Notre Dame Football: 5 overreactions from win over Boston College

Notre Dame football’s Week 3 win over Boston College prompted much talk around the nation. Here are the overreactions from their decisive victory.

The Irish played a well rounded game on the defensive side of the ball, but struggled to get things going offensively before halftime. Notre Dame’s raw talent was enough to power the Irish to a win over the Eagles, but there were many issues that clearly needed to be addressed.

After the win, the common consensus was that the Irish had successfully rebounded from last week’s heartbreaker. However, Georgia’s defense is almost incomparable to that of Boston College, meaning we really don’t have a good idea as to just how good the Irish offense was in this game.

Nevertheless, many see this win as the road back into college football relevancy, but that isn’t the case just yet. Here are five overreactions that have been swirling around Notre Dame’s latest win.

5. The Irish beat a solid Boston College defense

This point will be constantly circled back to throughout this article. The idea that the Irish made a top tier defense look silly is flawed. As mentioned before, it will be hard to judge Notre Dame’s performance against this team because we don’t know just how good they are.

Only a matter of years ago Boston College was one of, if not the best defense in all of college football. Those days are all but gone as Boston College has struggled to maintain any defensive relevancy over these last two seasons.

To see just how drastically the Eagles have fell off over the last year and a half, one must only look to the stat book. In 2015, Boston College was fourth in the nation in points allowed with 15.2. In only one year the Eagles saw themselves drop to 45th in points allowed, with their average rising a whole ten points by the end of 2016.

They have looked even worse to start the season this year, allowing scores of 20, 34, and 49 to Northern Illinois, Wake Forest, and Notre Dame, respectively. At this point, the Eagles have seen their opponent’s totals climb for each game, and the streak may continue when Boston College takes on Clemson next week.

Needless to say, this defense isn’t nearly as frightening as many remember them to be. The Irish did all they could against them, putting up 49 points on the day, but let’s not pretend that the Irish’s offensive performance was any greater than it really was.