What Syracuse coach Dino Babers said about Notre Dame football after Irish win
Syracuse head coach Dino Babers wasn’t necessarily surprised by the way Notre Dame went about its 41-24 victory over his No. 16 Orange on Saturday. He expected it to a degree.
“The game went the way I thought the game would go,” Babers said. “If I was them, that’s the way I would play the game. My hat goes off to coach [Marcus] Freeman and Notre Dame. They played it the way I thought they would play it, and they had success.”
Here’s everything else Babers said about Notre Dame after the game.
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On the Notre Dame running game
“They kept putting that ball in there. Unless you’re going to match scores with them on offense or get out in front of them so they can’t play that style, that’s exactly the style they should have played. They have seven offensive linemen. They have four tight ends. They just turned around and kept handing the ball to those three different backs.”
More Notre Dame football
• How two Notre Dame INTs helped the Irish beat No. 16 Syracuse
• How Notre Dame RB Audric Estime shook off fumble issues and regained his role
On trying to mount a comeback vs. the Irish
“I thought we opened it up a little bit by throwing the football. We actually started to get their defense tired. I shouldn’t say just throwing the football. It was almost like we were in two-minute offense. No huddle, and we were throwing every snap. Their defensive line, if you watched in the middle, they started getting tired with their pass rush. Now, they got a lot of guys. But even then, the guys they had out their started to get a little tired.”
On Notre Dame running back Audric Estime
“That’s the big dude, right? Yeah, he’s huge. What is he, 236 or something like that? How much does he weigh? Do you know? It’s 236 pounds or something like that I believe. 229 pounds? He’s a big guy. He’s got big thighs. The thing is, if it’s one running back doing the whole thing, then that running back gets to get tired as everybody else gets tired. When you’re rotating three cats, you’re only doing one-third of the work. You’ve got fresh guys coming at you every single time. That’s hard. It’s hard. That’s difficult. The only way it will change is if you’re getting three-and-outs. If you’re not getting them on three-and-outs, you can get very tired with those guys coming at you.”
