52 days until Notre Dame football: Numbers that back Marist Liufau’s usage

Notre Dame asked Marist Liufau to do everything in 2022. Because of it, he played a team-high 646 defensive snaps according to Pro Football Focus. Two-hundred and 52 of those came in coverage, which was the seventh-most coverage snaps of anyone on the Notre Dame defense.

Here’s a look at the top 10 in that category.

Cornerback Benjamin Morrison: 367Cornerback Cam Hart: 336Cornerback TaRiq Bracy: 321Safety DJ Brown: 296Linebacker JD Bertrand: 271Safety Brandon Joseph: 258Linebacker Marist Liufau: 252Cornerback Clarence Lewis: 230Safety Xavier Watts: 215Safety Ramon Henderson: 209

Liufau had the fourth-best PFF coverage grade (75.9) of any Notre Dame defensive player behind Morrison (82.2), Joseph (77.1) and Lewis (76.3). His yards per reception allowed (4.4) was the best mark on the team of any player who was targeted at least 10 times. Liufau gave up nine catches for 40 yards on 16 targets.

PFF credited the Irish with just 21 passes broken up in 2022. That was one of the fewest totals in the country. According tp CFBstats.com, Notre Dame had 24 passes broken up. That was tied with South Florida for 129th in the FBS by that outlet’s count. CFBstats gave Charlotte 21 passes broken up, which was the smallest count in the country.

Liufau broke up one pass all year according to PFF. He intercepted a pass vs. Syracuse, too, that came on a deflection from defensive tackle Howard Cross III. One PBU and one INT aren’t astronomical numbers for an athletic linebacker a team is asking a lot of, but all things considered Liufau’s shortcomings aren’t when he’s in coverage.

Pass-rushing is another story.

Liufau had a PFF pass-rush grade of 58.3 in 2022 on 112 pass-rush snaps. There were nine Notre Dame players who logged at least 100 pass-rush snaps, and Liufau had the lowest grade of any of them.

There is going to be the good and the bad with most college football players. For Liufau, the former is coverage and the latter is pass-rushing. Liufau’s run-defense grade (64.7) and tackling grade (64.6) were both slightly below average. He was elite in one area, bottom of the pack in another and middle of the road in two others. Weighing all facets, he was just an average ballplayer.

Coverage capability up to the standard he set for himself last fall will keep Liufau on the field as a will linebacker in his graduate season. But if he starts slipping there and does not make up for it with better pass-rushing and assignment-sound tackling, Notre Dame could experiment with putting younger, unproven players on the field in the middle of its defense.

The post 52 days until Notre Dame football: Numbers that back Marist Liufau’s usage appeared first on On3.