A growing concern for the Notre Dame offense over the last month has been the wide receiver rotation, or lack thereof. Their 'big three' is seniors Jordan Faison and Jaden Greathouse along with junior Micah Gilbert. Unfortunately, the issues to dip into the receiver depth were evident in their 28-24 loss to BYU where all three starting wide outs combined to play 235 snaps while the rest of the room combined for two and both of those snaps came from Mylan Graham.
Wide receivers coach Mike Brown, offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock and head coach Marcus Freeman need to find ways to get their talented play makers on the field, and the only way to do that is by expanding the rotation, something that should be top of mind for all three coaches involved. Brown, similar to the messaging Freeman mentioned during his Monday press conference, alludes that it boils down to trusting the depth of the room.
"I think it's something you come in and you have to have a plan and not that we didn't have a plan in that game,' Brown explained. "Sometimes you get into those situations and certain situations alter your plans. So what does that mean? It means you got to go back and reevaluate what your plan was. Obviously we want to go back, it's always been a challenge for us. We talked a lot about it, talked a lot about it throughout the bye week. Getting those guys involved in the game just earlier on in the game is going to be the mindset going in obviously as we continue to move forward."
Notre Dame's offense, as a whole, has lacked explosiveness. It's turned into a very vanilla, slow burn, 'grind it out' type of offense and that just doesn't fit the skillset of the players on the roster. There needs to be a philosophical shift in how to attack defenses and how to generate explosive plays. It's extremely difficult to be explosive when your most explosive players are on the sideline, and Brown knows it.
"We got to get those guys involved more," Brown stated. "Those guys are extremely talented on their lack of snaps at times. It's not really an indictment on them. It's more about the way that those front three guys have been playing. You start to get into some of those games, you're in a top 10 matchup on the road and you got these two guys who have made play after play after play in big games. It's hard to take them out. But at the same time, you don't want guys that are just worn down and tired, especially as you get later in the season."
There's plenty of options for depth at receiver, and this isn't a call to action to play all 15 scholarship wide receivers on the roster, no team in the country does that on a weekly basis. But there needs to be some early game opportunities carved out for depth pieces on the roster like Bubba Frazier, Elijah Burressand especially Mylan Graham.
"He's still doing a really good job," Brown said of the former Ohio State transfer. "Again, it's not an indictment on Mylan. Mylan's done everything that we've asked him to do. They battled it out throughout training camp and decided to go with JG as a starter. A lot of the amount of snaps that JG's getting is because of how good and consistent JG has been. It's not like Mylan's done anything wrong. You got a guy who's playing really good football right now for us and has been really consistent."
Like several teams in college football right now, Notre Dame has championship aspirations. But it's going to be extremely difficult if your top guys (Faison, Greathouse, Gilbert) are playing 45 or more snaps every single week. This wasn't just an issue in the BYU game. Gilbert played 57 snaps against Michigan State, 46 snaps against Purdue and 65 against North Carolina.
Faison played 69 snaps against North Carolina, 65 against Michigan State and 48 against Purdue on top of the 79 snaps he played against BYU. Greathouse's production and snaps have ramped up the last couple of weeks but even he played 43 snaps against North Carolina, 35 against Michigan State and 28 against Purdue to go along with the 79 he played against BYU.
Meanwhile, Burress has only played 36 snaps all season and they all came against Rice and Stanford. Frazier has only played 22 snaps all season, both against Rice and Stanford and Graham has only played 31 snaps in the last two games having played zero against North Carolina, and two against BYU. 29 of his 31 snaps the last couple of games came against Stanford. The coaching staff can talk about 'trust' in the big games ad nauseum, but failing to play Frazier, Graham, Burress or even Matt Jefferyor Jerome Bettis Jr.is a systematic failure.
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