Notre Dame football: Navy head coach evaluates Irish after 42-3 thrashing
If it was a fight they would have stopped it.
Notre Dame did anything and everything they wanted to Navy on Saturday, thrashing the Midshipmen 42-3 and starting the 2023 season 1-0.
The game was the first as Navy’s head coach for Brian Newberry, who replaced Ken Niumatalolo this past off-season. The game was obviously a thrashing but what did Newberry see in the Fighting Irish?
Here is what the new Navy head coach had to say about Notre Dame following the blowout victory and how he sees the Irish faring in 2023.
Opening Comments
“The first thing I want to say is that’s a heck of a football team that we played tonight. I can’t say enough good things about coach Freeman and his staff and his players. I thought the quarterback, Sam Hartman, played extremely well. Disappointed. It’s not what we hoped for an expected. But it was a good football team, and we knew— didn’t take a miracle to win the game, but we knew we had to be at our best. I didn’t think we were.”
On Notre Dame's rushing attack
“We’ve been good against the run around here for a long time. We were poor on first down. They were able to stay on track. We’re they’re able to stay on track, it makes it hard to make a really good call. They had a good plan. The coaches did a nice job. They had a plan for our pressures and our zeroes. The plan was to show some stuff to see what they were going to do. Let them show their hand a little bit. It didn’t work out quite like we wanted it to.”
On Sam Hartman
“He’s a really good player. We knew that going in. He’s a smart player. He sees the field really, really well. He was able to ID things we were doing really well and put the ball in the right places when he did. We missed him in the backfield and had a guy come of coverage and had a bust there…But he’s a really good player, and we knew that going in. He’s like a coach out on the field. He ran the offense well. He’s super efficient.
“The thing they were able to do that was a little disappointing to me was they were able to run the ball. The controlled the line of scrimmage. Their offensive line was really good today. They controlled the line of scrimmage, their running backs ran hard, we didn’t tackle well and that’s a bad combination. When they did throw it, they were deadly efficient.”
Notre Dame Run Defense
“We got some positive yards. We knew going into the game they weren’t going to be 10, 12, 15-play chunks. We knew we were going to have to grind it out. In the second half there was a drive that was about 14 plays. I knew that was the kind of game it was going to be. But we kind of shot ourselves in the foot when we’d get something going and get behind the sticks a little bit on offense and just couldn’t recover from it.
“They’re a good football team. A veteran football team on defense. They see the option every year and know how to defend it well. And they had a good plan.”
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