At some point, Marcus Freeman will have to figure out how to handle prosperity. But my goodness, can he handle adversity.
Notre Dame laid the smack down on USC in its most complete performance of the season Saturday night, 48-20, probably putting a one-team end to Caleb Williams’ bid to repeat as Heisman winner and keeping Freeman’s streak of having his team ready to go for its most elite opponents intact.
Now, a few disjointed thoughts while trying not to think about the fact that if any of about 12 things at the end of the Ohio State game had gone differently, ND’s chances at the playoff would look pretty rosy right now even with the loss to Louisville…
Give it up for Al Golden
The Notre Dame defensive coordinator has not always been the most popular person on campus. While almost universally considered a solid DC, Irish fans, including me, tend to nitpick some of his decisions. (Particularly some blitz decisions.)
So let’s applaud a pitch-perfect defensive game plan, executed near-flawlessly. Golden kept Williams off balance throughout Saturday night, leading to three first-half interceptions (!!), the first time the Heisman winner had ever thrown that many in a game. Caleb was able to work a little magic in the second half, aided by freshman dynamo Zachariah Branch, but the Trojans never had the ball while trailing by less than 18 in that span.
The biggest beneficiary of all that defensive success was, of course, Xavier Watts, who had the game of his life with two picks that both set up TDs, a forced fumble and a scoop-and-score. Remember when he was a WR?
Have yourself a night, Xavier Watts.
Two interceptions, a forced fumble and a fumble return for a TD for the Notre Dame safety.
🎥 @NDFootball pic.twitter.com/0wnWzhAuWu
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) October 15, 2023
Benjamin Morrison also got a pick, and Rylie Mills, NaNa Osafo-Mensah, JD Bertrand and others made a living in the Trojan backfield as ND’s front line pushed around its USC counterpart. Even my favorite whipping boy, Marist Liufau, got in on the fun and took Williams down.
Just for fun, here’s the full stat line ND’s defense produced against one of the best players this sport has ever seen: Williams threw for 199 yards and took 37 attempts to get them. He ran for minus-8 yards. He got sacked six times and threw three picks.
Not bad.
That made life easy for the ND offense
Most people’s case for Notre Dame in this game revolved around the Irish front returning to its Ohio State form and taking advantage of a soft USC defense. And certainly the O-line did well, not allowing a single sack to a Trojan team that was averaging nearly four per game. ND runners averaged close to five yards per carry. And Sam Hartman made a few big throws, none bigger than the deep bomb to Chris Tyree that swung momentum back Notre Dame’s way after a Trojan push. (He made a few good ones that were dropped, too.)
Sam Hartman hits Chris Tyree for the TD 🍀
🎥: @NBCSports pic.twitter.com/yIuKUmpwOT
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) October 15, 2023
But what Notre Dame did best tonight on offense was simply not allow the gifts its defense handed them to go to waste. ND scored touchdowns all three times Williams’ picks created short fields. The cliche term here is ‘complementary football,’ but hey, some cliches are cliches for a reason.
The TDs also ensured the momentum swings would go all the way the Irish’s way, keeping a raucous Notre Dame crowd in the game.
Special teams!
A brief shout-out to Notre Dame’s special teams unit, which other than a big return by Branch, had a pretty terrific night. The Irish made both field goal attempts, Bryce McFerson pinned USC deep, and oh yeah there was this.
Just when No. 10 USC started to show some life…
Jadarian Price immediately responds to the Trojans’ TD drive with a 99 yard kickoff return for six.
🎥 @NDFootballpic.twitter.com/LiDKgDxyae
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) October 15, 2023
The Freeman talk can quiet down for a week, and a new goal
No question, last week created some conversations around the Notre Dame head coach that hadn’t existed before. For maybe the first time, Freeman’s approval rating in South Bend fell below near-100 percent.
But what the Irish coach did was take a team playing on its midterm week, on its 8th straight week, against a super-talented opponent, and got them ready to go. Again. For whatever his flaws, Freeman has had the Irish playing good football against the best opponents every time – no 2017 Miami no-shows on the resume yet. As Irish fans know full well, that’s not really a quality you can just learn through experience. It’s something a coach has or he doesn’t. Freeman has it.
This win also creates a new goal for the team: End the stupid major-bowl losing streak. As we know, next year the CFP goes to 12 teams and there’s effectively no such thing as a major bowl anymore. It would be a fine time to end the stupid string of losses in those games that dates to 1/1/94. The Irish are almost certainly ticketed for one of those games if they win out, and other than Clemson, there’s no team left on the schedule that has any right to test them if they play well.
So those are the stakes. Identify the goal, pursue the goal, and execute it.
Enjoy the B1G, you McDonald’s fucks.
I second this proposal to temporarily suspend the foul language ban. Fight offfffff
The what now?
This felt great. Might dethrone 2017 as my favorite USC game
So it did. I was in a super section with super knowledgeable and very loud fans, and I when the 99 yard thing happened was thinking of 2015 when Will Fuller took the top off the vaunted SC defense)… and you are right 2017 with Josh Adams blasting them right up the gut, lots. Of course I have ’73 (and that team was presented during the game, o good omen) in the memory bank as well. So let’s just say, it’s sooo great to have a new “favorite USC game” in the batch!!
That game ruled imo
I do remember when Watts was a WR. Please let him play there again. If Travis Hunter can play 100 snaps a game, so can 0!
In my entire ND fandom (dating from when I was in 6th grade and loved the ’64 team), I have always felt one way about this particular game. If ND goes 1-11, and the “1” is USC, I feel pretty good.
I feel pretty good tonight.
Yeah, ’64, we wuz stinkin’ robbed… so payback always sweet, Cubsfan!
Yes, we were robbed in ’64. One of a number of shaft jobs we’ve taken when we’ve played at Southern Cal (use of that moniker not accidental).
The defense chose violence this week. Extreme, cathartic violence.
Gotta admit, I did not expect that.
What an absolutely beautiful way to spend a Saturday evening.
Al golden’s defense has allowed 37 points combined to OSU and USC, 18.5 ppg allowed.
Well done mad lad.
OK, so this team is good for my physical training regime… 216 total pushups! In the stands, myself! Better than Dublin! Love the up side of MF. Yeah, now get after the other parts.
How was the noise?
The noise was quite good. The crowd has learned how to be pretty damn good. Again, the video board has helped, a lot, over the past few years. Plus on this one, the students were ALL IN even though on break. Very incredible actions by them. One or two false starts were because of us, and the USC QB, what’s his name, clearly had some trouble with changing plays.
Thanks for asking. More to follow, there are some ways to improve still. But bottom line, we have a home game atmosphere that is quite remarkable because it’s very “us” and has become very good.
LOL
Appears that Al Golden is doing what a good coordinator should: figure out what his team is good at, what the other team is good at, and scheme accordingly. He doesn’t have the dudes to chase down athletic QBs, or get home on blitzes. For instance I saw Marist take a bad angle on Williams, very few QBs have the speed to beat him to the edge but the elite ones do. Anyway, he has the secondary to force coverage sacks with only 6 DBs, so he’s been scheming a lot of 5 man pressures. Only takes one guy to win one battle to really screw up things for the other team.
Putting out a BOLO for Tobias Merriweather. Watching Faison play well (good cuts on the reverse play, was open underneath on the Tyree bomb on a nice out cut) means that I’ll be waiting to hear news of transfer. Has Tobias even burned a redshirt?
Also did not realize McFerson was that athletic. Watch that punt return, McFerson doesn’t have much of angle but still ran down Branch and made a solid tackle. Almost as much fun as watching Xavier Watts completely juke Caleb Williams on one of his INT returns.
To be fair to Merriweather, he shouldn’t have been forced to play this year as a sophomore when he’s clearly not quite ready. There are many top players we’ve had that make jumps in their junior year. Let’s hope he can do that (and playing too soon hasn’t completely destroyed his confidence).
As fun (and better) making Williams miss was, I was soooo hoping Watts would just lower his shoulder and put a hurtin on him.
I’m pretty sure Caleb wasn’t making a real effort to make contact there.
For reference:
https://youtu.be/-Zeaf8v3pHY?si=bfG8ypOx7MYYKVin&t=9