*Editor’s Note: The line on FanDuel adjusted to Notre Dame as 9.5-point favorites after this article was scheduled to publish.
Notre Dame’s schedule has been heavily criticized since the spring. Six games into the season, and the Fighting Irish have yet to face a team ranked inside the top 30 on ESPN’s SP+, but all the team can do is handle the opponent before them.
Thus far, Notre Dame has done as well as you’d expect from the No. 2 team in the nation.
According to TeamRankings, the Fighting Irish’s +33.0-point margin of victory is the largest in the Football Bowl Subdivision, excluding games against lower-division opponents.
That’s 0.7 points ahead of No. 3 Miami. In the process, the Irish are holding opponents to the nation’s fewest yards per game, 214.2, 25.1 fewer than the next-best team.
They’re doing so while averaging 44.0 points per game, the second-best mark when leaving out games against Football Championship Division teams.
All of this is to say that Notre Dame is doing exactly what one of the best teams in the country should do against inferior opposition. You don’t have to take my word for it.
ESPN’s SP+ rates the Irish’s résumé as the best in college football, even though they’ve only faced the 92nd toughest schedule thus far.
