Let's move over to the Notre Dame defense and talk about the keys there.

Last week it was just kind of like, hey, just do your thing, do what you do.

This week, I think there are some things that this defense has a little bit to prove this

week, more so than last week.

And the biggest thing is, I would argue the two biggest disappointments for me so far this

season has been the play of Riley Leonard and how he's been used.

Because they go together.

And his play first and foremost is an even bigger problem than how he's used

because there have been some chances for him to make some plays and he has to take

him advantage of it.

The second one is the play of the defensive line.

Like the one thing we talked about before the season is you can't have regression you can't

regress like you need to build up areas where you weren't as good but you can't have regression

from returners you have to be as good or better and it we said if the defensive line is

simply as good as it was last year you've got a top 10 caliber defensive line they've regressed

they're not only not stopping

the run. They're getting gashed even more than they got gashed last year, but they're not having

the counter to that, which is creating negatives and rushing the quarterback. They're doing neither of

those two things right now. And that's got to get fixed. So you have to be good up front.

No one for the rest of the year is going to be afraid of this defensive line ever at all.

Matter of fact, Northern Illinois went into that game knowing that they could or believing

that they could push Notre Dame around and that's exactly what they did.

...