The Final 30 seconds.
Where to begin? Perhaps with the replay officials decision to allow Kizer’s touchdown run to stand? What seemed like a break for the Irish actually turned out to give Stanford more time to come back and kick a field goal.
From there, it all happened rather quickly. First the bad luck—another incidental facemask by the Irish as Isaac Rochell chased after Kevin Hogan. That provided just enough room for the game’s clinching play—a seam route that looked way too open.
Here’s what Shaw said postgame when asked about the play.
“Well we always look at what they do in the two minute,” Shaw said. “They were a couple different options. We tried some shots early on, they did a really good job defending it. But we thought there were some lanes inside. So we weren’t trying to score a touchdown, we were just trying to get into field goal range…Kevin did a great job, looking off the safety coming back and then he through a bullet. Devon caught it, got positive yards after the catch.”
Kelly audibly groaned when asked to give his evaluation of what happened.
“We’ve got to close down inside out on that seam route,” Kelly said. “I thought we probably played it a little bit too much, too much outside in, worried about backing up. We’ve got to be more aggressive to the seam route.”
In reality, Notre Dame’s defensive personnel deficiencies couldn’t have been exposed more on that play. Devin Butler was out of the game with a concussion, bringing in Nick Watkins to play outside cornerback. Lined up three across underneath the four-deep shell were Jaylon Smith, Joe Schmidt and Matthias Farley.
Romeo Okwara, Notre Dame’s best pass rusher, was relegated to making sure Hogan didn’t scramble. That left Andrew Trumbetti to chase Hogan opposite Day, with Isaac Rochell on the nose. Trumbetti’s outside route to the quarterback was never a factor.
Hogan put a very good throw in a hole between Schmidt and Farley, with the linebacker drawn inside by a curl and Farley surrendering the middle of the field too easily.
But more frustrating? The depth safeties Max Redfield and Elijah Shumate got. Neither had a clue that Stanford was just one big play from being in field goal range. There was more than 10 yards between the underneath coverage and the safeties over the top. Redfield was still in his backpedal at the 25, Shumate not much better as he finally broke on the ball at the 30. Bad Football IQ play by two guys who haven’t showed a ton of it.
There were so many great things that this football team did. But from day one, safety play has been a struggle. Game 12 that deficiency ended up breaking the team’s back.
