There was a lot of uncertainty on both sides going into last year’s game between Ohio State and Notre Dame.
Ohio State debuted a new defensive scheme under then-first-year defensive coordinator Jim Knowles. Marcus Freeman entered his first full season as Notre Dame’s head coach with a first-time starting quarterback in Tyler Buchner. As it was the first game of the year for both teams, neither side knew exactly how prepared it was to open its season against a marquee opponent.
Knowles’ defense won the day as Ohio State held Notre Dame to two scores and 253 yards in a 21-10 win. It was a lower-scoring game than expected on both sides – Ohio State’s 21 points would tie the fewest number of points it would score all year, and Notre Dame’s 10 points would be the fewest it would score all year – which resulted partially from Notre Dame making a conscious effort to slow the game down because it didn’t know what it had offensively.
“I thought (defensive coordinator) Al Golden and the defensive staff had a great game plan last year and really did a good job of executing it for the first game of the year, trying to figure out who we were defensively. And part of the mindset going into that game was trying to control the ball as long as we could,” Freeman said this week. “Limit their offensive possessions.”
Going into this year’s game against Ohio State, however, Freeman has a better idea of what his team can do because it has already played four games this season. Couple that with an offense that’s been more explosive this season thanks to the addition of transfer quarterback Sam Hartman, and Notre Dame plans to take a much different approach to this year’s game.
“It's still gotta be complementary football as we go into this Saturday, but I don't want to play not to lose,” Freeman said. “I want our guys to be aggressive and our guys to be attacking. And so we will play complementary football, but our objective isn't just to hold the ball and huddle every single play, kind of what my mindset probably was last year.”
Because Notre Dame has already played four games this season – the Fighting Irish have played one more game than most schools because they played a Week 0 game against Navy in Dublin, Ireland – Freeman feels like his team enters this year’s game against Ohio State with a better feel for what it does well.
“I think there's a lot of different factors,” Freeman said when comparing this year’s game to last year. “You have a year under your belt. It's not the first game of the year. You've been able to develop an identity as a program with these first four games. And so it is a lot different than what it was last year, being the first game of that season for me and the first game of the year.”
That said, the same is true for Ryan Day and Ohio State. The Buckeyes had some growing pains in their first couple of games this season, specifically on offense, as Kyle McCord competed with Devin Brown for the starting quarterback job and the offensive line broke in three new starters. But with McCord now entrenched as the starting quarterback, everything seemed to come together for Ohio State in its third game of the season last weekend as the Buckeyes rolled to a 63-10 win over Western Kentucky.
That gives Ohio State more confidence going into this week’s game than it would have had if it had played Notre Dame to begin the year.
“I think you build up in these first few games to figure out where you are going into this game, and you go from there. But I think that we've got some confidence going into this game. Got a rhythm,” Day said Tuesday. “So now we've got to have a great week of practice. And it's going to come down to who wants to compete more.”
Day described the first three weeks of the season as a “gradual buildup” for the Buckeyes, and he and his players know that they need to take another step and turn up the intensity even more this week. But he says he has a better feel for what he has in this year’s team now than he did three weeks ago.
“I'm glad that we went through those three games to get to this point,” Day said. “With some of the new faces that we had, and we did work out some of the issues, and so I'm excited to get on the field and go play this one now. I think that we have a pretty good idea of who our team is and where we're at. So now it's time to go play. But yeah, we are in a much different place than we were in Week 1.”
Notre Dame still has a significant advantage in terms of quarterback experience, as Hartman is now in his fifth year as a collegiate starting quarterback, having started at Wake Forest for four years. But McCord now at least has four starts under his belt, which makes Ohio State more comfortable with him leading the offense than it would be if he entered a game of this magnitude with only the one start he made against Akron in 2021.
With a lineup filled mostly with players who are in at least their third year of college football, Day also likes the fact that a majority of Ohio State’s key players already have experience playing in big games, which means they shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the spotlight that comes with playing a top-10 opponent on Saturday.
“I think that this is a group that has played on the big stage. The majority of these guys have done that, and they've seen it,” Day said. “Even though Kyle really hasn't been on that stage, he's seen it. He's been around it. He knows what it looks like. And a lot of the guys coming back from last year's team have been, they've been there before. So that's good going into it. And then, I think you saw last week what we're capable of. So yeah, I mean, it's all there. And now it's just time to go do it.”
