Notre Dame Football over Vanderbilt: Stats That Lie and Stats That Don’t

Last Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish defeated the Vanderbilt Commodores, 22-17. As always, there were stats. As always, many folks are going to dig into those stats, looking for the story they tell. Turns out, I am one of those folks. Welcome back to Stats That Lie and Stats That Don’t, the Vanderbilt edition.

The close win for the Irish was, in my opinion, a pretty straight forward game on the stat sheet. Most everything can be explained without digging too deep, a fact you’ll see me cover in the second section of this article.