If Notre Dame is a second-half team in 2015, as some suggest, Brian VanGorder’s defense has a lot to do with that perception. In seven games, only Georgia Tech has scored fifteen or more second-half points on the Irish, and even those were late game points against Notre Dame’s substitutes. No opponent has scored more than once in the third quarter.
In today’s post, I want to look at the second half performance of Notre Dame’s defense during the Brian Kelly era. With five and a half seasons to analyze, there’s plenty of data. What’s more, there’s a lot to play with, now, comparing the Kelly defenses to the Weis, Willingham, Davie, and Holtz squads in later posts.