Notre Dame ranks No. 5 on Greg McElroy's Top 10 defenses in college football list

ESPN analyst Greg McElroy has high praise for the Notre Dame defense, ranking the Fighting Irish at No. 5 on his top 10 defenses in college football list heading into the upcoming season.

“[Notre Dame]’s defense last year I think was so much fun to watch,” McElroy said. “I absolutely loved covering this team and love the identity that Marcus Freeman has employed. He’s a defensive guru. I love that you know what they’re gonna run. They’re gonna get up in your face, they’re gonna challenge you, they’re gonna go press man and they’re gonna be pretty aggressive with their blitz schemes. You know what you’re getting, and now you’ve just got to man up and go beat them and that’s hard to do.”

The Fighting Irish, fueled by their aggressive defensive, made a run to the College Football Playoff National Championship last season before falling to Ohio State 34-23.

“The one thing that held me back from putting Notre Dame at No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 is the turnover at defensive coordinator,” McElroy revealed. “I have a ton of respect for Chris Ash. But it just goes to show you how much respect I had for Al Golden, who has since left to become defensive coordinator in the NFL. But Ash has a really solid background as well. He’d been at Ohio State under Urban Meyer, helped lead them to a National Championship. He’s also spent time as the DC at Wisconsin, Arkansas and Texas. He’s been around for a while and he is going to be able to step right into what was a remarkably successful foundation established by Marcus Freeman and Al Golden.”

Notre Dame returns 66% of defensive production

Under Golden last season, Notre Dame allowed just 15.5 points per game (fourth best in NCAA) and 307.4 yards per game (11th best in NCAA). They return 66% of their defensive production from last season.

“They’ve got a lot of players back and they should be very, very good,” McElroy said. “The big question is how do you replace the defensive tackles Howard Cross and Rylie Mills? Those two guys being gone is significant, but they played the final month of the regular season without Howard Cross. They played the last two or three games of the College Football Playoff without Rylie Mills. So you’ve already gotten a bit of a glimpse at what it might look like if those guys are unavailable, and the results were good.”

“I really like what they have back with the edges defensively. Last year they were a disruptive group on the edge, but that was without two of their best players who they lost early in the season (Boubacar Traore and Jordan Botehlo). These two guys being healthy is significant, but because they got hurt it allowed opportunities for guys like Joshua Burnham and Bryce Young to step in and get quite bit of reps through the regular season and postseason run.”

McElroy’s entire list is below:

HM. Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee
10. Clemson
9. Oregon
8. Michigan
7. Oklahoma
6. Alabama
5. Notre Dame
4. Georgia
3. Penn State
2. Ohio State
1. Texas