Notre Dame has watched ‘a lot of film’ of Ohio St. loss to U-M

ATLANTA — As No. 7 Notre Dame prepared to face No. 8 Ohio State in Monday night’s CFP National Championship presented by AT&T, the Fighting Irish didn’t have to go back too far to find a blueprint for slowing down the Buckeyes’ high-powered offense.

Notre Dame’s defense watched film of Michigan‘s 13-10 upset of then-No. 2 Ohio State on Nov. 30 more than once over the past eight days.

“We watched a lot of film on that game,” Irish defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka said. “It definitely helped us on what we’ve got to stop, but there’s other games that they’ve shown some weaknesses. We’ll definitely take advantage of watching that film and keep that same mentality that we always have.”

Ohio State’s regular-season finale against its biggest rival was a performance it would like to forget. The Buckeyes had only 252 yards of offense, went 6-for-16 on third down and had two turnovers. They rushed for only 77 yards and missed two field goal attempts.

The Wolverines, who were 21-point underdogs, controlled the ball for more than 33½ minutes and shut out the Buckeyes in the second half.

What did the Fighting Irish learn from Michigan’s defense?

“Stopping the run, controlling the line of scrimmage and putting pressure on [quarterback] Will Howard,” Tuihalamaka said.

It’s probably going to be easier said than done with the way the Ohio State offense has played since losing to Michigan. The Buckeyes averaged 37 points in their three CFP victories against No. 9 Tennessee, No. 1 Oregon and No. 5 Texas.

Ohio State had 473 yards of offense in a 42-17 victory over the Volunteers in the first round, then 500 in a 41-21 rout of the Ducks in the quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl presented by Prudential on New Year’s Day.

Because of nine penalties, the Buckeyes weren’t as efficient in a 28-14 win against Texas in the semifinals at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic on Jan. 10, but still had 370 yards of offense.

While Notre Dame might pick up a thing or two from Michigan’s defensive game plan, it’s not like the Irish can try to replicate exactly what the Wolverines did.

“There’s some things that happened in the Michigan game that, you know, Michigan did really well, and Ohio State maybe didn’t do so well,” Fighting Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “But what you can’t do is look at another…