Tag: 2020 ACC football title

No ACC Championship Game Would Give Notre Dame Conference Title

If you have the chance to win a championship, you always want to do it the right way.

If you have the chance to win a championship, you always want to do it the right way. Notre Dame will have that chance when it battles Clemson for the ACC title.

But what if the game isn’t played?

Ralph D. Russo of The Associated Press has learned what would happen in that case:

Naturally, the replies to this tweet were along the lines of Notre Dame players will purposely go out so they can get infected with COVID-19 and cause this game not to be played. After all, how many times in the history of sports have we seen teams change their approaches when a scenario in which they would be safe is in play? They don’t care about the integrity of competition as long as they get what they want.

One would think Brian Kelly will teach his team to be smarter than that. The last thing a program that takes a lot of criticism from outside its fan base wants is to have its first and possibly only conference championship come with an asterisk. More importantly, being reckless on purpose would compromise the health of the players and the community at large. It’s better to keep doing what they’ve been doing and go about this ethically, safely and correctly.

 

Irish losing grip as Clemson’s main challenger in ACC?

A few analysts see Notre Dame trending in the wrong way. Should the Irish be concerned at all?

After one week of play, there is a concerning trend that some analysts have taken when looking at Notre Dame. The Irish are on the verge of losing their grip as Clemson’s main challenger for the ACC crown.

Eric Mac Lain, an analyst at the ACC Network, has the Irish behind North Carolina. Both teams won, both teams needed big second half’s to secure those wins.

Over at 247Sports, they looked at week two overreactions and the Irish showed up. Brandon Marcello stated the obvious that the passing game needed to be better, but his assessment after was concerning. Marcello noted “North Carolina, meanwhile, looks like more of a challenger than Notre Dame in the ACC.”

Yes, this was a look at overreactions, but it’s still a reaction. One that doesn’t have the Irish trending in the right direction. The good news is that after Kelly’s meeting with the media yesterday, he shed some light on the offense. A new zone blocking scheme held the offense back a bit, without live reps in preseason camp, there were kinks to be worked out.

Could that have been why quarterback Ian Book struggled? There were other reasons, his receiver with the most reps in camp, Bennett Skowronek, got injured and didn’t return. All new skill position players needed to be broken in.

North Carolina returned a 1,000 yard rusher, two 1,000 yard receivers and quarterback Sam Howell. They have the chemistry but still struggled.

Yes, some have “dropped” the Irish a notch in there rankings but it doesn’t matter much. Notre Dame’s schedule is set up for them to be able to break in a new offense, while still being able to win. Louisville and Pittsburgh are ranked opponents, but would they be in a normal season? Doubtful.

The defense looks like it won’t skip a beat from last years very good group. They will give the offense a cushion to get comfortable. Brian Kelly’s group should be fine going forward as they compete for the ACC title.