Explosive by Design: How Notre Dame Stress Tested Defenses
Modern offenses are no longer satisfied with stacking together twelve-play drives and hoping to stay ahead of the chains. The best offenses in football are hunting explosives. Every formation, motion, and blocking scheme is designed to create one thing: space. And in 2025, nobody created more space than Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock.
The Irish finished the season averaging a staggering 7.32 yards per play, the best mark in the country and a new program record. They also generated 40 plays of 30 yards or more, proving that this offense was not built to simply survive drives. It was built to flip the field instantly.
At the center of the attack were three core ideas:
Outside zone stretch
Slot fade vertical shots
Deep post manipulation
The concepts themselves are not revolutionary. What separated Notre Dame was how consistently they married them together.
Outside Zone: Stretching the Defense Until It Breaks
Notre Dame’s run game revolved around the combination of Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price. Together, they gave defenses two completely different problems.
Love was the explosive perimeter threat. Price was the downhill hammer. Instead of searching for one “complete” back, Notre Dame leaned into complementary skill sets.
That is an important lesson for high school coaches. Too many coaching staffs force every back into the same mold. Sometimes the better answer is allowing backs to specialize. Different tempos and running styles change pursuit angles and prevent linebackers from settling into consistent fits.
The engine behind everything was Outside Zone.
Rather than trying to displace defenders vertically, Notre Dame consistently worked to run defenders laterally. The goal was simple: stretch the defense until somebody overran the play.
One of the best coaching points in outside zone is teaching patience before explosion. Love consistently showed that throughout the season.
On several explosive runs, his aiming point stayed disciplined at roughly two yards outside and two yards behind the tight end. He pressed the landmark patiently, forced linebackers to flow over the top, then planted and cut vertically behind the backside tackle.
That is how outside zone is supposed to look.
Young backs often rush the read and outrun the blocking scheme. Love understood that speed only matters after the crease appears. He forced defenders to stretch horizontally first, then used elite acceleration once the cutback lane opened.
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
Another cutback by Love, another explosive gain. Notice how patient he remains behind the line while the backside develops. The left tackle and left guard do an excellent job handling the linebacker scraping over the top, which keeps the backside crease alive.
Notre Dame’s offensive line also deserves major credit. The tackles consistently climbed to second-level linebackers and ran them past the cutback lane. Against linebacker movement and scrape exchanges, the Irish stayed disciplined with lateral movement instead of chasing knock back blocks.
For high school coaches, this is a great reminder that outside zone is not about creating movement straight ahead. It is about creating displacement sideways.
Once linebackers start overfitting to the stretch, the defense creates its own seams.
Price became especially valuable because of how physical he was attacking those interior lanes. Defenses could not simply widen out to stop Love. If they did, Price punished light boxes inside. That balance is what opened up Notre Dame’s vertical passing game later in drives.
In this clip, the tight end is able to work up cleanly to the play side linebacker, which allows the left tackle to stay attached to the defensive end. The center climbs perfectly to the backside linebacker scraping over the top and carries him completely out of the cutback lane. That combination creates a massive seam for Price to hit vertically.
