Notre Dame’s defense is so bad, Syracuse is defending its own players

In the first half of Notre Dame-Syracuse, the game’s been score-heavy on both sides. That’s partly due to Notre Dame’s great offense, and, well, Notre Dame’s horrid defense. Which is great if you’re Syracuse, because then you can just fill the void and have your players be their own defenders.

Not that Notre Dame’s defense was good to begin with: they’ve surrendered 498 or more yards in three of four games this season, the previous instance happened last weekend against Duke. It was the Duke game that led to the Fighting Irish replacing defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder with Greg Hudson. Clearly, letting go of VanGorder didn’t fix things.