Recently, we journeyed back to the first big home game of the 2012 season and a copious amount of turnovers from Michigan. Today, we’ll venture back to 2012 again and the regular season finale in Los Angeles. A game which, at the conclusion of, I teared up quite a bit. I’ll bet many of you did, too.
Allow me to set the scene:
It is Saturday, November 24, 2012 inside Los Angeles Coliseum. The weather is 66 degrees with clear skies as the bright lights from the stadium shine down on Notre Dame attempting to complete its first undefeated regular season since 1988. The Irish have just answered USC’s field goal with a field goal of their own to take a 22-13 lead with 5:58 remaining in the 4th quarter in front of a packed crowd of 93,607 spectators.
Notre Dame kicks the ball off to Marqise Lee who takes it from the 2-yard line and runs to the USC 45-yard line to give his team great field position. On the next play from scrimmage, Trojans quarterback Max Wittek finds Lee for a 53-yard gain who is barely twisted down at the 2-yard line by Irish corner Bennett Jackson.
Now, it’s time for The 2012 Goal Line Stand, Part 2* featuring USC just unable to operate their offense.
PLAY #1 – A false start by USC so the goal line stand actually begins from the 7-yard line.
PLAY #2 – Curtis McNeal rushes for 3 yards but is wrapped up by Kapron Lewis-Moore with help from Prince Shembo.
PLAY #3 – On 2nd & Goal from the 4-yard line, Wittek throws a fade to Lee who is grabbed by Keivarae Russell as approximately 27 flags fly.
PLAY #4 – Now it’s 1st & Goal from the 2-yard line, and Wittek tries the fade again to Lee. This time, Russell is in good position but can’t get himself turned around. Flags fly again.
PLAY #5 – 1st & Goal from 1-yard line and Wittek is stuffed on a quarterback sneak attempt.
PLAY #6 – 2nd & Goal and Wittek tries the quarterback sneak again. It appears the entire USC offensive line false starts and I’m still not sure how Wittek doesn’t get the ball across the goal line.
PLAY #7 – After taking a timeout (USC let 2.5 minutes of playclock burn since taking possession!) the Trojans give the ball to McNeal on 3rd down and he is smashed by Matthias Farley and Louis Nix simultaneously just behind the line of scrimmage.
PLAY #8 – This glorious possession ends with USC getting fullback Soma Vainuku wide open off play-action but Wittek’s pass is at his shoelaces and falls incomplete.
I’m curious what everyone thinks about this game. For me, this win was just about as emotional as I’ve ever been following a Notre Dame game. Certainly as an adult. Just complete joy, and I remember the team eating In-N-Out burger afterward inside the stadium with Jack Swarbrick and loads of Notre Dame staff around happy as little kids.
For me, this will always be The Theo Riddick Game. On paper, this should’ve been a more comfortable victory. The Irish out-gained USC by 158 yards but faltered in the red zone big time. Riddick scored the only Notre Dame touchdown on a 9-yard scamper, and while Everett Golson had a solid game, he went 0 for 4 passing on 3rd down in the red zone with another 2-yard run that came up short of the sticks, too.
Riddick largely carried the offense with 179 total yards on 23 touches with a success rate of 65.2% on those touches. He saved his career-high in rushing for this game and permanently etched his name in Irish lore.
*The goal line stand earlier in the season against Stanford was more important, more emotional, and passionate but not quite as funny as the one at USC.Â
One of the best, if not the best, game that year (I think I wiped most of the BCS Bama game from my memory at this point). Theo was one of my favorite players from that era and he was a beast that game. Also, after watching these clips, I was reminded how huge Tuitt looked compared to everyone else — he seemed like an adult playing with a bunch of kids
I mean say what you want about Diaco but in that moment he knew a) the Irish DL >>> USC OL and a QB not used to QB sneaks and b) he had to take out Lee by any means necessary. Granted, he was helped by Kiffin not calling any timeouts during that stretch.
This game for me was the conclusion of a magical season. I remember so many moments from that season being on campus. Because of flights back to MA I was on campus with a handful of friends watching and called my dad immediately afterwards and broke down. Most emotional game of my adult life for sure.
If only Book had Golson’s arm.
But not his li’l tiny fumblin’ hands
I was thinking the same thing — watching some of Golson’s throws I was like “wow I remember those” but then the fumbles also popped into my mind
I loved watching Golson play. Most talented ND QB in the Kelly era for my money. I don’t know what happened to him mentally, but he was never really the same after the OPI loss to FSU in ‘14.
I’d probably give that to Kizer, but I hear you. Golson had an incredible ability to convert 3rd & 8 every time when we absolutely, positively had to have it.
That said, I do not miss the turnovers.
I think there was a direct correlation to post FSU 14 and the brian vangorder experiment falling apart at the seems.
I think this led to the offense pushing more to score on every possession, and I think that manifest itself in golson playing more with his hair on fire.
*note* my personal hypothesis with ND over the last 10 years is BVG was the single worst thing to happen to the program, and we are still feeling its ramifications, so I tend to get a little tin foil hat wearing with drawing the lines back to that dude.
Other than Declan Sullivan, which is worst possible thing, but in a very different, completely un-football-related way, I don’t think anything else is even close to as bad as BVG from a football perspective.
It can take a number of years to recover from a terrible coordinator, who hurts recruiting so much. But I *think* we’ve fully recovered at this point. That said, he was so awful that it really wouldn’t surprise me if we are still feeling his effects. I am curious what areas you might think are still being impacted.
Here’s a high level, and all personal assessment, I wholly welcome counterpoints! It’s all been thought out by myself:
When we had BVG, our program was on par with clemson talent wise. I base this on the 2015 game and the recent articles on this site. From 2015 onwards, clemson has become death star from star wars episode 6 (alabama is episode 4 death star) and overall, the meta of college football is the hyper consolidation of elite talent at the top. Notre dame was a competent defense away in the BVG years from producing the wins to keep pace with this talent consolidation when it occured in real time. Further, from what I understand, he was not interested in high level recruiting the way Freeman is now.
This two pronged effect, being a defense shy in the hyper-critical early playoff years, and the lack of elite recruiting intensity, put ND behind clemson, which is where we are now.
I think ND has righted the ship, but the opportunity cost of time lost from 2014-2016 in terms of recruiting momentum and on-field success I think has place us squarely in the tier 1b/2 of college football teams. Not to claw into the 1a elite tier, the amount of effort is exponentially greater than it would have been in the BVG years, before all 5 stars picked between the same 3 or 4 schools.
I equate this to exponential growth of mutual funds, the best time to get in is early, and it takes WAY more principal later to cover the time deficit.
Again, all personal assessment, and maybe I just need a lighting rod for when ND loses in the playoffs, and BVG is a nice target for my vitriol.
Aha. In that sense, we are definitely behind where we could/would be relative to CFB. I was thinking we are at/above where we were when he started in basically all areas, but that is just relative to ND.
Your points about timing with CFP and consolidation of top talent are great and sad.
In 2014, ND was closer to tier 1 (which really only included Bama and had more of the vacuum that Eric mentions). Now tier 1 has filled that vacuum with Clemson+tOSU and we are no closer to that and there is little to no space.
Does that pretty much cover it? Very insightful.
Yeah I think so, for me the term I associate with BVG era is “opportunity cost”.
Also, I think his awful defenses directly impacted our offensive playcalling as we could literally never rely on the D for a stop, therefore, more aggressive calls to score, therefore more risk of turnovers/mistakes, i.e. the opposite of the 2012 team. So transitively, he impacted offensive play in that era, and I think contributed to the failures of golson-kizer era QBs, and hell maybe even into wimbush; imagine if kizer stays for 2017 because he feels like hes supported by a TEAM (defense)
Hell yeah, brother.
If you told me in 2007 that, in just 5 years, ND would stone SC 8 times on the goal line in Los Angeles to finish 12-0 and #1, there is absolutely positively no way I would have believed you.
Also, I always think about this game and sequence when people talk about what a crazy offensive genius Kiffin is.
I was on top of the world after this one – I recall watching and rewatching the YouTube videos in this article all week afterwards – but the game that drew tears that year was Oklahoma. Beating a top-10 team on the road, somewhat easily, felt like a signal that the program had truly arrived. It helped that I’m just young enough to have missed all the good stuff from the Lou Holtz era, so that was the first truly huge win in a gut-check spot that I had ever witnessed.
This was a great day.
The greatest night of the 21st century for Notre Dame football and I’m not sure if there’s a close second, even with all of BK’s success.
These are close:
