Notre Dame Football Notebook: Irish 44, UNLV 21

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish improved their record to 4-3 on the season with a 44-21 victory over the UNLV Rebels. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t very interesting — so I guess Peacock was the right choice.

DIGGING IN

Notre Dame leaned hard on Logan Diggs in the running game. The sophomore from Louisiana carried the ball an astounding 28 times for 130 yards. Watching the game live, you really notice that Diggs looked like he earned every inch of those 130 yards. The offensive line was physical (and literally pushed him forward on several occasions) but this was a tough running game from Diggs.

SMALL DAY

Audric Estime has a fumbling problem. The power back was shot out of a cannon for the first touchdown of the day (a 12 yarder) but on his third carry of the game, Estime lost another fumble — and his day of carrying the football came to an end. This is something Notre Dame (and Estime) absolutely has to fix THIS week.

AN APPEARANCE

Isaiah Foskey has been known to disappear this season — as he has in past seasons for stretches of games. Today was one of those games where Foskey gets to pad the stat column a little bit and even it all out — kind of. Foskey looked superhuman with two blocked punts and three sacks for the day. While this was certainly a fun performance, I think we would all like a more consistent effort from him for the rest of the year. Still... it was a hell of a day.

A POPULAR MAYER

Michael Mayer is the best tight end in college football so a day that includes a 6 catch 115 yard and one touchdown performance almost feels like it’s being took for granted. The problem is that he was targeted 12 times on the day by Drew Pyne — almost half of the pass attempts. Mayer is the security blanket for Pyne, but that security allows bad throws, bad decisions, and bad moments. Mayer is phenomenal, but until Pyne is able to inolve more players more often, we may never see Mayer’s true value to the offense.

BRADEN LENZY

Braden Lenzy has been getting open all season, and in the first half of the UNLV game, It was a handful of times. Lenzy was able to finally get in the endzone on Saturday thanks to a variety of different ways of getting him the ball — even if they couldn’t find him on a post. Lenzy has took some heat this season, but he’s out there putting in the work and doing what he can. Just got to get him the ball...

NOTES TO FINISH

I really just want to move on from this game, but here are a few things I want to point out:

• UNLV was 0-13 on 3rd down
• UNLV didn’t have a single drive longer than 3 plays in the first half and posted 9 three and outs.
• After being such a huge part of the offense not too long ago, no running back caught a pass.
• Two pass breakups and a forced fumble and recovery from Notre Dame’s defensive backs is about as good as it gets this season.
• J.D. Bertrand... finally gets a break.