Notre Dame Football Recap: Irish slaughter the South Florida Bulls 52-0

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish improved to 2-0 (1-0) on the season with an absolutely dominating 52-0 shutout win over the South Florida Bulls.

Notre Dame scored touchdowns on their first 4 possessions of the game and went into the half up 38-0. Ian Book had a very lean day in the air going 12-19 passing for 143 yards, but scored 3 times on the ground.

The rushing attack is what Notre Dame really leaned on with a nice rotation of Chris Tyree, Kyren Williams, and C’Bo Flemister — with a little Jafar Armstrong mixed in as well with a TD run. Those three backs ran for over 250 yards and had 2 touchdowns (one was the first ever for Tyree). C’Bo really piled it on with 127 yards.

A lot of the yards and touchdowns were assisted by Irish part-time fullback Tommy Tremble. The Georgia native was impressive with his physicality all day, and was even rewarded with a rushing attempt on a 3rd down that gained 4 yards. He was also the leading receiver for the day with 3 catches for 60 yards.

Before the game started, we were informed of 8 Irish players that would be out for the day, and most of them were on the defensive side of the ball. The backups (and backups of the backups) played extremely well all day long. Jack Kiser was the leading tackler on the day as he replaced BOTh Shayne Simon and Marist Liufau.

Shaun Crawford and Nick McCloud were the only true starters on the field for the Irish secondary (including nickel), but Houston Griffith, D.J. Brown, and Clarence Lewis all played really well in their first extensive action of the young season.

Brian Kelly asked his team for a shutout during his halftime speech. He said he was “tired of being the nice guy,” and he got a very loud response from his players. They delivered, and everything else is just candy.

This is the 20th victory in a row at home for Notre Dame, and despite the opponent — it’s very impressive.

We will have plenty more on OFD about this win.