SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The best, worst playoff contender in college football was back in business Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.
And business was good, bad, booming and busting for the 16th-ranked Fighting Irish, who held off 15th-ranked Louisville 31-24.
What is it with this team? It can win at Texas A&M, then lose at home to Northern Illinois. It’s capable of hanging 66 points on Purdue, then struggling to move the chains against Miami (Ohio). It began an important game against Louisville by fumbling away the opening kickoff and falling into an instant 7-0 hole, then played like a world beater in building a 21-7 first-quarter lead — before shutting down on offense almost entirely.
The Irish are 4-1. They’ll be favored to win their next game, against Stanford in two weeks, and all the rest after that until the regular-season finale at USC, by which point we might have a different view of the Irish or perhaps we’ll still be flummoxed by them. They’re miles from perfect, but most teams around the country would switch places with them in a heartbeat — so there’s that.
“We’re going to have to get better,” coach Marcus Freeman said, “but it’s a great feeling to go into this bye week with a big win.”
Louisville (3-1) recovered Devyn Ford’s fumble on the opening runback. Three plays later, Tyler Shough hit Isaac Brown for a 10-yard touchdown, the Cardinals fans ringing the top rows of a sold-out house were revved up and the Irish were back on their heels.
“You want to yell and scream, and the player feels like crap, but you’ve got to reload and refocus on the next play,” Freeman said.
They did so dramatically, getting the ball back and driving 75 yards in 12 plays for a tying score. Quarterback Riley Leonard hit a fourth-down pass to Jayden Thomas among his five completions to four different receivers. Do the Irish have a passing offense or not? On this drive — and on the next one, which ended with a 34-yard strike from Leonard to Jaden Greenhouse — it appeared so.
The Irish next scored on a one-play possession — with a 4-yard Leonard run — after Louisville comically lost 45 yards on a botched punt snap. It was 21-7, revenge for last year’s 33-20 Louisville win was in the air and all signs were highly encouraging.
Who knew the tires were about to blow on the Irish offense? Or maybe the Irish simply let them go flat.
In the second quarter, Jadarian Price fumbled the ball away on the first play of a possession that began inside the Irish’s 10-yard line. Another quick Shough TD pass changed the look of things. From there, the action oozed by when the Irish had the ball. Over the second and third quarters combined, they gained 60 yards after having put up 132 in the first period.
Luckily for Freeman, he had tremendous safety Xavier Watts making one key defensive play after another. Watts’ second-quarter interception set up a 48-yard field goal by Mitch Jeter. On a fourth-and-1 for Louisville at the Irish 15, Watts teamed with Donovan Hinish on a crucial stop a chain link short of the line to gain. In the third quarter, on a fourth-and-2 near midfield, Watts pressured Shough and forced an incompletion. Finally, on Louisville’s last snap of the game — on fourth-and-6 from its own 49-yard line with less than a minute to go — Shough heaved it deep and Watts was there for the breakup.
Had Louisville tied the game, Freeman would have had a mighty hard time explaining his team’s last real possession before going into victory formation. After the Cardinals — out of timeouts — scored a touchdown to make it a seven-point game with 5:17 left, the Irish got the ball needing one first down to essentially ice it. Instead, they crawled into a conservative ball and let Leonard run it three times. The Cardinals retook possession with 2:44 left, plenty of time.
“They had no timeouts,” Freeman explained. “We said, ‘We have to be smart.’ ”
Was that smart? It didn’t look like it at the time.
The Irish were outgained through the air and on the ground. They had eight fewer first downs. They shot out to a lead, and from there Freeman relied — more than necessary, perhaps — on his very good defense. It was a recipe for a win, sure, but a sign of an elite team? That, it wasn’t.