Through seven games, Notre Dame’s special teams unit has three touchdowns coming on a fake field goal, a punt return and a blocked punt. The last time a Notre Dame special teamer scored a touchdown before this year was 2011.
But Scott Booker’s group has done more than get in the end zone. Freshman kicker Justin Yoon hasn’t missed a field goal since Week 2 (though he did miss PATs against Georgia Tech and UMass), and has consistently looked better each Saturday.
Redshirt freshman punter Tyler Newsome is averaging 43.4 yards per punt, and opponents have only returned eight of his 30 punts. Opponents are averaging 22.19 yards per return — 86th among FBS teams — but Notre Dame did an excellent job to keep the ball out of USC returner Adoree’ Jackson’s hands on Saturday.
[SHOP: Get your Notre Dame gear]
Jackson, who returned a pair of kicks for touchdowns in 2014 and flashed his big-play ability when he took a screen 83 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter, only broke off one big return — and that came when he took a lateral from JuJu Smith-Schuster 18 yards to the USC 46.
USC averaged a starting field position on kickoffs at its 29.25-yard line. For the game, USC on average started its drives at its own 25-yard line — and, according to Bill Connelly’s research, teams win just 32 percent of the time when they average a starting field position between their own 24- and 28-yard lines (of course, Notre Dame negated some of that advantage by allowing a handful of big-chunk plays).
Coach Brian Kelly credited the special teams success to a concentrated effort over the last few seasons finally paying off this fall.
[MORE: St. Brown is ready to play 'right now']
“It’s just been a point of emphasis of what we knew had to get better for us to be the kind of football team we wanted,” Kelly said. “I think the whole emphasis on how important special teams has to be, has been a message that is starting to really sink deeper into the program and the guys now take more ownership in making sure that that occurs.”
With little margin for error heading into the season’s final five games — three of which will come against current top-25 teams — Notre Dame can’t afford a costly special teams mistakes to disrupt its offense or defense. So far, this is a unit that’s looked far more capable of making big plays than it is of committing egregious errors.