Pinstripe Bowl: Rutgers vs Notre Dame

The Scarlet Knights will get a pseudo home game against the Irish, playing in the Yankees Stadium.  Rutgers started the season with a shootout loss to Fresno State and four straight wins.  After then losing five of the next six, the Knights were able to get bowl eligible by throttling USF at home.  The Fighting Irish had to contend with the loss of Everett Gholson before the season even started, but were still able to reach eight wins and get a victory over rival USC for victory in back to back years for the first time since 2000-2001.

The Rutgers offense wasn't overly proficient, totaling just over 3500 yards of offense this year, and scoring just 329 points.  Despite gaining just over 28 yards a drive, the Knights only went three and out 20.8% of their drives.  Gary Nova was replaced after playing dreadfully in the 1-4 slide by senior Chas Dodd.  Dodd was able to complete 60% of his passes, but averaged just 6.8 yards per pass and had just a pair of touchdowns to three interceptions.  The offensive line allowed a pressure on 14.7% of the QBs dropbacks, so it was not easy for either of the signal callers.  This likely lead to TE Tyler Kroft leading the team in receptions with 40, while averaging 13.3 yards per catch.  The run game only averaged 3.7 yards per carry, but its somewhat misleading since Paul James was actually able average 5.7 yards per carry.  James converted six of his third and short carries, while also averaging 3.6 yards per carry in the redzone.

The Notre Dame offense had its own issues at the QB position with Gholson missing the season, Tommy Rees stepped in as the starter.  He was able to hit long passes fairly often, with a fifth of his passes going for more than fifteen yards, but he only completed 53.7% of them.  He did improve his touchdown to interception ratio, moving it to 2:1.  Rees looked often for TJ Jones, who ended up with 65 catches on the season and a 16 yards per catch average.  Jones was good on third downs, converting 75% of his catches for first downs.  Troy Niklas has been a good option in stretches this season, and has averaged over 15 yards a catch.  The run game was headlined by a pair of juniors, Cam McDaniel and George Atkinson the third.  The pair combined for nearly 1200 yards and six touchdowns, with 28 runs of more than ten yards between them.

The Rutgers pass defense which has been so good in years past was just downright awful this year.  The unit allowed a 64.1% completion rate for an average of 7.9 yards per attempt.  While defending only 10.4% of the pass thrown against them, they allowed 31 passing touchdowns.  However, the run defense was just stellar, allowing just 2.99 yards per carry while keeping half of their opponents to under 100 yards.  LB Steve Longa had 111 tackles this season to pace the team, 7.5 of them for loss.  DL Darius Hamilton though lead the team with 10 stops behind the line, with 4.5 sacks and four more QB hurries.  The Notre Dame defense featured two of the top defensive line prospects for this upcoming draft in Louis Nix and Stephon Tuitt.  Tuitt was able to play up to expectations, totaling 7.5 tackles for loss in his 45 stops to lead teh team, and contributing six sacks.  Nix struggled a bit more, with a career low 27 tackles and just two of them for loss.  The down year for him showed in the team's run defense, which allowed 4.2 yards per carry with 13.4% of those carries going for more than ten yards.  Receivers were able to get their hands on most of the passes thrown their way, with just 28 passes defended.  But they werent able to pick up extra yards, averaging just 10.5 yards per catch.

This will likely be a defensive struggle, with a pair of middling offenses and solid defenses.  The total is set at just 52.5 but is in hand.  The Irish are also 14.5 point favorites, a bit much for a team that only outscored Air Force by more than 10 points.