One week of waiting
Irish dispatch Stanford to finish 11-1, but won’t know postseason fate until next Sunday
STANFORD, Calif. — Notre Dame did its job and now all the Fighting Irish can do is wait.
Jack Coan threw two touchdown passes and ran for another score and No. 5 Notre Dame finished off the regular season with a 45-14 victory over Stanford on Saturday to keep its playoff hopes alive.
“We controlled what we needed to control and that was to play really good football on offense, defense and special teams over the past six, seven weeks,” coach Brian Kelly said. “We’ve done that. So we made
our case. We’ll now sit back and see what other people think. But we got one of the best four teams without question in my mind. We’re ready to prove it.”
The Irish (11-1, No. 6 CFP) won their final seven games following a home loss to Cincinnati but will likely need some help next week to get into the College Football Playoff for the third time in the past four seasons.
“We did what we could with the games we had left,” tight end Michael Mayer said. “So now we kind of just sit and wait. I really believe that we’re one of the best four teams in the nation.”
Stanford (3-9) lost its seventh straight game to end the season following an upset of then-No. 3 Oregon for its longest losing streak and most losses in a season since a 1-11 campaign in 2006. The Cardinal were outscored 173-46 over the final four games.
This game wasn’t competitive from the start as the Irish forced a three-and-out on the first possession and answered with a 74-yard drive capped by Coan’s 16-yard TD pass to Braden Lenzy.
Coan added another TD pass to George Takacs and the Irish built a 24-0 halftime lead. He finished 26 for 35 for 345 yards with the 1-yard TD run in the third quarter.
Jonathan McGill intercepted Coan’s pass on the first drive of the second half to set up a 13-yard drive capped by Austin Jones’ 5-yard run. That ended Notre Dame’s streak of not allowing a TD at 219:17 of game action since North Carolina scored in the fourth quarter on Oct. 30.
“We weren’t focusing on that,” defensive lineman Justin Ademilola said. “We just knew that we wanted to dominate our opponent.”
The Irish are peaking at the end of the regular season even if the competition hasn’t been the stoutest. Notre Dame outscored its four opponents in November by a score of 162-23 but whether that’s enough to make the playoff may depend on what happens next weekend in the conference championship games.
“We knew that we had to control this situation because we don’t control anything after this,” Kelly said. “It was control the controllables. That was the theme all week because after today we don’t control anything.”
Mayer had nine catches for 105 yards, giving him 64 catches on the season. That breaks the school single-season record for tight ends of 63 set by Tyler Eifert in 2011.