Can Syracuse derail the Irish’s College Football Playoff bid?
This is it, Notre Dame haters. Your last, best chance at stopping the Irish from claiming their spot in the College Football Playoff all boils down to ... Syracuse.
Notre Dame has embarked on a 10-0 campaign thanks to wins over Michigan and a bunch of other opponents who looked much more formidable back in August (Virginia Tech, Stanford, Florida State). The Irish have taken advantage of their weak schedule to run out to the No. 3 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings. Beating the Orange Saturday and then a .500 USC team would all but guarantee a spot in the year-end bracket.
But Syracuse is trending upward thanks to head coach Dino Babers and veteran quarterback Eric Dungey. The Orange have only lost to the best two teams the ACC has to offer this fall, which sounds pretty great until you realize that means Clemson (great!) and Pittsburgh (...um), the latter of whom Notre Dame has already beaten in 2018.
So the Irish already have a transitive win here. A real victory — this one on the theoretically neutral field of Yankee Stadium in New York City — would set the tone for Notre Dame’s first-ever playoff bid. Can Syracuse be the blight that ruins Brian Kelly’s best-laid plans?
Syracuse vs. Notre Dame prediction:
The S&P+ ratings dub the Irish as the nation’s No. 6 team, because beating Florida State is meaningless these days. Syracuse clocks in at No. 39, likely due to the fact the ACC is just a crumbling sandcastle being washed away by the tide. But this is an exceptionally boring week of college football, and even though the numbers see this as a double-digit win for ND, let’s say the Orange win this one in an unlikely upset just to make cupcake week worth remembering.
Time, TV channel, and streaming info
- Time: 2:30 p.m. ET
- Location: Yankee Stadium, New York, NY
- TV: NBC
- Streaming: NBC Sports, fuboTV
- Odds: Notre Dame is favored by 10 points.
Syracuse vs. Notre Dame news:
- How did ‘Cuse go from four-win team to legitimate ranked program? Dino Babers turned his special teams play into a massive advantage.
“Everyone says that special teams is one-third of the game,” Babers said. “It’s not, but it is one-third of the yardage of the game. Every time you punt, it’s 40-50 yards of territory. Every time you kick off, that’s 60-65 yards of territory if you look at it from a battle standpoint. And that’s the thing that you have to protect. If you don’t spend a lot of emphasis on it, you can find yourself on long fields or short fields.”
- Saturday’s game was supposed to be a home game for the Irish, but Brian Kelly isn’t sweating it.
- Babers is staking the legacy of his seniors on this game against Notre Dame.
- Here’s a bunch of bad poetry to make you hate Notre Dame and its fans even more than you already do.
What’s the Notre Dame quarterback situation going to look like?
Ian Book missed last week’s game against Florida State due to injury, pushing Brandon Wimbush back into the team’s starting quarterback role. This was not a problem because the 2018 Seminoles are just a pile of raccoons stuffed into pads and jerseys.
Syracuse brings a tougher challenge. The Orange have only allowed touchdowns on 58% of opponents’ red zone possessions and, at 3.3 sacks per game, are one of the FBS’s most powerful pass rushing teams. Whether it’s Book or Wimbush, Notre Dame will have its hands full in the Bronx.