Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider, brought to you by Catanjury Financial Services with Tim LaMalley and Pete Sampson.

I'm Tim Priester. A couple days after Notre Dame's 24 to 16 victory over Ball State started out very well.

And really just kind of contended to deteriorate through the rest of the 60

minutes and had it been 65 minutes we probably wouldn't have gone into would have gone into

overtime at that point but you know I mean the the defense I have to keep coming back to the

defense if they don't do what they did in the red

zone, it's a different ball game at the end, Tavonconi all over the place. Jalen Elliott ends that

safety interceptionless streak. And the defense really comes through when they have to in order

to pretty much save the day. I thought the defense gave them a chance to take over the game in the first

half with three consecutive three and outs, then a six and out, then there was an interception.

Nordame just couldn't score. And you can't put a team away when you're constantly driving

down. A couple good plays, but then they'd be, you know, tackles for loss,

win-bush since then bad decisions. It was so inconsistent offensively that all you got to do is turn two of those five drives into touchdowns and you've taken over this game. Or just flip-field position. You know, when a game becomes a game of punts, it's not a very interesting game to watch. I mean, I think it's... Especially when Ball State's playing out of day. I mean, the Red Zone defense, Riley Neal, was item at one of nine for 10 yards in that touchdown, which I think was his ninth attempt. I think he was incomplete on his first eight attempts in the Red Zone. I have one of eight. Two of nine with the last one, but whatever. We're in that ballpark. Yeah, so it was not a, it was a really good performance by the defense overall. I know that some people were bemoaning like, oh, the corners are playing off. They're playing softer. I think that was the way to beat them because you were going to ask Riley Neal to throw 50 times, which is what happening. They tighten it up. As the game progressed, they tighten it up. Then you're giving him different looks, but I thought Clark Lee was very, very good

sort of figuring out what Ball State was doing earlier, and then Ball State really

couldn't do anything the rest of the game.

I think Neil started six of eight and finished something like 17 or 42.

So it was never a game where you felt like Ball State was going to move up and down the

field and put real game pressure on Notre Dame, but it should have been...

But it was like 48 to 13, not 24.

I mean, defensively, when you're giving up less than four yards per snap and less than

four yards per pass,

I mean, I know the optics of it, because I know what we kept saying to each other,

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