Notre Dame Run Defense Was Excellent Against Duke
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00:00 So if you go look at it, when they were running the power read, so power read for you guys
00:07 is basically the quarterback is actually running the power play, right?
00:13 Gap down, pull around.
00:14 That's the one running inside.
00:15 Correct.
00:16 And the back or the receiver is actually running a sweep outside a sweep.
00:21 So he's going to write it.
00:22 He's going to read that end man.
00:24 And if that end man goes out, he pulls and runs vertically and follows the blocker.
00:28 If that end man comes down or hesitates at all, he's going to give and let the jet sweep
00:32 get outside.
00:33 Well, what Notre Dame did is basically they said, Hey, we're going to have the edge, take
00:37 it and then the tackle looped and then Marist would run with the jet sweep or the linebacker.
00:42 And I know JD Bertrand chased it down once as well, but usually it was the other times
00:46 it was Marist did a great job because it was basically our linebackers are as fast as your
00:51 running backs.
00:52 That's basically what Notre Dame decided and they were correct on that.
00:55 And so they did a nice job with that.
00:57 But see that concept also set up nicely for the read zone because on the read zone, they
01:03 would crash that end and then loop Riley Mills around.
01:07 So the end would force the pole and then Riley Mills is going right outside and just sitting
01:12 there waiting on a quarterback and Riley Leonard cannot make Riley Mills miss.
01:16 He could not miss, make him miss the tackle.
01:19 Riley was very disciplined getting outside, not overplaying it.
01:22 And you need to be super disciplined to do what you're describing because you're not
01:28 always, you're not always going to be the guy that's tackling the ball.
01:31 I mean, and defensively you want to go to the ball and there's a lot of things that
01:35 you want to do instinctively, right?
01:37 It's like, it's like defending the triple option.
01:39 We talk about this all the time.
01:40 You got to do your job.
01:41 You got to do your job.
01:42 You got to do your job and it gets boring.
01:44 And when you try to do something that's outside of what your role is, that's when there's
01:48 a big play.
01:50 So you got to give a lot of credit to Riley Mills because maybe it didn't show up in the
01:53 stat sheet, right?
01:55 But he did his job over and over and over and forced the ball to where Notre Dame wanted
02:01 the ball to go.
02:03 Like what's the internet meme?
02:06 He knew his assignment and he did it over and over again.
02:12 And it proved to be very successful because the tackles for loss were huge and the linebackers
02:17 were flowing downhill.
02:19 It was awesome.
02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]