So Travis, these last two sections of the show are going to focus more on specifics, right?

Like just really diving into more the type of the granular, granular look at this football team.

And so we're going to talk about the areas where Notre Dame has to play at a high level

and areas where they need to show improvement if this defense is going to be a key to a

championship run.

And when it starts, it really starts with the areas where they have to continue to thrive.

And I think the efficiency in the past game is huge for the defense, which equals for them creating inefficiency on

offenses. That is a big thing. And you want to know why Notre Dame is a really good third

down defense because they force a lot of incompletions, which means, A, they're making a lot of stops on third down,

but also when you're, when teams are completing less than 50% of their passes, all those first

and second down throws that are going incomplete, well, guess what? That means they're going to be

in a lot more third and long type of situations,

and that's a place obviously where Notre Dame needs to be and be really good at.

So this team has been very good at forcing teams to throw a lot of incomplete passes.

And most of the teams that rank pretty high in this area are teams that are really good on third down.

If you look at the top five teams in the country when it comes to top five teams in lowest completion percentage allowed,

Notre Dame, Utah in Northern Illinois are also in the top 10 in third down defense.

Notre Dame is seventh, Utah's third, Northern Illinois is second.

Notre Dame is number one in past efficiency defense or opponent combined quarterback

rating.

And when you look at some of the teams they might play in the postseason beginning with

Indiana, the more you can force incompletions, the better chance you have at stopping them and getting them off the field.

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