‘Tis the season for giving? Not if you’re Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman.
“You know I’m greedy,” Freeman said following the Fighting Irish’s 27-17 College Football Playoff win over Indiana on Friday. “Although I don’t want [the team’s] focus to be on it, my focus is going to be on finding a way to get 13.”
The 13 in question is Notre Dame’s number of wins this season. And with 2024 marking the 100-year anniversary of the program’s first of 11 claimed national championships, this year’s team would reach territory no Fighting Irish squad has ever reached by getting to that 13th victory.
In beating Indiana, the 2024 team accomplished another feat no Notre Dame team had achieved by winning a Playoff game.
OK, so maybe the significance of that particular “first” needs an asterisk. Friday’s contest was the inaugural 1st round matchup of the first 12-team format.
The tournament’s expansion means if Notre Dame loses in its next matchup in the Sugar Bowl against No. 2 seed Georgia, the 2024 Fighting Irish will technically be further away from national championship No. 12 than in any of the program’s previous flirtations with the title during the 21st century.
Nevertheless, there’s meaning in Notre Dame finally getting over the Playoff hump. In the Irish’s three previous postseason games with national championship stakes—the 2013 BCS Championship Game and semifinals in the 2018 and 2020 seasons—they lost by an average of 24 points per game.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Riley Leonard’s walk-in touchdown carry late in the fourth quarter pushed Notre Dame’s wire-to-wire lead over Indiana to… 24 points.
A pair of late Hoosiers touchdowns made the Irish win less cosmetically impressive and negated that bit of symbolism. However, it didn’t change what has been a consistent theme in Notre Dame’s road to 12 wins, the nation’s second-longest winning streak, and a berth in the quarterfinals.
And in turning the tables on IU to kick off the inaugural 12-team Playoff, Notre Dame looked more like a team capable of winning the program’s first national championship since 1988—at times.
For roughly 58 minutes, a Fighting Irish defense that was excellent throughout the regular season cranked the intensity to another level. Notre Dame defenders combined for three sacks, but IU quarterback Kurtis Rourke was flushed from the pocket with golden domes in hot pursuit far more routinely.
A Hoosiers offense that averaged more than 43 points per game couldn’t sniff the end zone until the final result was no longer in doubt. The knock against Notre Dame teams in past postseason failures was that they lacked the toughness to compete with the hardened competition of the South.
While we’ll have a better gauge on whether that’s still the case by the end of New Year’s Day, this Fighting Irish defense certainly looked the part when it came to physicality.
Jeremiyah Love’s workload was limited, the byproduct of an illness that was evident when he spoke with a stuffy voice in his postgame press conference. All the running back needed was one carry of 98 yards to demonstrate that he can set the tone for an entire game in a single snap, though.
“I came into this game battling a few things,” Love said. “Being able to come into this and do what I can do for this team, it’s special.”
At other times, against a Hoosiers team whose inclusion in the Playoff field may have been dubious, the Fighting Irish suffered miscues that could cost them against stiffer competition. Love’s health improving in the next two weeks leading up to the Sugar Bowl is crucial for a Notre Dame offense that moved the ball into the red zone four times but scored touchdowns on only half of those trips.
Building on the momentum of 11 straight wins, and this 11th one in particular, is another crucial point going into the Sugar Bowl, Freeman said.
“But more importantly, it’s going to be elevating; getting better,” Freeman said. “It’s not a normal game week. We have to find ways to elevate and improve…Every week, how do we do it a little bit better?”
In getting just a little bit better incrementally, perhaps Notre Dame has discovered how to get significantly better in its postseason pursuits.
