We're roughly six weeks away from the start of Notre Dame football, when the Irish play host to Rice on Aug. 30 at Notre Dame Stadium.

In recent weeks, we've taken focused looks at recruiting, positional units, backups and more. We’ll take a step back today and think about the big picture. In what areas does Notre Dame need to improve and/or excel to succeed in 2014?

We’ll zero in on certain statistics that will likely be very revealing as to how successful the Irish will be in various facets of the game. Obviously, the most important stats in the end are points, wins and losses. We’ll probe a bit deeper here.

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