Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider, brought you by Irish Illustrated.com.

I'm Tim Preece with Pete Samson and Tim O'Malley.

We are previewing Virginia Tech, a huge game for Notre Dame if they are to keep their bowl hopes alive

because we know what's awaiting them in Los Angeles

the following week. I think it's going to be a, I think it's going to be an interesting matchup.

Virginia Tech's good. Somebody keeps giving me crap about all I'm saying that. But I noticed that early

in the season and it's going to be a real challenge for Nordame. Nordame playing

better football. I think it's a pretty evenly match games, even if the records don't indicate

that. I would like to see how Notre Dame's run game responds to a real run defense after some

success over the last couple weeks. I think one thing watching the Army tape that stuck out to me was

they're trending away from everything being so read-optiony.

There's a little bit more just straight handoff type stuff, which seems to suit Josh Adams really well.

I mean, so going through that tape, I mean, they had runs of 8, 14, 10, 8, 12, and 9 off straight handoffs.

Whereas their read options up the middle are 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2. 3.

So I think there's, maybe there's something there,

but I want to see it apply to a real defense that has some playmakers on the front 7

because Notre Dame, I think, needs that

to open up the passing game. I've been, you know, sort of pounding the table for more play

action type stuff all year. But to make that work, you need to establish, not just hand the ball

off, you need to establish a running game against a team like Virginia

Tech so Kevin Stefferson can get deep.

But yeah, I think Notre Dame is playing better football.

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