The Notre Dame Fighting Irish were looking to be in pretty good shape heading into 2015 already. However, the addition of Mike Sanford as offensive coordinator will take ND from being a pretty good team next fall to contending for a spot in a New Year’s Six Bowl game.
Sanford comes to South Bend from the same position with the Boise State Broncos. Under first-year head coach Bryan Harsin, Sanford’s offense ranked No. 9 in the nation for scoring offense while displaying elite balance. The Broncos finished the season ranked No. 29 in rushing, No. 23 in passing, and finished as the No. 17 ranked team in Red Zone offense in 2014. Boise State was sparked by their balanced offensive attack to a 12-2 finish, including a win in the Fiesta Bowl over the Arizona Wildcats.
Before he was a coach at Boise State, Sanford spent time coaching with the UNLV Rebels, Stanford Cardinal, Yale, and the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. He is uniquely suited to fit in at Notre Dame with his experience recruiting with strict academic restrictions during his stints with Stanford and Yale. He knows how to find intelligent football players and develop them on the field.
At Notre Dame, Sanford will inherit an offense that will not be lacking in experience next fall. Nine of the 11 starters from last season will return on a unit that ranked No. 32 in the nation in total offense. They have excellent depth at the skill positions, with the team’s top two running backs returning in 2015 along with the top four pass catchers from 2014. Perhaps most importantly, the offensive line is big and experienced after losing only one starter this offseason.
Really the only question surrounding the Notre Dame depth chart for next season offensively centers around the quarterback position. Everett Golson made his return to South Bend in 2014 and got off to a red-hot start to the season. Up until the team’s controversial loss on the road to the Florida State Seminoles, Golson looked like a possible Heisman Trophy candidate.
But down the stretch, things fell apart for Golson. After racing out to a 7-1 start in which Golson threw for 22 touchdowns and just seven interceptions, Notre Dame lost their final four regular-season games and Golson struggled to produce consistently, throwing seven touchdowns and seven interceptions in that late-season slide.
As a result, Golson saw his playing time split with Malik Zaire down the stretch, who provided the Irish with a much-needed spark in their bowl game against the LSU Tigers. The young signal caller was an efficient 12-of-15 passing for 96 yards and a touchdown against LSU while rushing for 96 yards on 22 carries with another score on the ground in Notre Dame’s 31-28 win. Golson, meanwhile, accounted for just 96 total yards on the day and completed 6-of-11 pass attempts.
It goes without saying that Zaire finished the year with the hot hand at quarterback. That puts the spotlight this offseason on whether Zaire did enough to secure the job long-term or if he gets another season to develop in a limited role.
So the challenge now falls to Sanford to figure out this quarterback position. If Golson remains the man under center, the coaching staff is going to have to rebuild his confidence after he fell to pieces down the stretch in 2014. He’s proven before that he has the ability to take Notre Dame to the top when he led the Irish to the 2012 BCS National Championship before running into the buzzsaw of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Regaining the confidence he had during that run would go a long way towards putting this quarterback question to rest for good.
Sanford can help Golson return to form by taking some of the pressure off of him with the running game. While the Irish rushing attack was very potent at times, they struggled to consistently rush the football effectively. They averaged 4.28 yards per carry in 2014, ranked No. 70 in the country, and saw that average dip to 3.91 in the 11 games they played against Power 5 conference opponents. In two games, the Irish averaged less than two yards per carry when they managed just 1.74 ypc against the Michigan Wolverines (54 yards on 31 carries) in a 31-0 win and a dismal 1.08 ypc against the Arizona State Sun Devils (41 yards on 38 carries) in a 31-55 loss.
There will be a sense of urgency for Sanford this spring as he won’t have a lot of cupcakes on the schedule next season to tune up his offense against. Notre Dame opens the season with a home game against the Texas Longhorns, whose defense appeared on their way to being one of the Big 12’s best in 2014. The rest of their schedule is littered with Power 5 opponents that will present major challenges with home tilts against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and USC Trojans while traveling to play the likes of the Clemson Tigers, Virginia Cavaliers, Pitt Panthers and Stanford in their regular-season finale.
It figures to be a daunting gauntlet for the Irish in 2015, but that’s no different than any other season at Notre Dame. The Irish routinely schedule big-time opponents up and down their schedule year in and year out and they will be expected to find success no matter who they are playing. Sanford won’t have any benefit of the doubt if the offense starts the season sluggish just because of the difficulty of the schedule.
Finding an offensive rhythm with a balanced attack that utilizes the talent on this roster will be a major key to how successful the Irish are throughout 2015. Sanford has a track record of putting together solid gameplans that utilize the talent at his disposal with great success at a number of stops before he arrived in South Bend. That skill will be well-received at Notre Dame as the Irish look to make it back into the conversation for a New Year’s bowl bid or even a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Mike Sanford has spent his career building elite, balanced offensive attacks. That expertise will catapult Notre Dame from a team with the potential to be pretty good into a legitimate contender for a New Year’s Six Bowl bid next January.
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