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SOUTH BEND — A full month has passed since Notre Dame football’s 34-23 loss to Ohio State in the CFP national championship game, but some continue to second-guess Marcus Freeman’s fourth-quarter calculations amid a furious comeback that fell short.
Rob Ash is not among them.
As director of coaching development for Championship Analytics, which counts Notre Dame among its 100 FBS clients, Ash had no quarrel with Freeman’s decision to try a 27-yard field goal with 9 ½ minutes left and the Irish trailing the Buckeyes, 31-15.
“That was definitely the right decision at that point in time,” Ash said Thursday in a phone interview. “We strongly recommended a kick there.”
With possessions at a premium, Notre Dame faced fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard-line against the nation’s best red-zone defense. Freeman saw his decision backfire when kicker Mitch Jeter hit the upright and the Irish later converted a second two-point conversion attempt to pull within eight.
“I just thought instead of being down 16, let’s try to go down 13,” Freeman said in his postgame news conference. “I know it’s still a two-score game, but you have a better probability of getting 14 points than you do 16 points.”
Ash, who visits with Freeman and other client coaches each offseason as a sort of analytics sherpa, corroborated what many fans and pundits decried as fuzzy math.
“Given the exact score differential … 16 is only a two-possession game like 20% of the time,” Ash said. “Then you have to factor in a 9-yard conversion just to get the touchdown. And then the other piece that people forget is even if you were successful on the 9-yard conversion and made the two 2-pointers and everything worked right, which is not likely to happen, you still only tie.”
Notre Dame’s offense entered the season finale eighth in FBS with a…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/balancing-notre-dame-footballs-commitment-090331524.html
Author : South Bend Tribune
Publish date : 2025-02-21 09:03:00
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