Notre Dame week. The #4 Clemson Tigers travel to South Bend to play the unranked 5-3 Fighting Irish. Yes, they looked good last week against a severely beat up Syracuse team that took Clemson down to the wire just two weeks ago. Lee Corso is famous for saying “Not so fast.” So, Not So fast.
Yes, the score was 41-24. The Irish went into the 4th quarter leading only 24-17, and “erupted” for 17 points. Overall, the Irish rushed for 248 yards and passed for another 114 yards on 9 of 19 passing. This is the same defense that gave up 293 yards rushing to the Tigers, and 150 through the air. The big difference in the two games were four gifts from Clemson via the turnover route, something Tigers will strive to correct against the Irish.
Now that the CFP poll has been released, this game does take on the “David and Goliath” aspect but Notre Dame Head Coach Marcus Freeman doesn’t think so. “This isn’t a David versus Goliath,” said Freeman. “This is Notre Dame versus Clemson. Two powerhouses, two blue-blooded programs that are going to battle Saturday night in Notre Dame Stadium.”
This is fine for him to say and by all intents and purposes, this is going to be a tight game, but statistics don’t bear this out. The last time the Tigers ventured into “Notre Dame stadium”, the Irish squeaked out a 47-40 OT victory in a game that Trevor Lawrence had to sit out due to contracting Covid. Freshman QB DJ Uiagalelei stepped in and threw for 439 yards and two touchdowns, mainly because the Tigers couldn’t run the ball. That night, the Tigers had 33 rushes for 34 yards, and depended heavily on the passing game.
At the same tim, the defense yielded 310 yards through the air to Ian Book, and now-NFL running back Kyren Williams had his way, running for 140 yards on the ground with three touchdowns. TE Michael Mayer was just a freshman in that game, but still caught 5 passes for 67 yards. He is the only one of these three to still be playing this Saturday.
Clemson is going into the game as a 4.5 favorite. As stated earlier, the Irish are coming off a victory over a beaten-up Syracuse team and now the “upset alert” folks are out in droves, again.
The CFP folks have just handed the Irish a little more motivation to play their best game of the year. The Tigers are ranked 4th in the Playoff Polls while Notre Dame, well, are not ranked at all. They are 5-3 for a reason.
It’s odd that the Irish seem to play better on the road than at home, losing two of their home games to “powerhouses” Stanford (3-5) and Marshall (4-4) earlier in the season. But wait, Notre Dame has won 5 of their last 6 games. They are on a roll. Right? Syracuse was beat up from playing Clemson the week before. QB Garrett Shrader was not healthy enough to play the 2nd half, turning it over to freshman QB Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, who had thrown a grand total of 3 passes in 3 games prior to this game.
After opening with two losses, the Irish have beaten some not-so formidable opponents in UNLV (4-4), California (3-5), and BYU (4-5 with recent losses to ECU and LIberty). They did have an impressive win over North Carolina in Chapel Hill, 45-32, putting up over 500+ total offense against a team that also yielded 61 points to Appalachian State.
All in all, the social media/sports analysts are going to peep-off all week on how Notre Dame is going to win and the College Football Playoff ranking is a false narrative. I think Coach Dabo Swinney and the team will have something to say about that come Saturday night.
