SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Greg McElroy has watched all of Notre Dame, not just the moments when he’s been side by side with Sean McDonough as part of ESPN’s broadcast team.
The former Alabama quarterback called Notre Dame’s win at NC State when Sam Hartman picked apart the Wolfpack defense. He called Notre Dame’s offensive collapse at Clemson when Hartman threw two picks under constant pressure. But McElroy has also watched the Tennessee State film, when right tackle Blake Fisher got turned around by an FCS pass rush. He watched the Ohio State game, when offensive coordinator Gerad Parker called a nearly pitch-perfect game against one of the country’s best defenses.
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Point being, when it comes to the casual analysis of Hartman and Notre Dame’s offense this season, McElroy can be more formal about it. He’s done the work. And as Notre Dame heads toward this season’s final two games, including Hartman’s alumni reunion with Wake Forest on Saturday, what’s wrong with the Irish offense isn’t exactly a quarterback story.
“I think we’ve come to a time in the college football world where you can’t play quarterback by yourself,” McElroy said. “Because receiver is now a premium position. And explosiveness at receiver is of paramount importance. And I don’t think Notre Dame has enough of it.
“Who’s the catch-and-run guy that you’re just going to say, ‘Man, we gotta get that guy 12-to-15 looks a game.’ A Marvin Harrison-type player, a Malik Nabers-type player, they don’t have that guy.”
The reasons why are multiple, from injury misfortune, to poor recruiting, to transfer misevaluations, to offensive game plans that can go stale after halftime. But as McElroy sees it, the narrative of “what’s wrong with Sam Hartman?” should zoom out from a quarterback with 128 career touchdown passes, seventh most in FBS history.
That’s not saying Hartman is without fault, something he accepted in bulk after Clemson when he stepped in front of the bus headed toward Parker. The pick six thrown to Clemson linebacker Jeremiah Trotter was a poor decision, thrown to a tight end who failed to separate. Hartman missed Rico Flores in the second quarter for a potential touchdown. He failed to loft a pass to Gi’Bran Payne over defensive end Xavier Thomas that could have gone for another score.
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But, as McElroy sees it, Hartman has hardly been the biggest of Notre Dame’s problems.
“I think it’s really more of a supporting cast thing than it is a reflection of Hartman not being good and the offense not taking off,” McElroy said. “If you just had one receiver to put out there at X and you can hold the safety, and he can’t spin down and take away the run, that completely frees things up. But that’s what’s missing. They have everything else. Seriously, they have everything else.”
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Notre Dame has gone 23 games without a 100-yard performance by a wide receiver. Only Rutgers, UConn, Iowa, Navy and Wyoming have gone longer without hitting that mark. The Irish have also been poor in pass protection all season, challenging the notion that Notre Dame opened the year with two future NFL offensive tackles. The results suggest the Irish actually have one All-American in Joe Alt and four other linemen still under development.
According to TruMedia, Notre Dame ranks 106th nationally in pressure rate allowed at 36 percent of drop backs. Against Clemson, that pressure rate jumped to 61 percent of drop backs, against Duke it was 54 percent, essentially making life untenable for Hartman in the backfield. Sometimes that’s the offensive line breaking down, with the Irish rotating at center and both guard spots this season. Sometimes that’s the running backs failing to protect, eaten alive by Clemson’s linebackers two weeks ago. And there’s the issue of Hartman having few outs at receiver, which he had at Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons had 18 100-yard games by receivers in Hartman’s final two seasons there.
“It’s hard to protect them when your best pass catching options are your tight ends,” McElroy said.
When the best tight end is out for the season — Mitchell Evans was lost for the year with a torn ACL suffered against Pittsburgh — it only exacerbates that problem. Despite missing two games, Evans still leads Notre Dame in targets, catches and catch percentage among regulars at receiver and tight end.
There’s also the matter of scheme catching up to Hartman, both in terms of him learning a more pro-style system compared to the slow mesh at Wake Forest and Parker learning on the fly in his first season as offensive coordinator. Some of Notre Dame’s strengths have proven to be weaknesses while some schematic principles don’t seem to get called as much as expected from the outside. For example, Notre Dame called just two play action passes against Clemson, per Pro Football Focus, a seeming waste of Audric Estime’s 17 carries for 87 yards.
Advanced stats recap from the Clemson game
The bar to succeed offensively was so low with how Clemson's offense fared
Factoring out Sam Hartman's runs, ND had a 29.2% rushing success rate, 31.3% passing
-4% pass rate over expected and 2 play action passes is tough to square pic.twitter.com/MFJN4Sh9D4
— Notre Dame Football Stats & Analytics (@ND_FB_Analytics) November 5, 2023
Parker pushed back on that idea, noting that Clemson played so much man coverage that it reduced the utility of throwing play action. It’s worth noting that Hartman has struggled when he has thrown play action this season, too, which could be an issue of learning a new scheme where there’s more post-snap reads compared to what he did at Wake Forest where there was more pre-snap work.
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Hartman’s 54.7 percent completion rate on play action this season ranked 115th nationally. He’s averaging just 54.5 passing yards off play action at Notre Dame this season after averaging 126 yards per game from the conception in his final two years at Wake Forest.
“If we could guarantee running play action passes we’re going to get us first downs and yardage, we would do it,” Freeman said. “The biggest thing I think with Sam is that he’s still in the first year of a completely different system, and the problem is you have so much success early, right that it’s like, ‘Oh man, he’s just mastered this. We’re good to go.’ He makes every perfect read and those type of things, and then you play some really good defenses and we haven’t had a performance.”
Hartman is down to three chances to course correct before departing Notre Dame. The experience here has hardly been a failure, with the Irish still in position to win double-digit games. But Hartman’s sole season won’t entirely feel like a success either, a quarterback with unprecedented experience looking at times like a first-year starter. It’s just that the reasons behind those optics aren’t entirely on the quarterback himself.
“How do we find ways to help him make decisions that will help our offense continuously have success?” Freeman said. “Because I’ve never been around a person that works as hard as him in terms of trying to make sure he understands what we want from him, but also what the defense is presenting.
“It’s not a lack of work ethic. We got to do things as coaches and players around him to help him have success because he is a talented, talented individual that it’s hard.”
(Top photo: Joseph Weiser / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
