This week’s Notre Dame football game is all about coaching connections, as the Fighting Irish welcome Miami of Ohio, led by a very familiar face to Notre Dame Stadium. The RedHawks are led by Chuck Martin, who was an assistant under the very first Brian Kelly staff at ND in 2010.
Martin stayed with the Irish until 2013, serving as offensive coordinator for the final two seasons he was at Notre Dame. He took the Miami of Ohio job in 2014. Martin came to ND from Grand Valley State, where he led thr program to a 74-7 record in six years, taking over the program once Kelly (118-35-2 in 13 years at GVSU) left for the Central Michigan job.
Additionally, the Notre Dame football team is wearing helmets with “ARA” emblazoned on the front this season, honoring the late Ara Parseghian, who passed away in August. Parseghian compiled a 39–6–1 record in five seasons at Miami before moving on to Northwestern. Parseghian would then go on to cement a Hall of Fame career as head coach at Notre Dame after his tenure at Northwestern.
KICKOFF: 5pm EST Saturday, the start time is odd because this game is demoted from the TV network partner’s main network station. Instead it will air on the junior varsity cable version of the network’s channel.
SPREAD: Notre Dame football -22
TV PREVIEW: I discussed what Brian Kelly has to accomplish this season in order to not worry about losing his job during my segment this week on WGN, CLTV Sports Feed with Jarrett Payton, have a watch below:
RADIO PREVIEW: Tuesday on KOZN 1620 The Zone, Omaha on Sharp and Benning in the morning. I briefly touched upon the win over Michigan State in the opening.
Miami of Ohio (2-2) Preview:
It’s “the Cradle of Coaches,” as M of O has produced a ton of eventual star coaches including, but not limited to:
Earl Blaik, Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Bill Arnsparger, Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gillman, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, Bill Mallory, Jim Tressel, Joe Novak, Ron Zook, Dick Randy Walker, John Harbaugh, Gary Moeller, Dick Tomey, Sean Payton and Terry Hoeppner.
Martin is just 12-27 thus far in this his fourth year on the job. Last week he beat one of Kelly’s former schools, the aforementioned Central Michigan Chippewas, decisively. The RedHawks have a win over Austin Peay, and losses to Cincinnati and Marshall on the season as well.
Chuck and I are not going to be playing the game. I know how he is going to prepare his football team. He knows how I’ll prepare my football team. I think that’s probably it,” said Kelly of Martin.
“I think I’ve gone against other coaches that I know very well in terms of how they’ll prepare their football team, and I think that’s probably the similarity.”
The RedHawks went 6-7 last season, losing to Mississippi State in the St. Petersburg Bowl. As Kelly said Tuesday morning, this opponent begins a streak from here until the end of the season that will see his side play all teams that appeared in bowl games last year.
#22 Notre Dame Football (3-1) Preview:
Notre Dame currently rates 21st nationally in turnover margin and 13th in turnovers forced (with nine) and three of those TOs Saturday night at Michigan State made all the difference, as the Irish won by a healthy margin. This despite, being heavily out-gained in total yardage by the Spartans.
ND didn’t turn it over, and you ended up seeing a very strange final result statistically. It’s common to win the yardage battle and lose the game, but it’s very rare to have such a big yardage advantage and lose by that many points.
It’s a massive improvement from last season, when the Fighting Irish were 104th nationally in turnover margin.
Kelly was asked about this after the win over Michigan State.
“It was the first time we really faced a team that threw the ball quite a bit. 51 passing attempts. We have to play with a little bit more of a sense of urgency in terms of down and distance, recognizing game situations.”
“So there’s some improvement there for us. We’ve got to do a better job with just understanding passing off routes, underneath coverage, things of that nature, inside-out on slant routes in terms of down and distance.
“So there’s a lot of things that we can improve on there, and again, seeing a team that threw it 51 times last night gave us a real good kind of snapshot of some of the things that we’ve got to really focus in on and work to improve this week.”
A third of the way through the season, Notre Dame has produced 16 rushing touchdowns (they had only 18 in all of 2016) while allowing just one rushing touchdown (the Irish allowed a whopping 23 last season). They rank fourth nationally in rushing TDs. and second in rushing TDs allowed. Indeed that will be focus in this one- controlling the line of scrimmage.
Offensive line is the strength of 2017 Notre Dame football, we’ve all been saying that since the spring. The defensive front has been much better than expected too.
“It’s a determined, intentional decision to go that route. It’s focused on that fundamental principle of physicality–running the football and being great against the run. This has been intentional from January in terms of what I wanted this to look like. We want the differential.”
Prediction for novelty purposes only: Notre Dame Football 42, Miami of Ohio 13
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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