1) Dammmmmmmmit.
2) The overall tone of coverage last week was “It’s weird Notre Dame is choosing to show up for this scheduled ritual sacrifice,” which makes the fact that the Irish had the lead at the half and the ball with a chance to win at the end impressive. What is less impressive is that they didn’t win, another heartbreaker on the national stage, a lathered-up crowd helping to induce a number of bad penalties against a team comprised of superior recruiting classes. But there were so many moments of real grit from the Irish: Not letting things spiral out of control when it felt like the flow was against them in the second half, instead rallying back from 23-10 to put the fear of death into the Georgia faithful who had shown up to finish off their much-hyped bacchanalian weekend with what they presumed would be an easy victory. The three-and-out to get the ball back, against a team with that offensive line, that tailback and that quarterback? It’s a shame the offense couldn’t close the deal because it was an incredible effort.
What I’m saying is it feels very tiresome to go through another moral victory/we should be proud round after a tough loss but this was a moral victory and we should be proud so here we are. The Irish went on the road against a team many projected to make the playoff and basically played them even, falling about half a yard short per snap versus the achievements of the Bulldogs and coming close on total yardage and first downs. We talk about this a lot, but per the rules of the game, when two good teams play one of them has to lose and that's what occurred on Saturday. The Irish are just a little worse than the very best teams in the sport and better than almost everyone else and while that’s kind of a weird place to be there's no rule they can't continue to improve. It just pains me that they could have stolen this and it slipped away, a lost chance of robbing joy from the Dawg fans who thought this would be a walkover and putting another achievement into the program's canon.
3) Can’t say enough about the defense, which held D’Andre Swift under 100 yards and to a long of 15. Georgia could never really get their running game going — the long run of the day was only 16, the average carry 4.6 — due to exquisite tackling by all involved. The Asmar Bilal/Drew White/JOK combo was great at the second level while MTA was a beast in the middle, but it was a team effort across the board.
I don’t even know what to say about the secondary — including TaRiq Bracy, in a pleasant surprise — which was so good all night and forced Jake Fromm to make perfect throws and receivers to make perfect catches in order to achieve anything of note. Unfortunately, that’s what they did, as Lawrence Cager continued his one-man anti-Irish quest, transferring in from Miami after leading the Canes in receiving during the 2017 game (only two for 45 yards, but still, he’s 2-0 against the Irish in primetime at different programs). Clark Lea went heavy with his rotations up front so the Dawgs couldn’t just grind Notre Dame down and it worked great on a warm but not oppressively hot evening. Lea is so, so good at coaching defense and whatever numbers he would like on his check I fully support the university writing them down.
4) Chip Long and Ian Book did a lot of good work but things came undone in the third, mainly due to a pair of disastrous third-down targets to Chris Finke. Georgia worked to take away Cole Kmet (tremendous in his season debut) and Chase Claypool (a true beast, again) for a stretch but at the end of the last edition I mentioned how neither side of the ball could leave the other hung out to dry and that’s what happened after the half. The offensive line did a good job of protecting Book and I would have preferred a few more shots with an emphasis on Chase Claypool Back Shoulder Throw Theater. I also appreciate that Long understood that the running game wasn’t going to muster much with the current personnel and didn’t try for balance for balance’s sake. This could be noted in the defensive section above but it’s very weird neither team had a sack in this game, but good work by the offensive line pass blocking some great athletes.
Let’s nitpick a little further: Fleaflicker? Weird choice when Georgia knew it didn’t have to respect the Irish run game. Also, did not love the second down throw to Tony Jones, Jr. on the final drive but I suppose those types of plays sometimes do break loose. The pre-snap penalties were obviously awful and you don’t take timeouts in the third quarter unless you’re only fielding nine defenders or someone is literally on fire. (While using them was annoying, I don’t think the lack of timeouts affected anything: In the end, the Irish had the ball with two minutes at midfield, which is about the best we could have hoped.) It’s important to note that complaints about playcalling would be further reduced if Finke catches either of those third down tosses to start the second half.
let's touch them hedges
5) Does Notre Dame have enough weapons on offense, particularly in the backfield? Nope, but the skill player difference would have narrowed if you had Michael Young, Jafar Armstrong, Jahmir Smith and/or Braden Lenzy available, let alone Kevin Austin. (If current verbals hold, you’re adding in five-star talent in Jordan Johnson and Chris Tyree to help further solve this problem in future seasons.) Kelly said Sunday that Young, Smith and Lenzy are probable for the Cavaliers while Armstrong is on pace for the Trojans. Survive Saturday, work on stuff during the ByeVG and then all hands on deck for the big October games sandwiching the bye.
(For narrative sake, it would be really great for Armstrong and/or Young to have some monster games once they’re back because then we can start some “Wow, if Notre Dame had their best running back and second-best receiver, imagine how things would have went against Georgia!” water cooler buzz going. What purpose will this serve in the long run? Not really sure, but I think it might annoy Paul Finebaum and that alone is enough for me.)
6) Sterling work from special teams. Jonathan Doerer was great on kickoffs and made his only field goal attempt of the game, which was a short one but I don’t think there are any easy ones when you’re kicking into the Georgia student section in primetime. Jay Bramblett was really great, as it was his Bulldog counterpart who had a couple tough ones while the freshman stayed true. Also, Claypool finally got his muffed punt recovery in a big game! We are one third of the way through the season (sad and scary but accurate!) and despite having two new specialists special teams has just sort of rolled along. Something bad will happen at some point because perfection is not achievable for college kickers but worries that this would be a disaster have proven unfounded. Nice work by Brian Polian after losing a couple of program standouts.
7) The really crappy part about this is Kirby Smart gave the Irish a chance to steal this and they couldn’t. Not going for it on that fourth and one was defensible but also pretty cowardly considering it could have put the game away instead of relying on a defensive stop in the final minute. The Kelly/Smart battles have been two classics and the Irish have fallen short twice, meaning Fromm is going to dine out on his 2-0 record against the Irish for the rest of his life which seems very unfair. If the Irish play a cleaner game or Armstrong is healthy, we are maybe talking about an undefeated team that just pulled off the upset of the season and was on the fast track to a second straight playoff appearance. Alas.
8) Notes from the ground in Athens: It really did get quite loud in that stadium, their music selection was fun and the light show was nuts, some true WWE-level shit. Georgia fans were extremely nice all weekend although the tailgating is VERY spread out, which made me appreciate the Stadium and Joyce lots’ concentrated asphalt plain of flagpoles and chaos. Of course, Athens is a wonderful town to post up in for a long weekend of day drinking. Shout out to Mama’s Boy, Uncle Ernie’s, Little Italy Pizzeria and the wonderful Creature Comforts brewery — where we spent eight idyllic hours on Friday, including having the aforementioned pizza delivered there — for all being top notch. I love Notre Dame dearly but I’m always jealous of the natural college towns where campus flows into the city as opposed to the jarring College Town In A Box and Athens is an ideal example of that. Much fun all around and to all the folks I met in person for the first time, thanks for being great.
creature comforts
9) Winning is Hard*/Schadenfreude Round Up: Michigan fell behind 35-0 at Wisconsin before tacking on some pointless late scores to make it look more respectable, leading to lines from the faithful like “
The Jim Harbaugh era at Michigan has become indefensible” and partisan descriptions of the game as a “
start-to-finish debacle that'll shake even the most steadfast optimist's confidence in the program.” Yowie wowie, Wolverines! Utah took a top ten ranking into the Coliseum and lost to the Trojans on Friday night despite outrushing them 247-13 and holding the ball for nearly 40 minutes. (USC at Washington will be on at the same time as our game this weekend and will make a nice toggle option.) Central Florida went into Heinz Field and lost to Pitt, ending their regular season winning streak as Pat Narduzzi atones for mucking around late in Happy Valley. Under Narduzzi, Pitt has victories undefeated Clemson, undefeated Miami, a Big Ten champion Penn State team and now Central Florida. (They've also gone 30-26 overall.) Avoiding that upset last year truly was quite the achievement, albeit an ugly one.
* To whomever was wearing a green “Winning Is Hard” t-shirt on Saturday, I saw you and thank you. Apologies for not saying hello before you disappeared.
A bunch of teams in the bottom half of the Top 25 lost at home, with SMU taking down TCU, Colorado dropping Arizona State and Washington State blowing a 32-point lead to UCLA despite nine touchdown passes. Arkansas lost at home to San Jose State. Ohio State trailed Miami (OH) briefly. Miami (Fl) was a 30-point home favorite over Central Michigan and won by five. Mack Brown lost at home to App State. Texas A&M lost at home to Auburn and when you have the Aggies’ upcoming schedule (Bama, LSU, Georgia) it’s tough to drop any games in which you’re a favorite in College Station. Virginia needed a late rally against Old Dominion, as did Florida State against Louisville. Stanford and Northwestern both appear to be really, really bad as they were noncompetitive against Oregon and Sparty, respectively. Sad to see since David Shaw and Pat Fitzgerald are such cool guys.
10) I am very tired of losing these games. I don’t have a call to action, plan or any larger thought, I just want to say that it really sucks and it’s okay that we feel this way about it. I wish there were some guarantee that if you lose enough brutal heartbreakers that you guarantee yourself future success (like a customer loyalty punch card for moral deserts) but that’s not the case. Still, what's the alternative? Give up? Nah. This program is so close, they just have to keep pounding the rock. For my own mental and emotional health, perhaps I need to stop chasing the feeling of Norman 2012 because the occasion of sitting in an enemy bar surrounded by far happier opposing fans waiting for traffic to clear and your soul to un-fracture is becoming a tad rote. (If you embark upon this journey, I recommend getting some great friends who are also experienced in this specific form of sadness, which I was fortunate to have present this weekend.)
You support a really good football team, but it’s also flawed and more than capable of losing, particularly if the injury bugs bites as it did in the early going. As the seasons of some of the opponents we thought would make marquee games start to fall apart (hello, Wolverines; good day, Cardinal) those contests will become less competition between equals and more “This team with nothing to lose is trying to pull off a win over the Irish to redeem their season.” It’s better to be a superior team on paper than your opponents, but this is a weird sport and upsets happen when pressure mounts. I would like to tell you that the fact the Irish were so close to the best opponent on their schedule and the fact the rest of the slate looks wobbly means that 11-1 is guaranteed but that’s not how any of this works and be wary of anyone who implies as much. Nothing is given and much work is left to do.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s game, we sat in the stands for a bit and I kept mumbling about how I couldn’t fathom this team getting up for their game against the Cavaliers. But you know what? I feel better now. You’re playing a Top 20 team at your home in one of the better games of the weekend and honestly now they might be the highest ranked foil you’ll face the rest of the way. Even with Saturday evening’s darkness, if you can’t get up for this what are we even doing here? Khalid Kareem seems to have the correct mindset, stating after the defeat, “The next opponents coming up this season, best of luck to you, because we’re coming.” While that might just be false bravado, it could also be this team understanding how good it is and deciding that there are too many goals left on the table — winning streaks against Michigan, Southern Cal and Stanford; a second consecutive New Year’s Six bowl; a third consecutive double-digit win season; extending the home winning streak — that there’s no point in wallowing.
Let’s hope it’s the latter. Go Irish. Beat Cavs. Redemption starts with not letting Georgia defeat you twice.
