Notre Dame won't ‘chase ghosts' while planning for Navy

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said Navy’s many different triple option formations are “too many to count.” Last year, the Mids gave Notre Dame a look they hadn’t shown on film since 2009.

The challenge for Notre Dame, as it always is against Navy, is figuring out what to focus on when watching film instead of falling down a rabbit hole of rare formations from previous seasons that might show up Saturday afternoon in South Bend.

“You can definitely chase ghosts for those plays that they run once or twice,” junior safety Max Redfield said. “As far as what they run most often is what we’re going to have to be most familiar with, and a few things that they might throw at us based on our scheme that we run is really all we can study.”

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Notre Dame succeeded in shutting down Georgia Tech’s triple option Sept. 19, holding the Yellow Jackets to just three conversions in 15 third-down attempts in a 30-22 win that wasn’t as close as the scoreline would indicate. Georgia Tech and Navy run similar triple options — Mids coach Ken Niumatalolo was Paul Johnson’s offensive coordinator from 2002-2007 in Annapolis — but Navy deploys far more different looks than Georgia Tech.

Safety Matthias Farley will play against Navy for the fourth time in his career on Saturday and said it’s important to not worry about one or two uncommon plays that could be run.

“Our coaches do a great job of breaking it down for us and giving us specific things to look at from the past,” Farley said. “It’s just buying into the gameplan that’s put in front of us. You can go back forever and say oh, they ran this one time 30 years ago, obviously things are going to happen and there’s an adjustment for everything, a check for everything, they’ve seen every defense there is and they have a check for everything, so you gotta be prepared for things to be different.”

Notre Dame’s defense succeeded against Georgia Tech by throwing plenty of different fronts at the Yellow Jackets and by playing nearly flawless assignment football. Navy, though, rolls into Notre Dame Stadium undefeated and averaging 5.81 yards per carry (14th among FBS teams) while converting over half of their third down attempts.

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Georgia Tech’s offense has been sloppy this year, fumbling 14 times (losing five) while Navy has fumbled six times (losing one). There’s a strong case to be made Navy runs its triple option better than Georgia Tech, which rode the antiquated-yet-effective offense to an Orange Bowl trophy last season.

Notre Dame can’t afford to get ahead of itself on Saturday and look ahead to its primetime date with USC Oct. 17. But it also can’t afford to get bogged down thinking about plays Navy may have ran four or five years ago, even if the Mids run one of those this weekend.

“What we need to do most and most well is just being able to read our keys,” junior cornerback Cole Luke said. “If we all read our keys on the same page at the time we need to, we’ll all (have) success. That’s pretty much it. They will run something that we’ve never had a chance to look at during practice, but I think if we all read our right keys and conceptually we understand what’s going on, we’ll be fine.” 

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