Things that happened in 1988:
The Lakers won the NBA Championship
The Dodgers won the World Series
A vice president won a presidential election
4th ranked Notre Dame beat the number 1 ranked team at home
All of those things have happened in 2020. Unfortunately, the Lakers winning the championship is way too common. But the Dodgers won a World Series and a vice president won a presidential election for the first time since 1988. Notre Dame has won two other games against the number one ranked team since then. We beat Colorado in the 1990 Orange Bowl and we beat Florida State in 1993. The 1988 college football season ended with Notre Dame winning the National Championship. Hopefully this season will end that way too.
This was our first game against the number one ranked team since I was a student. And much like that game, this one lived up to the hype. Ian Book played the best game of his life (so far). He threw a couple of deep balls, he ran the ball well, he threw the ball away when he was under pressure (this is something he has not done often), and he led a 91 yard drive with less than two minutes left to tie the game. Kyren Williams has been amazing. I wasn’t expecting much out of him this year, but he’s been great. Even when we’ve been able to run the ball well in the past, we couldn’t do it against the elite teams. We did it yesterday. Williams had the long run on the second play of the game to give us the lead. His average for the rest of the game wasn’t great, but it seemed like he made plays whenever we needed one. And he had the best game I’ve ever seen from a Notre Dame running back picking up the blitz. That was fun to watch (it was like watching Mookie Betts running the bases). Our wide receivers were a pleasant surprise. Avery Davis made the biggest play of the game and Javon McKinley made some good plays. They’ve both been better than I expected. Ben Skowronek has probably been about what I expected. The offensive line did a pretty good job. We’ve had great offensive linemen under Kelly, but it always seemed like the offensive line didn’t perform in our biggest games. We were able to out-physical Clemson last night.
Our defense gave up 40 points, but I thought they were pretty good. Travis Etienne was shut down. D.J. Uiagalelei set a record for passing yards against Notre Dame, but we made Clemson one dimensional. They didn’t have Trevor Lawrence and I did think Uiagalelei missed a couple of throws that he could have made, but they definitely didn’t lose the game because of poor quarterback play). Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoah’s fumble return was kind of like something I did once or twice in the old NCAA Football video games where you intercept a pitch and return it for a touchdown.
Special teams was mostly good. Jonathan Doerer made four field goals and only missed a really long one (and Jay Bramblett made a great tackle on that play to save a potential disaster going into halftime). I was thinking missing an extra point at the end of regulation or at the end of the first overtime would be the worst possible way to lose, but there was no reason for concern. Kickoff coverage was very good. Matt Salerno has been sure-handed on punt returns, but I’d like to see somebody who is a threat to do something returning punts. But if they do everything else well, I’ll live with not having a threat on punt returns.
When we fell behind by seven, I was thinking we should go for two if we scored a touchdown, but then when we scored, I didn’t want to. Kelly was asked about it after the game and his reason for not doing it was pretty much the same reason I changed my mind: we worked too hard to score that touchdown and have the opportunity to get to overtime. But then in overtime, I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to stop Clemson. (Speaking of overtime, I’m morally obligated to talk about how stupid college football overtime is. It’s slightly less stupid than Notre Dame playing in a conference because the idea of overtime is not stupid, but the rules that they came up with are just so dumb.). We get back to back sacks to put Clemson behind the chains. I had flashbacks of when we were one play away from beating USC in 2005. We had 3rd and 20 after a Trevor Laws sack and then 4th and 9 and then it was the Dwayne Jarrett catch for 61 yards that led to the Leinart fumble and then the Bush Push (by the way, I looked up how long the Jarrett catch was just to make sure, but I definitely didn’t have to look up how many yards USC needed on third and fourth down, I remembered). But this time we finished it off.
I almost got to see an all time classic win in person against USC in 2005. After the game I had the thought that if not for the pandemic, I could have been there last night (this game was on our original schedule). But really, I probably wouldn’t have gone. I haven’t been to a night game since Jon was in law school. It would not be fun to have to drive back to a hotel after a night game. And ticket prices would have been ridiculous. The other reason I wouldn’t have gone was that it’s November. I haven’t been to a November home game since Navy in 2013. After the Stanford game in 2014 (which was early October, also check out that post for my favorite games, the list needs to be updated because this one is definitely at the top of the list of games that I didn’t go to), I pretty much decided that I didn’t want to go to any cold weather games at Notre Dame anymore (this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but September games are definitely my preference). Of course, it turned out to be much warmer than the last football game I went to, which was at Duke 52 weeks ago. So it would have been cool to be there in person for a game like that, but I probably wouldn’t have been there even if I could have gone.
I have this ranked as our best win since 1988. You could obviously make the case for the Florida State game in 1993. But I think this one was bigger than that. In 1993, Lou Holtz was in the sixth year of the best extended stretch of Notre Dame football since Ara Parseghian was the coach and Florida State hadn’t won a National Championship yet. This win was more like beating Miami in 1988. Clemson has been one of the top two programs in college football for half a decade and Notre Dame has not been on their level during that time. And also in 1988, our last two wins came against undefeated teams that were two wins and one win away from a National Championship when we played them (USC and West Virginia).
I hope this year’s team can finish like the 1988 team. It’s going to be tough. We should win our next four games before a rematch with Clemson, but we play three teams that are better than anybody we’ve played so far other than Clemson (plus Syracuse, who is terrible). We do have some wiggle room now that we’ve beaten Clemson. If we did lose a game and then beat Clemson again, that should be good enough to get to the playoff. But being undefeated in the regular season would give us a chance to make it to the playoff even if we lost the rematch with Clemson. It would be so nice to play in this stupid conference for a year, win it, and then be independent again. Really our worst case scenario should be getting the ACC spot in the Orange Bowl. But I hope this team isn’t satisfied. This was a great win for Brian Kelly (we can move this game ahead of the Oklahoma game in 2012 as his best win) and the team, but there’s so much more that they have a chance to accomplish. If we get to the playoff, we’re looking at the possibility of Round 3 with Clemson and teams like Ohio State and Alabama. If you want to do something great, it’s not going to be easy. The 1988 team beat teams that were ranked 9, 1, 2, and 3 when we played them (those teams were 4, 2, 7, and 5 in the final poll). Let’s finish this season the way the 1988 team finished the season and not the way the 1993 team finished the season. Go Irish!
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