Notre Dame Defense Has Much to Prove vs. LSU in Music City Bowl

For most of us, December is a time for holiday parties, a few too many cookies and the promise that January means a move back to the straight and narrow. For Notre Dame's defense? December presents one last opportunity to prove that their November performance won't be the lasting memory of this historically woeful group. 

Brian VanGorder's young defense spent bowl preparation looking for a parachute to stop their free fall. With LSU's prodigious ground game looking to barrel through Notre Dame in the Music City Bowl, the Irish defense got back to the basics as they assembled a final game plan to help finish the season on a winning note. 

Getting healthy was a big piece. Defensive tackle Sheldon Day is on pace to play 40 or 50 snaps at defensive tackle, his knee healthy enough to battle in the trenches with a running game that averages nearly 50 attempts (48.5 to be exact) a game.

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Sophomore Isaac Rochell will move inside as well, doing his best to fill in for Jarron Jones at the other defensive tackle position. Rochell, who matched Jones and Day at 7.5 tackles for loss this season, will be a critical piece to the Irish's efforts up front. 

"He's extremely important," head coach Brian Kelly said over the weekend after the team's first practice in Nashville. "He's a guy that can play both inside and outside and he's going to have to do both for us."

Fortifying the front line is the first step. But erasing the memory of a seven-game run of giving up 30 points or more may have been more challenging. That's been part of the December rebuild that the coaching staff has tried to impart on a young group that hit rock bottom Thanksgiving weekend against USC. 

"Trusting their technique. Trusting themselves. Having great confidence in what they're doing," Kelly said of the internal marching orders. "We need a little bit more size up front, but we'll make up for it with some determination and grind through it. And I think we've got a good plan to find ways to minimize some of the areas where we lack."

Cody Riggs' return to the secondary will help, giving the Irish a capable pair of cornerbacks to focus on the passing game. So does the breather both Max Redfield and Elijah Shumate got, the embattled safety duo given one-on-one time with their coaches to begin negotiations on their joint extraction from the doghouse.

Les Miles has built a program around power personnel, not schematic tweaks. So the weeks spent studying LSU has the Irish prepared for what's to come. Now they'll need to prove to a more than skeptical audience that they're capable of slowing down an offense—something they haven't done since early October. 

Give Kelly credit for one thing: He's not making excuses. 

"We really only have three guys out from the Florida State game," Kelly said. We've got [middle linebacker] Joe Schmidt out, we've got [safety Drue] Tranquill out and we've got [defensive tackle] Jarron Jones out. We've only got three guys out. They're three good guys, granted, and we'd like them back. But the fact of the matter is we should be able to find a way to grind it out. And that's what we're looking to do." 

It's a big if, but if Notre Dame's defense can manage to slow down the Tigers, a victory in the Music City Bowl would be just the ticket for starting 2015 on the right track. 

*Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.