Notre Dame wants more after historic upset of No. 1 Clemson
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Avery Davis’ dreams have been rerouted and contorted so many times, it’s only fitting that when he finally stepped into them late Saturday night at Notre Dame Stadium, there was some physical pain involved.
Two overtime periods after his game-saving, 53-yard catch set up his game-tying, 4-yard touchdown reception, Davis found himself in a celebratory mosh pit for the ages.
“The fans storming the field was crazy,” the former Irish quarterback, cornerback and running back and current wide receiver said of the aftermath of fourth-ranked Notre Dame’s first takedown of a No. 1 team in 27 years, a 47-40 toppling of Clemson in double overtime. “It’s different when you see it in
the movies. But when you are in there, it’s kind of weird. I was getting bumped around and stuff. But I loved the energy, so it was pretty awesome at the same time.
“This is a game that is literally going to live on forever. We just made history.”
The best kind of history, the kind of moments that never fade, are the ones that represent an evolutionary step.
Saturday’s extending of the nation’s longest active winning streak to 13
games and the Irish’s home win string of victories to 23 broke a run of 10 successive losses to top-five teams. Five of those had occurred under 11th-year head coach Brian Kelly’s watch.
In the post-Lou Holtz Era (1997-present), Holtz successor Bob Davie won his first, a 36-20 upset of No. 5 Michigan to start the 1998 season. Then he, Tyrone Willingham, Charlie Weis and Kelly combined to go 1-18 thereafter. Until Saturday.
“We’re not celebrating because we showed the world or we changed the narrative or did this because they were the No. 1 team in the country,” Kelly said. “We did it because we proved something to ourselves, and that’s really satisfying and that’s what we’re celebrating.”
Holtz himself was 13-8 against the top five during his 11 seasons (1986-96), but he lost his first four.
It was a 31-30 upending of topranked Miami (Florida) in 1988 that went beyond a special day and became the building block for a special, six-year dominant run by the Irish.
Notre Dame would go on to beat two more top-five teams that season, Southern California and West Virginia, to capture the school’s most recent national title.
This Irish team would likely have to beat three more top-five teams this season if they want their season to finish the same. That would include Clemson in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game Dec. 19 in Charlotte, North Carolina, provided the Tigers don’t slip up against their three remaining opponents.
All three are unranked, and probably the toughest of those – Virginia Tech – lost Saturday at home to Liberty.
The next of four remaining regularseason games for the Irish, meanwhile, starts with a trip Saturday to meet up with Boston College.
“We got so much more work to do and, look, BC is going to be a challenge for us,” Kelly said when pressed whether he had just witnessed two potential playoff teams squaring off at Notre Dame Stadium.
“I’ve got to get this football team back up, emotionally ready to play BC. We’ve got a target on our backs now. There are so many more things on my plate relative to what I have to do than really concern myself with playoffs and who is in and who is not in.
“There are other people that will do that, because the real challenge now is to keep this football team accelerating.”
He’s right. If a special night is going to morph into a season to remember, Notre Dame must be a better team in late November into December than it was against Clemson.
Still there were people and numbers to behold.
Among them: h Behind sophomore Kyren Williams’ 140 yards on 23 carries and three touchdowns, Notre Dame outrushed Clemson 209-34. That’s the sixth-fewest rushing yards allowed in a game in the Kelly Era.
The ACC’s all-time leading rusher, senior All-American Travie Etienne, was smothered to the tune of 28 yards on 18 carries, a career-low 1.6 yards per carry and lowest rushing total in a game in which he had 10 or more carries.
h Despite giving up more than 30 points for only the second time in Clark Lea’s 33 games as Irish defensive coordinator, the defense came up big in big moments.
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah led the way with nine tackles, including 2 1⁄ for
2 losses. He also plucked a loose ball out of the air, after it bounced off Etienne’s hands on an errant pitch, and returned it 23 yards for a score and a 20-10 Irish lead with 5:53 left in the first half.
On Clemson’s next possession, he stripped the ball out of Tigers wide receiver Amari Rodgers’ hands, with cornerback Nick McCloud recovering it and the Irish cashing that in for a 45-yard Jonathan Doerer field goal.
Late in regulation, with Notre Dame down 33-26, an Irish drive stalled near midfield and Clemson took over on downs when a fourth-down pass glanced off receiver Ben Skowronek’s hands.
But the defense forced a three-andout. the Irish got the ball back with 1:48 left and proceeded to go 91 yards on eight plays in 1:26 to tie the score.
“I thought about it briefly,” Kelly said of the prospect of going for two after Davis’ TD catch with 22 seconds left in regulation. “We had a two-point play that was, we felt, a really good one. I thought about it. We had just worked too hard to get back into the game, and so it just didn’t feel right to go for two there. But I did think about it.”
In the second overtime, with Notre Dame ahead 47-40, Adetokunbo Ogundeji and Owusu-Koramoah combined to sack Clemson freshman quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei for a 10-yard loss, followed by a 4-yard sack by Daelin Hayes.
An incomplete pass on 3rd-and-24 was followed by a benign 13-yard completion that ended up with a loose ball finding its way to McCloud again. Uiagalelei, filling in for All-American Trevor Lawrence (still in post-COVID-19 protocol), threw for a Notre Dame opponentrecord 439 yards and two TDs in his second college start.
In the seconds that followed, it seemed like every one of the 11,011 spectators not wearing orange and purple spilled onto the field to revel like COVID-19 didn’t exist.
Notre Dame went 10-for-19 on third downs, compared with Clemson’s 4 of 15. At times it felt like Clemson’s offense moved the ball so effortlessly and explosively on first and second downs and that Notre Dame’s was trying to execute death by paper cut.
Yet Notre Dame’s average yards per play was actually slightly better than Clemson’s (6.5 to 6.1).
“We struggled to contain their quarterback,” said Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who posed for a pic with the Knute Rockne statue Friday and showed his team “Rudy” as the Friday night pregame movie.
“He bought time and extended plays and made some big plays on some scrambles.”
Ah, that would be senior quarterback Ian Book, who threw for more than 300 yards, ran for 64 more on 14 carries and picked himself up after fumbling near the goal line late in the third quarter with the scored tied 23-23.
“Coach Kelly did an unbelievable job getting us ready this week,” Book said. “He told us – same with (offensive coordinator Tommy) Rees – this is a game that if you win, you will remember for the rest of your life. I kept telling myself that all day throughout every series.”
Now he wants more – the next evolutionary step and what that could turn into.