plenty of national love and Cam Hart an experienced partner across the field—can lose few enough battles that it limits McCord’s chances to make plays. Put more directly: Maybe McCord’s great, but if he isn’t, we’re going to have a better chance of slowing down this offense if he has two or three clear touchdown opportunities than if he has ten or twelve. The pass rush, of course, can help with this.
It’s not only the passing game, though, and in yards per play rankings, Ohio State’s rushing offense stacks up slightly higher against the rest of the country than it does attacking through the air. Part of what Indiana did so well against these guys was stuff Henderson, keeping him to 47 yards on twelve carries. Western Kentucky let him pick up chunks, eventually yielding 88 yards on thirteen attempts, with two touchdowns mixed in there. Early reviews of Notre Dame’s front seven have been positive, but the work is heavily cut out for everybody. Ohio State is a good team in every facet of football. This is a better Ohio State than we thought last year’s was.
One way to conceptualize individual college football games is a raw collision of power with some funky stuff thrown in around it. What I mean by this is that generally, the better offense and the better defense produce better drives for their respective cause and more scoring opportunities for their team. On the edges, though, the funky stuff comes in: Who has more redzone success? Who turns the ball over, and where do they do it? Who makes their kicks? Who breaks off the big plays? Notre Dame doesn’t have a great chance of winning the raw part of the game. This team might be close to as good as Ohio State, but it’s unlikely it’s better. What that means is that Notre Dame must be flawless on the funky stuff. Big plays need to be limited. Red zone stops are paramount. The turnover battle must be a wash at worst. Spencer Shrader needs to make his kicks, and it’d be great if he could hit from close to 60 yards if the situation warrants that. That’s how you win a college football game as a one-possession underdog. This isn’t a 28-point spread, Notre Dame doesn’t need to throw every trick it has at Ohio State and go for it on every single fourth down. But Notre Dame’s an underdog, and there’s a reason for that. Polish goes a long way in college football.
Overall? There’s a chance Ohio State is the best team in the country, and even if they’re not, there’s a chance they win the national championship. The closest Notre Dame has played a national champion in the last 25 years is 17 points. After finding a ceiling around the edge of the top five and hitting it hard a few times under Brian Kelly, we continue to await another step forward. Can we win? Yes. Will we? It’s more unlikely than likely. If we do, it’s possible it will be in part because Ohio State is not national championship quality. But either way, if we win this game, there’s a chance we’ll have finally taken that step. At this point, that’s the most for which we can hope.
Quick(er) Hitters
JD Bertrand, DJ Brown, and Mitchell Evans are all expected to play this weekend after Bertrand and Evans missed Saturday’s game with concussions and Brown left it with a hamstring problem. Overall, then, unless something bad happens in practice this week, Notre Dame should be at full strength on Saturday. Even Gabriel Rubio is expected to be back from that Week Zero knee injury.
Tyler Buchner had a very bad day for Alabama, and Drew Pyne had a very bad night for Fresno State, which makes Notre Dame’s performance these last two years rather impressive, in hindsight. It’s looking like Notre Dame set quarterbacks up to succeed, and if it isn’t all Tommy Rees (still Buchner’s coach), that’s a good reputation to have. Small-sample stuff, but we’re looking like we may want a good transfer quarterback for next year, so let’s hype it. Cam Rising? Will Rogers? Michael Pratt? Cameron Ward? We will take care of you.
Looking three quarterbacks ahead, Notre Dame got another four-star commit, but this time in the 2025 class. Deuce Knight, ranked the 70th-best recruit overall in the 247 Composite, is ours if we can keep him. He’s the third commit in the 2025 class as things stand right now. Ideally, he one day takes over for a Heisman-winning CJ Carr as Carr goes on to the NFL. Let’s put all of that into the universe. Incidentally, for the Cubs fans in the room: Knight attends George County High School in Lucedale, Mississippi. That’s where Justin Steele went.
It’s a big test for the Country Club Fans this weekend. How many will have sold their tickets to Ohio State fans? How many will be hollering at the row in front of them to sit down? The environment needs to be hostile, and at the very least, it cannot be hostile towards Notre Dame.
No basketball news. The hockey schedule is out—I guess it wasn’t fully out before. The Irish open with a two-game home series against Clarkson on the Saturday and Sunday of the Louisville weekend.
Chris Guiliano, a swimmer for Notre Dame, made the U.S. Men’s National Team in the 100 meter freestyle. I’m not sure exactly how big an honor this is, but it seems big!
This Week
Yeah, the football team looked sloppy against Central Michigan. That’s concerning, and that’s important, but now that the Ohio State game is here, it’s hard to dwell on that. These first four games have been about figuring out the forecast. Saturday is the storm.
The volleyball team beat Toledo yesterday in straight sets, improving to 6–2 on the year. They’ll host Boston College and Syracuse on Friday and Sunday to open ACC play. Neither of those two teams received votes last week in the volleyball poll of record, nor did Notre Dame.
The women’s soccer team opened ACC play strong, beating Wake Forest 3–1 behind two assists from Leah Klenke. They’ll go to Durham on Thursday to play Duke, who also opened ACC play with a win and is ranked near Notre Dame in the polls. That game will be on ACC Network Extra.
The men’s soccer team tied North Carolina on Friday, 1–1, on a late goal from Daniel Russo. That leaves the Irish tied for the ACC lead at 4 points. They’ll visit Akron tomorrow before hosting Virginia on Friday night. The Virginia game will be on ACC Network. Virginia’s 1–1 in the ACC and was not receiving votes in the national poll of record last week, when Notre Dame was ranked 10th (UNC was also not receiving votes).
The cross country teams dominated the National Catholic Invite, which does not have as strong a field as the name implies. Siona Chisholm won the women’s race, followed by Erin Strzelecki and Andrea Markezich. Caroline Lehman finished fourth, among the Irish and in the field, 47 seconds back of Markezich. Markezich, who finished 3rd in the ACC meet last year, set a personal record in the 5K, so I’m taking this as a good result for the team. In the men’s race, Notre Dame’s top seven went 1–2–3–4–5–7–8, with Joshua Methner winning while Carter Solomon didn’t run. The programs are off this weekend.
The women’s golf team is in action today, playing the second round of the Mary Fossum Invitational, hosted by Michigan State. Late in the day, they’re in eleventh place, last among power conference programs and leading only Northern Illinois, Toledo, Grand Valley State, and Oakland. The men’s team is off this week, but plays next Monday and Tuesday in an event hosted by Northwestern.
The men’s tennis team will play fall meets against Memphis, Princeton, and Tulane this weekend in New Jersey. The women’s team has the Milwaukee Tennis Classic listed on its schedule from Thursday to Sunday, but the event’s website doesn’t appear to have its brackets up yet.
The softball team played fall ball games yesterday against Lawrence Tech and the Wisconsin edition of Bryant & Stratton College (there is also one in New York). I can’t find results. I’m not sure they matter.
One Last Thought
Don’t worry about Duke, Louisville, and USC just yet. It’s a tough stretch, yes. But worrying about a letdown is, ironically, getting way too far ahead of ourselves.
