During a good number of Notre Dame football games this fall I have had the same text message conversations plenty of other Fighting Irish fans have:
“Why don’t the Irish run more playaction?” or something along those lines is a common starting point.
The biggest deal of that was made following Notre Dame’s loss at Clemson two weeks ago when the Irish attempted just two playaction plays all game long.
The gameplan was clearly different in Saturday’s shellacking of Wake Forest and quarterback Sam Hartman performed well. A large part is obviously because of the opponent he faced, but did using playaction a significant amount more help him?
A good find from Matt Freeman of Irish Sports Daily Sunday morning shows just how good Hartman was after faking a handoff.
Per PFF – Notre Dame QB Sam Hartman went 8-of-11 for 126 yards and two touchdowns when using play action during Saturday's game. pic.twitter.com/xrlTbWRzeM
— Matt Freeman (@mattfreemanISD) November 19, 2023
That’s good for more than 11-yards per attempt on a day that saw Notre Dame regularly make big plays offensively.
Like I asked in my postgame writeup though – where was this a couple of months ago?