On Saturday night, No. 10 Notre Dame will match up against Navy for the 98th time. And while the Irish have won six in a row this season and seven consecutive games in the Navy series, they cannot overlook an always-pesky Midshipmen team. Navy checks into the weekend at 7-1 and carries the best in-conference record in the American Athletic Conference.
With four games left to play in the regular season, here’s how the Irish can improve to 7-2 under the lights at Notre Dame Stadium.
Win the turnover battle
It’s well-documented that the turnover margin is one of Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman’s most valued metrics when evaluating his football team on a weekly basis. A positive turnover margin not only speaks to Notre Dame’s ability to change momentum with defensive plays, but also to its desire to avoid beating itself.
The turnover margin is also how the Irish ran a ranked Navy team out of MetLife Stadium last October. The Midshipmen coughed the football up six times, more often than not without any disruption from Irish defenders. As a result, the game got out of hand in a hurry.
For Navy, which always wants to negotiate its way down the field and shorten the game by eating up the clock, turnovers become a massive difference-maker. If you can suddenly take the football away from the Midshipmen, you disrupt the longevity of their drives and put yourself in a position to score on the other side, open the game up and take Navy’s top-ranked rushing attack out of the picture.
For Notre Dame, defensive turnovers have been everywhere lately. The Irish have accumulated multiple takeaways in six straight games, and the only games this season in which they didn’t win the turnover battle were their two losses against Miami and Texas A&M. By playing mistake-free football on offense and wreaking havoc on Navy’s plans defensively, the Irish can make a blowout of Saturday’s game.
Control the line of scrimmage
I’m sorry to be Captain Obvious here, but when you play against Navy, you have to own the trenches. Especially this year, as the Midshipmen lead all of college football in rushing yards with 317.3 per game.
A week ago, when Navy lost its first game of the season at North Texas, the Midshipmen ran the football well but couldn’t finish drives, committing three turnovers while forcing no takeaways. Meanwhile, the Mean Green were able to capitalize with an efficient passing attack and a dominant rusher of their own. Freshman running back Caleb Hawkins set career highs for North Texas with 197 yards and four rushing touchdowns on 33 carries.
On defense, Notre Dame needs to be assignment-sound against Navy. The Midshipmen demand attention to every detail with their multi-layered rushing attack, led by Blake Horvath, their returning starting quarterback. Horvath has also opened up Navy to throw the ball more often than it has in past years, leading running back Eli Heidenreich to a 575-yard season as a pass-catcher.
When on offense, Notre Dame’s line has to give Navy the business, whether that’s in protecting freshman quarterback CJ Carr or creating lanes for the dominant Irish running backs. Last year, junior running back Jeremiyah Love hit a 64-yard home run against the Midshipmen. If he’s got one or two more of those in him this weekend, he’d become a 1,000-yard rusher with at least four games to spare while propelling his team to a dominant night.
Handle success
Freeman’s Notre Dame teams have always been able to rally back from hard times, whether that meant turning 2022’s 3-3 start into a nine-win season or making the National Championship game last year with a loss to Northern Illinois. Handling success can be a different beast, though – one that teams might not even consider.
The Irish need to consider it, because this week’s first College Football Playoff rankings all but guaranteed that Notre Dame will reach the CFP by winning out. Their head-to-head loss against Miami clearly does not matter anymore, and the committee views Notre Dame quite favorably relative to the ACC’s leaders and the SEC’s two-loss squads. A 10-2 finish may even have the Irish hosting their first-round game again.
But Notre Dame’s not 10-2 yet. And as last week’s game in Chestnut Hill showed us all, any team can put the Irish in a vulnerable position if they’re not on their game. To get where it wants to go, Notre Dame must maintain for four more weeks the urgency and intensity it has used to climb back into the driver’s seat. That begins this weekend against Navy.
