Virginia is for lovers but Virginia Tech is for sacrifice at the altar of bowl hopes. Your Notre Dame football team must take this one, Senior Day in South Bend, and then the Golden Shillelagh game at USC in order to qualify for a bowl game. Good luck with that, as it’s a tall order. Va Tech have fallen out of both polls but the Trojans are #13 in one poll, #15 in the other.
I think the Fighting Irish can split the difference, but winning both is going to be a tough task.
TV: 3:40 p.m. ET; Saturday, Nov. 19; Notre Dame Stadium (80,795); Notre Dame, Ind.
NBC national telecast with Dan Hicks (play-by-play), Doug Flutie (analysis), Katrhyn Tappen (sideline), Jeff Simon (director) and Josh Freedenberg (producer).
SPREAD: Notre Dame football -1 or pick’em, depending on your house. No one really knows, this is a toss up game.
Notre Dame football Preview:
Great response from the Fighting Irish this week. After one inexplicable loss to a service academy on a neutral site, they came right back and utterly destroyed a different service academy at a different neutral site this week. All the angry, hostile troll Tweets I got after the Navy loss for my position advocating Brian Kelly return this season….they didn’t happen this week.
These are all good things. This Notre Dame football game has regained some confidence as they finished off the Black Knights by halftime. Notre Dame football Sports Information Department Director John Heisler writes:
Army coach Jeff Monken appeared to be almost in a state of shock after the game at the Alamodome. He couldn’t have been more impressed with Notre Dame’s play–and he couldn’t remember the last time his team had been dominated in that manner. That result provided a valuable dose of confidence for the Irish, who may not own a great record right now but certainly looked like a more than capable and improving team on Saturday.
Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly will have to make a transition from prepping against an option team these past two weeks to preparations against a more orthodox offense.
“We’ve got to transition from playing option for the last two weeks into traditional offensive structure,” Kelly said.
“So yeah, our practice schedule is going to be a lot different in terms of our preparation, and we have to squeeze in a lot more into our practice to pick up for the loss of those types of reps that you would normally get over the last couple weeks. Yeah, the practice schedule will look a lot different from what they’re used to over the couple few weeks and require a lot more attention to detail.”
Virginia Tech Preview:
The Hokies won the coaching carousel this time around in landing Justin Fuente from Memphis. If I was an A.D. looking for a coach last offseason, Fuente’s agent would have been my very first call. Fuente has his Hokies in a decent spot this season, tied for first in the ACC Coastal division with North Carolina.
However, they totally blew it last weekend with a loss to Georgia Tech that both dropped them from the national rankings and kept them from staying in first place in their division. They will probably need some help to get to the ACC title game. Maybe this Notre Dame football team is catching them at the wrong time.
The Hokies have impressive wins over Pittsburgh and Miami, but their loss to Duke is inexplicable. Quarterback Jerod Evans comes in boasting spectacular numbers as a true dual threat. He’s completed 63% of his passes for 2,525 yards, 22 TD passes against such 4 interceptions. Rushing, he’s accrued 608 yards and 6 TDs.
He’s supplemented by Travon McMillan, who’s got 500 yards rushing and a 4.6 yards per carry average to match that of his QB.
Notre Dame football Coach Brian Kelly sizes up Va Tech:
“Defensively it’s what you expect from Bud Foster’s team, they keep the pressure on you.”
Experience in the back end of their defense I think is the key to their defense, returning starters across the board can play man, can mix it up, play some zone coverages. They’ve lost some guys up front, but Eron and Edmunds, extremely productive tackles. What you see with Virginia Tech is negative plays. And most offenses get into long yardage and Virginia Tech is one of the best in the country on third down.
So consequently for us offensively is staying down in distance situations that keep us out of third and long, that’s where they’ve been very, very effective.
Offensively, I think if you talk about Evans you talk about a quarterback that is a dual threat quarterback, that can run the football, big, physical, a lot like Kizer in that sense, and can throw it, as well. They have three good receivers, I think their numbers are almost six thousand yards between the three of them.
I think Ford, Phillips, Hodges, Ford’s the guy that they look to when they need to get the football. But I think tempo will be a key. They don’t play quite as fast as Syracuse, but they can play tempo. I mean they can move fast if they want to. And it’s a team that wants to be balanced in terms of running the football and throwing it.
Excellent kicker, about 80, 90 percent, kicks it out of the back of the end zone and Stroman is really good at punt returns.
Prediction: Notre Dame football 27, Va Tech 24
As I said in the intro, I’m predicting the Irish to split it down the middle these last two, which would unfortunately leave them home for the holidays. I think they’ll take this one, but lose at Southern California, as the Trojans look like they’re getting hot at the right time these days. .
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.