2007 Game 7:  USC Versus Notre Dame - Defense Notes Date - October 20, 2007 Location - South Bend Indiana Result - USC 38 Notre Dame 0 Just as there were a lot of nice plays on the offensive side of the ball there were a lot of good things on defense as well in this game for USC. For the game the Trojans produced season high totals for sacks and tackles for losses, and tied the high point for turnovers forced as well. Starting with the statistical trends here are how things now look after seven games in the table below. The source data is all from the NCAA's CFB web site for Division I football statistics and the 2007 defense figures are all year to date (YTD) numbers. The all time leading performances for the Pete Carroll era are highlighted in bold for completed seasons for comparison. As you can see a couple of areas in 2007 are right at or slightly ahead of those levels at the midway point in the season. Other areas are still lagging. The next several games in the Pac-10 will be very revealing about how good this defense is in historical perspective. Category 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 YTD Rush Yards Per Game 83.2 60.2 79.4 130.5 91.1 64.1 Rush Yards Per Carry 2.8 1.8 2.6 3.8 3.0 2.2 Pass Yards Per Game 201.8 276.2 199.9 230.4 204.7 188.0 Pass Yards Per Completion 11.6 11.5 10.6 11.1 11.1 9.1 Pass Completion % Allowed 49.8% 55.0% 53.8% 59.7% 54.6% 54.1% Total Yardage Defense 284.9 336.4 279.3 360.9 295.8 252.1 Scoring Defense 18.5 18.4 13.0 22.8 15.2 16.6 Sacks 43 55 50 32 35 17 (31) Tackles For Loss 96 126 120 73 87 43 (79.8) Fumbles Recovered 19 20 16 16 11 7 (13) Interceptions 17 22 22 22 11 6 (11.1) 3rd Down Defense % 27.6% 38.8% 28.0% 36.5% 38.7% 31.9% Note: Figures inside ( ) indicate simple projections over a 13 game season. The Trojan rush defense has now moved up to #4 in the country and trails only Boston College, Ohio State, and Oregon State. That ranking and others will probably take a hit after playing the Oregon Ducks next week who are averaging 292 rush yards per game and just ran for over 460 versus Washington on Saturday. Pass yardage defense has improved for the most part each week and only the 373 yards rang up by Sam Keller keeps it from ranking higher. Notre Dame could only muster 117 yards passing in this latest game and the QB was under heavy pressure most of the game. Below I'll highlight some of the sack plays. As I mentioned above for the first time this year USC put up big numbers in both the sacks (5) and tackles for losses (10) department. In 2003 and 2004 these type of figures were regular occurrences but now they seem to only happen once or twice per year. With the latest figures USC is now on track to average about what it did in the 2005 and 2006 seasons for sacks and TFL's. Let's hope the upward trend continues going forward although against the Ducks next week I don't expect too many sacks of TFL's in reality. Just containing them for short gains will be a good starting point. How Notre Dame Scored Notre Dame did not score in the contest so this is a simple table to update this week. Drive Starting Point Points Comment Long field scoring drives 0 N/A Short field scoring drives 0 N/A Scores directly by the defense or special teams 0 N/A Totals 0 USC Base Defense Schemes / Notre Dame Formations On 1st and 10 yards here is one of USC's base fronts in the game versus ND's single back alignment. On 2nd and 10 here against ND's 3WR I Formation alignment USC played the more conventional looking 4-3 alignment with the WLB split out more to the side of the twin wide receivers. On other passing downs USC left the center uncovered and went into a stronger pass rush alignment and blitzed the middle with LB's on several plays. Also more than once I thought I saw the double eagle alignment with Sedrick Ellis in a zero technique directly over the center and two three technique players outside the guards. Cushing and Moore are the stand up ends in this instance. There were some other subtle alignment changes and a lot of bringing Kevin Ellison up in support on run plays for outside containment, blitz situations, and short pass plays to the flats. I did not find any really great secondary pictures in the telecast this week. It looked like a lot of Cover 2 pre-snap reads that rotated into Cover 1 and man under or other related secondary schemes. I'm sure some of it was more complicated pattern read schemes and other methods but without direct knowledge there is no accurate way to comment. USC Rush Defense The USC rush defense was good this game as noted above. Overall it allowed only 48 yards on 30 attempts for a 1.8 yard average. Notre Dame stuck with the attack on the ground more than Arizona did last week but did not find any success. The biggest rush play for Notre Dame was an 11 yard gain by Armando Allen. He generated 58 yards but much of it came well into the fourth quarter. On the negative side for the Irish Evan Sharpley lost 31 yards on his eight carries which include the five sack plays. Here is the histogram of the ND runs in the game. 34 of the Irish rushing yards came on the final drive in the game. USC Pass Defense The USC pass defense did well in this game and that is to be expected when the defensive line can put pressure on a relatively new quarterback. Likewise of course good secondary coverage creates time for the defense to create pressure as well. Notre Dame only completed 17 of 33 passes for 117 yards with one interception. Only one pass play of greater than 15 yards was completed (22 yards long) and one equal to 15 yards. Notre Dame was 4 of 17 on third down conversions in the game for 23.5%. Here is the histogram of their completed pass plays. YPA was a very low 3.9 yards and YPC was also a very low 6.9 yards. Sedrick Ellis Sack Plays This week let's take a closer look at the Sedrick Ellis sack plays up the middle. There were two of them and I thought they were both worth closer examination. Here was the first Ellis sack on a first down and 10 yard play. It looked like initially two Irish defenders were blocking Ellis from this angle but it is hard to tell. Somehow he still got free and sacked the QB for a four yard loss on the play. Here was the second Ellis sack play that came out of the double eagle alignment with two 3 technique DT's Ellis was initially blocked fairly well and looked contained to the left. Even at this point he seemed somewhat contained by the offensive line. However he had beaten his man in the pile up and suddenly you have to wonder what comes over a QB's mind at a time like this? There was probably no way to even side step and avoid the sack at this point unless your name is perhaps Vince Young. That has got to hurt a lot the next day was all I could think when I watched the play on TV. Blitz Play & Rey Maualuga Sack Here was another of the sacks that came on a second and short situation where USC correctly guessed pass on the play. This time USC blitzed both the strong safety off the end and the middle linebacker up the middle. Rey Maualuga quickly closed in and made a nice tackle before the QB could escape. There were other nice sacks as well including plays by senior Alex Morrow, an assisted sack by Kyle Moore and another sack by Rey Maualuga as well. Additionally there were at least ten tackles for losses in the game by the Trojan defense. Kyle Moore Batted Down Pass Play When USC was not sacking the Notre Dame QB they were still harassing the Irish in different ways. On this one the Trojans dropped Kyle Moore into pass coverage to the left of the offensive formation. The camera did not zoom in until after the pass was thrown but Kyle timed his leap just correctly and deflected the pass for an incompletion. Other Notes and Reflections There were two Irish fumbles and the Kevin Ellison interception as well at the end of the game to stop the final Notre Dame drive. For an afternoon to me at least it felt more like the old USC defense of 2002 to 2004 that stopped the run, constantly put pressure on the QB, and forced turnovers leading to short field scores on offense. Overall this was a very positive game for the Trojans on defense. Enthusiasm has to be somewhat tempered I suppose by the reality that this was not a top Irish team with a veteran QB like Brady Quinn the past couple of seasons. Still it was encouraging to see the Trojan defense generate the sort of big plays that have been sorely lacking in the areas of sacks, tackles for losses, and turnovers. Producing more of these and staying out of a shooting match will be key next week against the Oregon Ducks.