In the season opener, Notre Dame is expecting the unexpected from Louisville football

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Get ready, Louisville. The very eyes of Notre Dame are on you.

On Wednesday morning, the nation’s ninth-ranked football team, in its facility with 11 national championship banners on the walls, shifted focus and began its preparation in earnest for its Sept. 2 season opener at Cardinal Stadium.

With game plan installation underway, Notre Dame’s focus is now to “work towards really peaking for our game against Louisville,” said Fighting Irish head coach Brian Kelly.

A national semifinalist last season, Notre Dame opened as a 19.5-point favorite for what will be a debut performance for Louisville’s new coaching staff led by Scott Satterfield.

For the Irish, their goal in 2019 is clear — to add a 12th banner to those walls. The first game looms as only a first step toward such ambitions and greater challenges, most notably a headlining Sept. 21 showdown at Georgia that could match two top-10 teams. Standing out in Notre Dame’s musical playlist for Wednesday morning’s practice: “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.”

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But as such heavy underdogs after a miserable 2018 season, the Cardinals have nothing to lose in this opening game. And they offer a unique challenge for the Irish in that the transition in coaching staffs and schemes makes them a mystery.

“We’ll watch Appalachian State film, obviously,” said Kelly, a nod to Satterfield’s previous coaching stop. “That’s the first place where we’re going to go. And then prepare for the unexpected, things that we haven’t seen before. We have to be very simple and keep things simple on our end, because they’re going to do some things that we haven’t seen before.”

Six Notre Dame players were selected in April’s NFL draft. So there are holes to fill on both sides of the ball for a team that won 22 games the past two seasons and was 12-0 entering last season’s playoff defeat to eventual champion Clemson.

Much of the 2018 success ultimately had to do with quarterback Ian Book. He returns as the Irish’s headliner after taking over as the starter during this past season, completing 68.2% of his passes for 2,628 yards and 19 touchdowns.

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Kelly’s stated desire, however, is more conservative. It’s a strategy that perhaps plays to Notre Dame’s strengths on the lines of scrimmage, given that 10-year Irish defensive line coach Mike Elston on Wednesday called this, “The best defensive line we’ve had here in quite some time.”

“We’re going to have to the run the ball well and stop the run,” Kelly said. “We’re going to have to play with a physicality. You really can’t see that right now. We’re going to have to play that way against Louisville.”

Indeed, the Cards’ offensive approach under Satterfield is expected to lean on the running game.

But the Irish can’t assume that, necessarily.

“What I do know is these guys are really, really skilled coaches,” Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea said. “They’ve done it at a really high level at App State. I’ve got a lot of respect for them, and so I know that we’re going to be challenged. I know that they’re going to have wrinkles, and they’re going to find ways to move us around and try to compromise what we feel are our strengths.

“You have to kind of prepare for a lot more than you’re going to see.”

Lea said his approach will be to watch tape of Appalachian State’s offense going back a few years to “when the personnel was a little different.”

“You kind of pile it all together and then really pull the most challenging parts and pieces and make sure you rep it 100 times and hope that somehow you’ve surrounded the bulls-eye,” Lea said. “We’ll have to be on our toes and evolve and adjust as we go, because they’ll have things that inevitably we won’t have prepared for.”

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LACEY IMPRESSING: Defensive lineman Jacob Lacey, a former standout at South Warren High School in Bowling Green, enrolled early at Notre Dame this past spring and has since continued to impress coaches, likely earning a spot in the playing roster as a true freshman.

Lacey was a four-star prospect and the state of Kentucky’s No. 3 overall prospect in the 2019 class, according to the 247 Sports composite, ranking behind only Nebraska’s Wandale Robinson and Stanford’s Stephen Herron.

“Jacob will be ready. Total confidence in him,” Elston said. “… His dad went to Louisville. He was actually, I think, born in Louisville and spent five years (there). So he’ll be ready for Louisville in terms of energy and excitement.”

Gentry Estes: 502-582-4205; gestes@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @Gentry_Estes. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/gentrye.