Today was far less about Notre Dame/Stanford than a bunch of other games with playoff implications for Notre Dame. Almost every single one went badly except for the Irish’s game, an easy win that sent ND into whatever postseason it ends up in on a 10-game win streak, each of which with a 99.4% or higher postgame win probability.

(The SP+ metric, which basically plugs teams’ down-to-down success rates into a computer and says how often teams would be expected to win with those stat lines, has given ND a 99.4% probability after USC, a 99.9% probability after Arkansas, and coming into tonight, a 100% in every other game. I think it’s safe to chalk this one up as another 100-percenter.)

With the Irish’s run over for now, let’s take a quick peek at some of the stuff that happened for the Irish.

From our own ND-Atl, who was in attendance tonight.

Love’s Heisman run stalls out

Short of another game like last week’s, it was always going to be tough for Jeremiyah Love to make his final Heisman push, because the Irish were unlikely to make his staying out there for much of it a necessity. However, when Fernando Mendoza did very little in IU’s blowout of Purdue, the door seemed cracked open for Love.

That changed when Love took a knee to the ribs on ND’s second possession, forcing him to the sidelines. Love went to the locker room briefly, then came back out and even returned to the game for a spell before ND’s final TD drive made his departure a formality. I enjoyed Marcus Freeman basically using his sideline interview to say he was gonna sit Love for his own good either way but hoped he would hear it from Love first. Always coaching.

Marty Biagi in his bag again

These special-teams fakes are such a regular feature of Notre Dame’s attack that they’re not even all that surprising anymore. Once Josh Burnham moved behind center, it was clear to everyone except apparently the Stanford defense that something was afoot.

The Irish have the most fun special teams unit in the country, which is remarkable considering how awful their field goal team is.

Why did Stanford throw to Leonard Moore so much?

There’s no accounting for silliness. Stanford spent the bulk of the first three quarters throwing it to all-everything Leonard Moore, with predictable results. Moore must have enjoyed being able to make his presence felt in a more direct way than usual.

It was nice for fans, too, to see Moore show off his skills. We are so spoiled to have him another year after this one.

Taking care of business/late in the game stuff

The Irish just did what they were supposed to do. Again. CJ Carr made a pretty cool deep throw to Jordan Faison to start the 2nd half and set the Irish up for what proved to be the starters’ final score of the regular season, ending a pretty routine (mostly in good ways) performance by Notre Dame.

There was nothing particularly pretty about it, and certainly not late in the game as Stanford put in a couple of late touchdowns to make the events appear closer than they were. But that’s life when you’re blowing teams out, and it’s likely ND has surrendered more garbage time points than anyone in the country.

However, the Irish rolled to a 35-3 halftime lead, and the rest of the game was largely beside the point. It’s too bad ND played like it, but this game started at 10:30 Eastern time and you can understand a team that’s been hyper-focused on its business for 9.5 games in a row letting their feet off the gas pedal a bit, even if it’s not ideal.

I could’ve done without ND’s more seemingly overt desire to score at the end of the game than usual with the backups in, but at the same time it was more than a little frustrating that ESPN broadcasters Dave Flemming and Brock Osweiler seemed so shocked that the Irish were running an offense with the second team. That’s been a consistent quality of the Freeman era since the get-go, is continuing to play with the reserves in, and professional broadcasters ought to be aware of that. But then, these are the guys that needed several plays and a commercial break to make the connection that Stanford reserve QB Charlie Mirer was in the game because his father is Rick Mirer. So who knows.

The rest of CFB was a nightmare for ND

No question the rest of Saturday was very poor for the Irish. LSU and Auburn seemed absolutely determined not to win against OU and Alabama respectively, when either upset would’ve been a major boon to ND’s playoff chances. Chalk held serve in every other matchup as well. The supposed Vegas long-shot odds against ND making the playoff don’t look so bad now – even in the best case scenario of Miami not jumping the Irish on Tuesday and neither Alabama, Texas nor Vanderbilt doing so either, ND needs at least one of the SEC and Big 12 title games to play out the way it needs them to to secure a spot in the playoff. If one of them (Miami) does, it’ll have to be both of them.

Ten wins

However this ends, this team has been mostly a joy to watch the last 10 games. Instead of letting this turn into a hangover season, as I predicted might happen after the Texas A&M game, the Irish went out and dominated 10 consecutive opponents and put themselves in position to get in the playoff. If they don’t advance, they’ll probably be (from a statistical perspective at least) the best team to ever miss the thing again given its apparent pending expansion. But that’s in the past now. One play, one life, as the coach says. Go Irish. Hope there’s more to come.