Closing out the regular season portion of the 2019 Notre Dame football schedule, the Irish head to Palo Alto to battle the Stanford Cardinal in another rivalry battle. David Shaw’s team is coming off a 2018 effort in which any rollercoaster analogy would be sufficient. That’s because they started and ended their season with four-game winning streaks and dropped four of five contests in the middle.
A breakdown in the Cardinal’s usually-reliable rushing attack was a key reason for their midseason dip, which began with a 21-point loss against the Irish. That was byproduct of the shaky play on the offensive line, while the added emphasis on throwing the ball wasn’t enough to compensate for a defense that allowed over 400 yards in a game seven times and over 500 on three occasions.