Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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The Complementary Angle T Second-year coordinator Chuck Martin attempts to expand the offense's identity By Lou Somogyi he 2012 Notre Dame offense had mixed reviews during a remarkable 12‑1 campaign. The pluses included becoming only the eighth Notre Dame team ever to commit 15 or fewer turnovers in one season (15). It was a monumental improve‑ ment from its No. 110-rated 29 turnovers during the 8-5 season in 2011. offense Q&A The Fighting Irish also posted a rushing average of 189.4 yards per game — their best since 2000. This included outrushing the physical Stanford Cardinal, grinding out 270 yards on the ground against a BYU run defense that finished second in the coun‑ try, and accumulating 215 and 222 yards rushing in victories at Oklahoma and USC, respectively. The down side was Notre Dame's pass‑ ing efficiency rating slipped to 74th in the country — it was 59th in both 2010 and 2011 — and the red-zone offense finished 70th, too often settling for field goals (24 on 32 attempts) over touchdowns. Consequently, Notre Dame was 78th in scoring offense (25.8 points per game), and averaged at least 11 points fewer than any of the other teams that finished in the final top six of the Associated Press poll. The 2012 Notre Dame offense's job was to run clock (it was 22nd nationally in time of possession at 31:44 per game) and not put the dominant defense on a short field. Under second-year coordinator/quarter‑ backs coach Chuck Martin, its job just might have become tougher in 2013. First it graduated four of its top six re‑ ceivers, most notably first-round choice Ty‑ ler Eifert. Next, its top two running backs, Theo Riddick and Cierre Wood, also picked up their diplomas after accumulating 1,659 yards rushing last year. Finally, starting quarterback Everett Gol‑ son withdrew from the university this May for academic reasons and plans to re-enroll in 2014. Martin helped Notre Dame average 412.2 yards per game last year — 222.8 passing and 189.4 rushing — but it was only 78th nationally in scoring with an average of 25.8 points per game. photo courtesy notre dame media relations The 2013 Notre Dame offense might have a complementary angle again. Blue & Gold Illustrated: It seemed like once Everett Golson became a viable running threat in October, the entire offense func‑ tioned better. How important is a running threat at quarterback in this offense, and how much does his loss hurt? Chuck Martin: "There are a lot of ways to win football games. Would you like to have a quarterback that can run, throw, jump, do cartwheels? Yeah. But you do what the people you have are good at — not just the quarterback, but everyone — and that's what you lean on. It's not, 'Oh my God, this of‑ fense works only if the quarterback can run the ball!' "Was Everett an excellent athlete and did he extend plays? Yeah, he did some of those things. Do we have somebody else that can do that? Maybe. Maybe not. But there are a lot of ways to win, so you try not to worry about anything that you don't have on of‑ fense or defense and try to worry about the things you are good at and you accentuate what you are good at. "We'll have to pull from different areas of our offense to be efficient." BGI: How comfortable would you be get‑ ting quarterbacks Andrew Hendrix or Malik Zaire implemented into the game plan for a specific package? CM: "Our job right now is not to try to predict the future of what may happen, be‑ cause anybody who followed Notre Dame football a year ago, all these questions about how the quarterbacks were going to play out during the year — was it going to be An‑ drew or Tommy [Rees] or Everett or Gunner [Kiel]? — could have never predicted how the season unfolded. Even if you were going to write a script, you probably wouldn't have written it that outrageous. Our job is to try to get all three quarterbacks ready to play. 38 ✦ Blue & Gold Illustrated 2013 Football Preview 38-39.Offense Q&A.indd 38 6/25/13 2:30 PM