16 days until Notre Dame football: A stat the Irish will have trouble backing up

BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Notre Dame football statistic every day until the 2024 season opener at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 31 in College Station, Texas. Today, there are 16 days until the Irish and Aggies kick off at Kyle Field.

A Notre Dame offensive line featuring Joe Alt at the left tackle spot and Blake Fisher bookending the right side allowed the Fighting Irish to finish tied for 17th in sacks given up in 2023, the program’s best placement in that statistical category since coming in a tie for 11th in 2019.

Notre Dame only allowed 16 sacks last season. How much will that number change with Alt, the No. 5 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, and Fisher, a third-round selection, no longer steadying things up front? The Irish are presumptively replacing them with Tosh Baker , a graduate student who’s only started six games in his career, and Aamil Wagner , a junior who has started zero.

Gulp.

It’s not all going to come down to the far sides of the line, of course. Notre Dame needs consistent pass-blockers in the middle, too, and position coach Joe Rudolph believes he has those in junior center Ashton Craig , junior right guard Billy Schrauth and whichever senior, Pat Coogan or Rocco Spindler , earns the right to start at left guard. Sophomore Sam Pendleton seems to have entered that position battle, too, for what it’s worth.

Pro Football Focus has Notre Dame offensive linemen being responsible for 11 of the 16 sacks the Irish allowed last season. Here is the breakdown of who those 11 were attributed to with the total number of pass-blocking snaps each player played in parenthesis.

Fisher: 3 (366)
Schrauth: 2 (117)
Spindler: 2 (292)
Andrew Kristofic: 1 (22)
Charles Jagusah: 1 (23)
Alt: 1 (368)
Coogan: 1 (389)

The sneakiest stat of the bunch? Probably that Coogan allowed as many sacks as Alt on 21 more pass-blocking snaps. He steadily had a pretty good year as the only Notre Dame offensive lineman to start all 13 games.

Baker did not allow a sack on 41 pass-blocking snaps, and Wagner did not allow any on 15. Their pass-blocking grades were 57.3 and 37.0, respectively, though, which accounted for two of the seven worst grades among the 25 Notre Dame players who generated one.

Craig did not allow any sacks on 111 pass-blocking snaps after filling in at center for Zeke Correll in the final three and a half games of last season. He generated a pass-blocking grade of 63.4. Correll’s was 77.2, second on the team behind Alt’s 91.2.

Needless to say, Notre Dame is missing a lot from last year along the offensive line.

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