Notre Dame Football: A Deeper Statistical Look at the Irish Offense vs. Navy

The 16th-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish beat the No. 23 Navy Midshipmen, 52-20, Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.

IT WAS OVER WHEN...

NBC Sports

With 4:45 remaining in the second quarter, Notre Dame kicker Jonathan Doerer drilled a 32-yard field goal to put the Irish up 31-0. The Irish, seven point favorites coming into the game, reached 100 percent win probability after that made field goal.

SUCCESS RATE

Ian Book was 14-of-20 for 284 yards, 5 touchdowns and zero interceptions. His success rate for the game was 65 percent, the sixth best performance of any Irish quarterback in the Brian Kelly era (minimum 10 attempts) and tied for the best effort this year.

What is success rate?

“The goal of success rate is to create an on-base percentage-style efficiency measure,” ESPN’s Bill Connelly wrote last year. “Depending on a given down and distance, each play is deemed successful or non-successful:

• First downs: gaining at least 50 percent of necessary yardage (usually 5 yards) is successful.
• Second downs: gaining at least 70 percent of necessary yardage is successful.
• Third or fourth downs: gaining at least 100 percent of necessary yardage is successful.”

For quarterback performances, Connelly told me to consider only downs where a pass was attempted or a sack was recorded. (He’d also suggest adjusting for opponent, which I haven’t done.)

The Irish ran 53 offensive plays and were successful on 26 of them. Their 49.1 percent success rate as a team was 37th best in the Brian Kelly era and fourth best this year.

BREAKING TACKLES/MISSED TACKLES

I charted Book with one missed tackle caused and Claypool with two missed tackles caused. For the season, Tony Jones Jr. has broken or dodged the most tackles — 24. Claypool is second with 10, and Book is third with nine.

YARDS AFTER CONTACT

As I used to chart games for College Football Film Room, I use their guideline to calculate based on where the ball was when contact was made. It has to be substantial contact, when the runner is either slowed or in danger of being tackled.

YARDS AFTER THE CATCH

Total yards minus air yards. Air yards can be negative if the ball is thrown behind the line of scrimmage.

BOOK PASSING CHART

TARGET COUNT

Notre Dame quarterbacks are targeting Chase Claypool an average of 8.3 times per game this year. If he continues on that trajectory, the wide receiver from British Columbia will have 100 targets by the end of the regular season.

Miles Boykin had 99 targets during a 13-game season in 2018, excluding plays negated by penalty. The last Notre Dame receiver to be targeted 100 or more times was Will Fuller in 2015. He had exactly 100 targets.

BOOK VERSUS HIS PREDECESSORS

The senior has now taken 1,444 snaps under center for the Irish. Here’s how his statistics match up to five of his predecessors who took that many snaps for Notre Dame. (Carlyle Holiday took 1,443 snaps under center for the Irish from 2001-2004.)