I'm not Nick Saban but I've coached DB's for a minute. Now I know the fact I coached and share my opinion drives some posters crazy, I'm not doing this brag, just sharing my opinion and sharing that I have a little bit of training on the subject, so if you could refrain from the snarky,sarcastic, personal remarks about me and my career that would be great.
IMO with the amount of time left in the game you want to try and prevent the opponent from completing passes and getting out of bounds to stop the clock. Running clock is the friend of the defense.
So the ND defensive backs were playing outside technique or a "trap" defense. Most teams in that situation want to run out breaking routes to stop the clock. The outside technique "traps" the defender in bounds and keeps the clock ticking. Good idea and good strategy.
As Brian Kelly stated in the post game presser you have to play tighter on the seam route. Even though you are allowing the receiver a free inside release up the seam, at some point you have to realize he is not running an out route and have to hug up on him and make a play on the ball. ND simply allowed him to run down the seam and catch the football.
So IMO the scheme was fine. The execution was poor, and when you factor in the magnitude of the game it was a disaster. Does ND not practice that situation enough? Or did the player simply make a mistake? I don't know.
A lot of mistakes which led to big plays happened on the back line this year. But the safeties in the BVG defense are asked to do a lot of things that Bob Diaco usually never asked his safeties to do. He sends them quite often on blitzes, they often play near the LOS on run downs, and they are often put in man to man pass defense situations.
Diaco just kind of left Smith and Motta on the hash, played zone and allowed them to ball hawk and knock receivers silly.
Have a good one fellas!
Nice summary. When I looked at the replay I saw Schmidt coming into the scene late and short. It seems to me the LB, if they are not going to blitz have to fall back much quicker and seal off those inside routes; at least get in the way. Where were the linebackers?