Saturday night at Yankee Stadium will be the 100 year anniversary of the famed Four Horsemen naming. It’s fitting that it will be a top 20 showdown as the 9-1 and 6th ranked Irish take on undefeated and 19th ranked Army.

“If we think it’s Navy part 2, it’s not,” Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden declared Tuesday. “It’s a different animal–their formation structure, their running style, the way they utilize different components. It is quite different from Navy.”

Notre Dame of course crushed then undefeated Navy last month 51-14. The Mids crushed themselves with fumble after fumble. Army is tops in the nation in protecting the football, turning it over just three times all season. That will be quite the challenge for a Notre Dame defense that is #1 in the country in turnovers forced with 25 on the season.

Army’s triple option attack centers around quarterback Bryson Daily who is 2nd in the country in rushing yards among quarterbacks, averaging 118 yards per game on the ground. Daily has also rushed for 21 touchdowns, which is tied for the 2nd most rushing touchdowns of any player at any position in the nation.

“He’s a very good player, he’s an aggressive, physical runner,” Irish captain and safety Xavier Watts says of Daily. “Their whole team is very physical.”

Watts says one of the differences between Navy and Army is that Navy likes to go to the edge while Army will go down hill when running.

Daily has not thrown the ball much but has completed 57% of his passes for 72 yards per game and more importantly has thrown seven touchdowns to just one interception.

“He’s smart, he’s got moxie,” Golden says of Daily. “He has command of the offense. He has patience with the football, strong lower body. You need to wrap him up, you need to get hats to the ball. Upmost respect for him and how they are executing on offense and a big challenge for us this week.”

Notre Dame’s defense has been stingy all season, giving up just 11.4 points per contest, which is 3rd in the country.

If you think Army is just about offense, well their defense gives up less points per game than Notre Dame. Army is 2nd in the country in scoring defense, yielding just 10.3 points per contest. Of course, it’s complementary football for the Black Knights. With the triple option attack controlling so much tempo of the game, opposing offenses are limited in how many possessions they will get in a game.

That will be the headache for the Irish offense, especially one that has struggled for a healthy chunk of the season with doing nothing offensively for long stretches of the 1st half. Last week, after scoring on its opening drive (thanks to great field position from a turnover on the opening kickoff by Virginia), Notre Dame produced 3 and out after 3 and out and didn’t score again until about six minutes left in the 2nd quarter. The Irish were just 1-12 on 3rd down, in large part to penalties and mishaps early in downs.

“Stay out of 3rd and long,” Irish offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock told Sports Michiana when asked how to fix Notre Dame’s offensive lulls in the 1st half. “You gotta quit grabbing people where you are not supposed to grab them, whether that’s the face mask or your hands outside of the framework. We can’t play good offensive football with four 3rd and 16s or more in a row. I don’t care what offense you are. You are not going to be very effective if you put yourself in those situations.”

Denbrock says those are self inflicted wounds that can be corrected with the way they teach technique and with playing with discipline. He says that was an emphasis in practice this week.

Irish quarterback Riley Leonard said after the Florida State game that the Notre Dame offense has the ability to hit a switch and make a scoring drive happen when needed but does need to fix the lulls. This week, he felt it was different.

“I don’t necessarily think the defense stopped us in any way last week,” Leonard explained. “Penalties–we were just behind the chains most of the drives. Any drive we weren’t behind chains, ended up in a pretty successful drive. We just have to be more disciplined and clean up some things.”

Leonard says the first play of the drive is very important and they need to get 3 to 4 yards on the first play of a drive to set the tone.

#6 Notre Dame (9-1) and #19 Army (9-0) will kickoff at 7pm Saturday night at Yankee Stadium in New York. The game will be broadcast on NBC.