SOUTH BEND, Ind. — How does a quarterback who completed 19 of 22 passes for 313 yards and three touchdowns get better?
There’s an easy answer to that question about Malik Zaire. The redshirt sophomore southpaw gained only 16 yards on nine carries in Notre Dame’s 38-3 win over Texas Saturday night, a somewhat surprisingly low total for a player with a reputation of being a read option whiz.
Zaire's total includes a 12-yard loss on a sack, but even removing that from the equation he only averaged about three yards per carry.
“He should have been nine carries for 60, 70 yards, maybe more,” coach Brian Kelly said. “There's a lot of room for improvement in there. He's very capable. He knows where he needs to get better in that.”
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Kelly pointed to Zaire needing to improve fundamentally on read option plays and called it a “very correctable” problem. Against LSU in the Music City Bowl, Zaire carried 22 times for 96 yards, so it’s not like he hasn’t had success on the ground at the college level before.
But after Tarean Folston suffered a season-ending torn ACL on his third carry of the game, all of a sudden Zaire had to work with a pair of running backs in C.J. Prosise and Josh Adams he hadn’t played next to in a game. Kelly thought there was a little bit of hesitancy from Zaire in getting comfortable on read option plays next to those two greenhorns. Zaire agreed and said he’s spent some extra time in practice working with Prosise over the last few days to accelerate that familiarity.
While it didn’t show in his passing line, Kelly figured Zaire had some first-game jitters that led him to get a little anxious in the run game, too. Those manifested themselves in some alignments that weren’t conducive to making the right reads against the fronts Texas lined up.
“We had some alignment issues, we had some things that going fast-paced, a lot of things could be out of whack but being able to be in alignment is (our) first and foremost (goal) and some of those things were crucial in making the reads a bit different,” Zaire said. “We fixed those this week and being able to continue to read out some of the looks they gave us, they gave us some different looks and things that we’ve practiced.”
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Still, Zaire masked that ineffectiveness with a phenomenal game throwing the ball, which was partly set up by Notre Dame calling for far more running plays with him in the game. Kelly said after Saturday's game that Zaire's ability to pass off play action makes things look so easy it felt like stealing yards from Texas.
Zaire’s strength, despite his strong game through the air, will always be his ability to run the read option, QB powers, etc. Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Mike Sanford said during spring practice that if he and Kelly could get Zaire to be an effective passer, he’d be nearly unstoppable.
Against Texas, Zaire was nearly unstoppable, but not for the default reason. The focus, at least for this week, flipped to getting Zaire more comfortable with his reads. That’s a problem much easier fixed in game week than throwing mechanics.
“I don’t want to paint it as we weren’t pleased with his performance, we were (for) a second-time starter,” Kelly said. “But certainly a lot of room for growth, especially in the run game.”