I did game by game diaries of the Celtics in the NBA Finals and the Dodgers in the World Series. I have to do one for Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff. Much like the Celtics and the Dodgers, Notre Dame needs to win four games to win the championship. The difference is there’s no wiggle room. The Celtics and the Dodgers both won four out of five. Notre Dame needs to win four in a row. Anyway, let’s get to it.
Round 1
Today was my last day of school before Christmas vacation. In my 20 years of being a Notre Dame football fan, I think I’ve had to work the day after a game a few times (we’ve played on Labor Day and I think there was at least one bowl game that came on my last day of Christmas vacation), but I don’t think I’ve ever had to work the day of a game (there was the BCS Championship Game 12 years ago, but I took that day and the next day off because I went to the game). Fortunately I had a half day and the game didn’t start until 8:00. So I had plenty of time to relax before the game. I felt good going into this game. I think my dream scenario was getting the 5 seed and Arizona State or Iowa State getting the 12 seed. We missed out on the cold weather advantage that we would have had against a team from the South or West, but we had a significant talent advantage over Indiana. Of course, we had a significant talent advantage over Northern Illinois and we lost that game. So there’s always some uncertainty.
The game got off to a rough start. After forcing a punt on Indiana’s first possession, we threw an interception on our second offensive play. It was a batted ball so that’s just something that happens, but it wasn’t good. Indiana was set up with good field position. But it didn’t matter because Xavier Watts intercepted a pass at the 2 yard line. He might work his way up to my favorite Notre Dame football player ever if we win the National Championship. He’s awesome. And then on the next play Jeremiyah Love ran 98 yards to give us the early lead. Indiana moved the ball a little bit on their next possession, but then they punted on 4th and 8 at the Notre Dame 37. What are you doing? You’re down seven points as an underdog in a playoff game. You’re one first down away from field goal range. You’re one big play away from tying the game. You have to go for it there. In a video game, you go for it there without hesitation. In a real game, you should absolutely go for it in that situation without hesitation as well. Anyway, after a bad punt, we went 83 yards on 16 plays to make it 14-0. And really, the game was over. Later in the first half, Indiana kicked a slightly more defensible field goal. It was 4th and 4 at the Notre Dame 16. If it was 7-0, I probably would have kicked the field goal. Down 14, I think you should go for it in that spot. But we answered that with a shocking 49 yard field goal from Mitch Jeter. He’s been bad lately (probably because of injury, but it doesn’t really matter what the reason is), but I was definitely happy to go into halftime up by 14. He made another kick later in the game so I was hoping that would help restore some confidence, but then he had a kick blocked after that. So yeah, I’m still not going to feel good any time we have to kick a field goal as the playoff continues. Indiana had another ridiculous punt down 20-3 in Notre Dame territory in the fourth quarter. That led to a Riley Leonard touchdown run to make it 27-3 and the game was completely over. Indiana scored a meaningless touchdown, got a two point conversion, and then recovered an onside kick. They scored another touchdown and had a two point conversion attempt to make it a one possession game. There were only 25 seconds left so we still would have been heavily favored to win even if they got it, but it would have made for an uncomfortable onside kick if they had gotten down to 8 points. But we stopped the two point conversion, recovered the second onside kick, and took a knee to win 27-17.
The defense was really good. Indiana had 63 rushing yards (2.3 yards per carry) and only 215 passing yards (6.3 yards per attempt) when they were behind for pretty much the whole game. The offense left something to be desired. We had a 98 yard run, but finished the game with only 5.5 yards per carry. Jeremiyah Love didn’t get over 100 yards rushing until the fourth quarter (even after the 98 run in the first quarter). He only had eight carries in the game. He got hurt against USC and didn’t do much tonight in the seven carries that didn’t go for 98 yards. So that’s at least a little concerning. Riley Leonard was decent after the interception, but we didn’t have much success trying to get the ball down the field in the passing game (although he did complete a 44 yard pass to Jordan Faison to set up the touchdown that made it 27-3 in the fourth quarter). And field goal kicking remains a concern. We will be playing Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Georgia is definitely beatable, but we will not have the significant talent advantage that we had over Indiana. We will need to be better offensively than we were tonight to beat Georgia. I think we have a chance, but I don’t expect to win. If we do win, then we are very real contenders to actually win the championship. This was our first postseason win against a top 10 opponent since we beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl on January 1, 1994. So it’s definitely a good win. But beating Georgia would be a much better win. But for now, I’ll enjoy this one and hope that the road teams win tomorrow. Merry Christmas to all and to all a Go Irish!
Round 2- Sugar Bowl
The game ended two and a half hours ago and I just remembered I was doing this blog. It’s been almost two weeks since we played Indiana. Of course, we were supposed to play a day earlier, but the terrorist attack in New Orleans pushed the game back. When I heard about it, I figured that they might postpone the game. There was no news about that until the Peach Bowl was going on and they announced that it would be postponed for 24 hours. I was hoping they would move up the start of the game. There was no reason to start at 8:45 if you weren’t going to be playing right after the Rose Bowl. Fortunately, they eventually announced that the game would be at 4:00. After what happened in New Orleans, I definitely think it was the correct decision to postpone the game. But I felt bad for all the people who had travelled to New Orleans. If I had gone to the game, the plan definitely would have been to come home today. So the postponement would have meant missing the game or staying for an extra day, extending my hotel stay, and changing my flight. That probably would have been pretty expensive. I saw that notable Notre Dame alumna Jessica Smetana was supposed to go to the game, but she did not because she left today as originally planned. I’m sure a lot of other fans were in the same situation.
Since my time as a Notre Dame student, this is our third time playing postseason football with a chance to win a national championship. In 2012, I thought we would win. It was a magical regular season and I was overconfident. We got spanked by Alabama. In 2018, I was hopeful, but not too optimistic. We lost to Clemson. It was actually competitive until we lost Julian Love and then we had no chance. In 2020, I knew Alabama would beat us pretty easily. Of course, this year is a totally new format. I felt confident about beating Indiana. Now we had to play Georgia. This was the type of game I would not have had any confidence in winning under Brian Kelly. I wouldn’t say I expected to win, but I felt like we had a good chance. Marcus Freeman gets the team ready to play big games. Brian Kelly did not.
It was clear that our defense was ready to go. Georgia was threatening late in the first quarter, but we recovered a fumble to put a stop to that. After a scoreless first quarter, Georgia got on the board first with a field goal. We responded with a 44 yard field goal by Mitch Jeter. We took the lead with a 48 yard field goal with 39 seconds left in the half. Then a sack and a forced fumble gave us the ball at the Georgia 13. On the next play, Riley Leonard threw a touchdown pass to Beaux Collins with 28 seconds left. Suddenly, we were in very good shape going into halftime. In the first half, Jon texted in the group text that the first team to 13 was going to win. We were at 13. Jayden Harrison started the second half with a 98 yard kickoff return for a touchdown to make it 20-3. Besides rarely getting the job done in big games, my least favorite thing about Brian Kelly was always taking the ball when we won the coin toss. I’ve known since I was 10 years old playing Madden that you would rather have the ball to start the second half than to start the first half. Why couldn’t he figure that out? Freeman defers when we win the toss and that definitely paid off in this game. All year, we’ve dominated the middle eight minutes of the game and we did it again in this game. Georgia cut it to 20-10 in the third quarter and it felt like it would be competitive the rest of the way. It really wasn’t. After we got stopped at a fourth down at midfield, we got a big fourth down stop to get pretty good field position. A questionable penalty cost us a first down, but Mitch Jeter made a 47 yard field goal early in the fourth quarter to make it 23-10. He was excellent today and that was good to see. A fourth down pass interference kept the next Georgia drive alive, but then we forced an incompletion on fourth and five at our nine yard line. Then we had a fourth and one at our own 18. After sending out the punt team, we rushed the offense onto the field and got Georgia to jump offsides. That was a great move by Marcus Freeman. That let us take a whole lot more time off the clock and the game was pretty much over after that. Georgia got the ball back, but we got a sack on fourth down with less than a minute left and the game was over.
After the Indiana game, I said that we needed to be better offensively to beat Georgia. We were not better offensively and we still won. We had 90 yards passing (3.8 per attempt). Love and Price combined for 56 yards rushing on 16 carries. Despite the lack of passing yards, I thought Riley Leonard played well. He protected the football and ran for 80 yards on 14 carries. That was the best part of our offense. Love has been hurt since the USC game and that’s a problem. We managed to win this game, but it’s hard to keep winning like that. The defense and special teams came through in this one. You have to figure that it will take more from the offense to beat Penn State and hopefully win the national championship.
Whatever happens, the monkey is off our back as far as major bowl games. We hadn’t won one since January 1, 1994. We had plenty of bad coaches since then, but Brian Kelly wasn’t a bad coach and he couldn’t win one in 12 years at Notre Dame. Marcus Freeman got that done. I hope he has more accomplishments ahead in the next few weeks. We’ll be taking on Penn State in the Orange Bowl on my birthday. I despise Penn State. This is the school of Jerry Sandusky. Joe Paterno allowed Jerry Sandusky to happen and Penn State fans still worship him. I think I would despise Michigan for cheating to win a national championship no matter what, but the fact that I’m a Notre Dame fan makes me despise them more. I root against USC and LSU (Brian Kelly) because I’m a Notre Dame fan. But I would root against Penn State regardless of what team I rooted for. Of the 12 teams that made the playoff, Penn State winning the national championship would be the worst possible outcome. It would be nice to be the team that prevented that from happening. Go Irish!
We won a trophy that means something. Yay!
Round 3- Orange Bowl
I was confident about this game. James Franklin annoyed Marcus Freeman at the press conference the other day. James Franklin is Penn State’s Brian Kelly. He beats bad teams and loses to good teams. Marcus Freeman gets his team ready to play big games. We were not going to lose this game.
The first college football game I remember watching was Notre Dame and Penn State in 1992. I wasn’t a Notre Dame fan at the time. I didn’t remember the result (we won 17-16 on a late two-point conversion), but I remember watching it because of the snow. When I was a student, we beat them 41-17 in 2006. I was hoping that tonight would be more like the 2006 game than the 1992 game. It was much more like the 1992 game (except for the weather).
There were rumors before the game of a bunch of our players having the flu, but supposedly they were mostly backups. I don’t know how true that was. We looked pretty bad in the first half. We couldn’t really stop the run and we couldn’t do anything on offense. We fell behind 10-0. Riley Leonard got hurt late in the first half and Steve Angeli came in and gave us a lift. We got a little lucky to recover a fumble when Angeli got sacked, but he was able to move the ball other than that. We got a field goal and we went into halftime down 10-3. It was only a one score game even though we hadn’t played well. The good news was that we were getting the ball to start the second half (once again, I’m still annoyed by Brian Kelly refusing to defer and one of the reasons that I love Marcus Freeman is because he gets a simple thing like that right). We came out of halftime and moved the ball very well on our first drive. Riley Leonard finished off a good drive with a three yard touchdown run and suddenly we were tied.
It was still tied going into the fourth quarter. We had a nice drive at the end of the third quarter and start of the fourth quarter. Jeremiyah Love finished it with a man’s touchdown on a tough two yard run. He’s still hurt, but he battled and had a good game tonight. It was 17-10 and we had the lead for the first time. It seemed like all the momentum was on our side. And then it wasn’t. Penn State tied it up and then Riley Leonard threw an interception with about 10 minutes left that gave Penn State good field position. I let out an involuntary noise of disappointment. Penn State scored to retake the lead 24-17 with 7:55 left to play. All the momentum was back on Penn State’s side. But we were not done. Jaden Greathouse caught a pass, made a beautiful move, and went 54 yards for a touchdown to tie the game with 4:38 left. It was the best play we’ve had from a wide receiver all season. He played a great game (7 catches for 105 yards and the game-tying touchdown in the fourth quarter). It was tied, but Penn State was in a position to go on a long drive and score with very little time remaining. They didn’t do that. We got a three and out (aided by a false start on first down). Now we were in good shape. But we couldn’t take advantage. We had one first down and then we had to punt. Penn State had it with 47 seconds left. They got 13 yards on their first play. But then the defense made the one huge play that we needed. Christian Gray intercepted Drew Allar with 33 seconds left. It was his biggest play since he returned an interception for a touchdown against USC. We had it on the Penn State 37. Mitch Jeter ended up kicking a 41 yard field goal to give us the lead with eight seconds left. Penn State had no timeouts left. We were in great shape and we probably would have won no matter what Penn State did, but they made a mistake. They let the kickoff go for a touchback. You have a better chance of returning a kick for a touchdown than you do to go 75 yards in eight seconds. They threw an incomplete pass and then one desperation play that didn’t work and we won.
For the first time in 12 years, we will play for the National Championship. We went 31 years without winning a major postseason game. And now we’ve won three playoff games (all against top 10 teams), including two major bowl games. That’s different from getting to the championship game in 2012 when there was no playoff and only two teams played for the championship. We’ve accomplished a lot this year, but I hope we’re not done. We’re going to be underdogs against Texas or Ohio State. I expect it to be Ohio State and we’re going to be bigger underdogs against them than against Texas. But it’s one game and anything can happen. We played them last year and we should have beaten them. Marcus Freeman is going to have the team ready to play. I don’t necessarily expect to win, but we’ve accomplished enough to believe that it’s possible.
Today was my birthday. It was a good birthday. I think this is now my favorite Notre Dame football win that I watched (and that has nothing to do with the fact that it came on my birthday). Hopefully it will move into second place on that list on January 20. Tomorrow is Marcus Freeman’s birthday. Happy Birthday Jim! Happy Birthday Marcus Freeman!
We’ll be going back to Miami to start next season and hopefully to finish next season in the National Championship Game.
Round 4- National Championship Game
Well, it wasn’t the end that I hoped for. I was one win away from the year of sports perfection. The Celtics won the NBA Championship and the Dodgers won the World Series. If Notre Dame won the National Championship, that was everything I ever wanted in sports all in a span of seven months. It was not to be.
The game started out beautifully. We had a drive that lasted almost ten minutes. We converted third and fourth downs and Riley Leonard scored a touchdown. My concern was that our offense would be too predictable. When we needed a yard, Leonard ran and got it. But was that going to work all game? As it turned out, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was we couldn’t stop Ohio State. They scored to tie it. The game ended with our running backs getting 16 yards on seven carries. It would have been nice to get them more involved. Our second possession was costly. It will probably get lost in everything that happened, but I think it was the biggest possession of the game. We started the possession with an incomplete pass, a five yard penalty, and a ten yard penalty. Not surprisingly, we didn’t get a first down and then we punted. We couldn’t stop Ohio State and they scored a touchdown to take the lead. Now we were playing from behind.
We were down 21-7 at halftime. Ohio State was getting the ball to start the second half because they won the toss and deferred because Ryan Day is a better coach than Brian Kelly. If we had won the toss, it still might have been a 21-7 game at halftime, but then we would have gotten the ball because Marcus Freeman would have deferred. If that was the case, maybe we score to start the second half and make it interesting. But they got the ball first and scored another touchdown to make it 28-7. Then we had a fake punt on fourth and 2 from our own 33 that didn’t work. I didn’t mind going for it in that situation, but we should have just gone for it. We brought Steve Angeli out with the punt team and that pretty much telegraphed the fake punt. Shocklingly, we held Ohio State to a field goal on the ensuing possession.
We were down 31-7 and then we started playing. We got a touchdown and two-point conversion to make it 31-15. Then we recovered a fumble. We moved down the field and had first and goal at the 8. I didn’t like the first down play. I saw the formation and knew it would be a quarterback run. It went for a loss of 1. Then we had two incomplete passes. With fourth and goal at the 9 with 9:27 left, we kicked a field goal that hit the upright. People did not like that call. I would have been okay with going for it, but I don’t think it was a bad call (the result was terrible, but I don’t think the call was terrible). If you go for it, you’re not likely to score. But if you do, you still need a two point conversion, another touchdown, and another two point conversion to tie. All of that is very unlikely. And even if you do all of that, you’re still only tied. Most likely, you will need two more possessions to take the lead even if you get the touchdown on fourth and 9. If you kick the field goal and make it (and you should make it from the 9), then two touchdowns and two extra points gives you the lead. This supports the idea that kicking the field goal was marginally better than going for it:
We had a 22% chance of success if we went for it. Let’s be generous and assume we have a 50% of getting the two point conversion. That would mean that going for it has an 11% of resulting in a touchdown and two point conversion and only needing possibly one more possession to tie (we would still need one more possession or overtime to take the lead). So we would have an 89% chance of not getting the touchdown and two point conversion and still needing two more possessions. Obviously we didn’t make the field goal, but this gives us an 88% chance of making it. In all likelihood, we were going to need two more possessions after this one. Making the field goal gives us the opportunity to take the lead with two more possessions without needing any two point conversions. The result doesn’t make the decision bad. As Stan Van Gundy has said about basketball, “Write the story when the ball is in the air.”
It seemed like the game was over, but we finally made Ohio State punt. We scored a touchdown and got a two point conversion with 4:15 left. We still had all three time outs left so we kicked off. We had a chance to get the ball back on third and 11, but Will Howard completed a pass to Jeremiah Smith for 56 yards. We brought a blitz that didn’t get there and Ohio State’s best wide receiver beat one on one coverage. And then the game was over as long as Ohio State didn’t fumble or miss a field goal. They ended up kicking a field goal to make it 34-23 and that was the final score.
Ohio State should have won. They had a pretty good talent advantage even if the teams were at full strength. I’m sure Ohio State had injuries also, but I doubt that injuries affected them the same way they affected us. We were missing Anthonie Knapp (he spells his first name incorrectly, but losing our starter at left tackle in the semifinals didn’t help), Ashton Craig, Jordan Botelho, Boubacar Traore, Rylie Mills, and Benjamin Morrison. These players played, but were probably not at 100% because of injuries: Jeremiyah Love, Charles Jagusah, Rocco Spindler, Howard Cross, and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa. I’m probably missing somebody. With or without the injuries, Ohio State should have won this game, but we definitely didn’t play our best game.
Hopefully this is the start of something good. It’s disappointing to get this close and not finish it, but this was a special season. We won 14 games. We beat three top 10 teams in the college football playoff (including the SEC Champion). We won two major bowl games after not winning any since winning the Cotton Bowl on January 1, 1994. We played a bad game, but still had a chance to win with 2:38 left to play in the fourth quarter. This was the best team we’ve had since 1993 and that should not get lost in the disappointment of tonight.
Tonight was not the best game Marcus Freeman has coached. But I hope he stays at Notre Dame for a long time. Overall, he’s been very good in his first three years and he’s a great representative for the university. I was surprised that we weren’t more competitive early in the game tonight. But I do feel like if we had fallen behind the way we did with Brian Kelly as the coach, we would have lost by a lot more than 11. Like Freeman, Kelly made it to the National Championship game in his third year (he probably wouldn’t have if we had to win three playoff games to get there). He was at Notre Dame for another nine years. If Freeman stays at Notre Dame for another nine years, I believe that he will win a National Championship during that time. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.
It was a disappointing end to a great season. I’m not going to work tomorrow because I knew that whatever happened tonight, I would not want to deal with children tomorrow.
We waited 12 years for this chance. Let’s not wait that long for the next one. Go Irish.
