Not on their level
Clemson makes Notre Dame’s best look like a prep team
ARLINGTON, Texas — The last time Notre Dame played in a game this meaningful, the stage was too big, the opponent too strong. The Irish trudged off the field as 42-14 losers to Alabama in the BCS championship game six seasons ago.
The country labeled them as frauds.
This time? Ugh. History repeated itself.
Clemson walloped the Irish 30-3 and harassed Ian Book at every turn Saturday in a College Football Playoff semifinal. While Book completed just 17 of 34 passes for 160 yards and an interception, Clemson true freshman Trevor Lawrence posted this pretty stat line: 27-for-39, 327 yards, three touchdowns, no turnovers.
“Just an amazing performance,” coach Dabo Swinney said. “A dominant performance. These (players) stepped up and did an awesome job.”
Said Lawrence: “There’s not much pressure when you have guys like that playing around you.”
The Cotton Bowl victory puts the Tigers in the national title game for the third time in the last four seasons. They will play the Alabama-Oklahoma winner Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, Calif.
Notre Dame returns to South Bend, Ind., after a 12-1 season.
“It’s hard to win a game when you score three points,” Book said. “We didn’t need super-human efforts today. We needed to do what we did all season but we weren’t able to do that.”
Angry Irish fans will say Brian Kelly should return all those coach of the year trophies. Or at least that Notre Dame’s best athletes are bronze medalists compared with the Usain Bolts that flood the rosters of the top southern teams.
Sympathetic Notre Dame fans will point to some bad breaks and ask: Where is the love?
The game was even after one quarter, with the teams exchanging field goals. Then Julian Love, the All-America cornerback from Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park, left with a concussion and could not pass the memory part of the baseline test until halftime.
Everything changed. Lawrence hit another true freshman, Justyn Ross, on a perfectly lofted 52-yard touchdown pass. Ross beat backup cornerback Donte Vaughn, subbing for Love.
Clemson was wise to pick on him. Vaughn didn’t even see the field at USC and entering Saturday had allowed 16 catches on 21 targets, by far the worst percentage on the team.
Losing Love was an awful break, but if you’re assuming your cornerback won’t get sidelined by injury or a targeting penalty and don’t have a No. 2 who can avoid getting drowned, that’s a problem.
“It hurts,” Love said. “It was hurting me internally. I wanted to be out there and help our team. I let them down in that regard.”
Standout safety Alohi Gilman went down in the second quarter, returning in time to crunch Lawrence on third-down quarterback rush. Lawrence got right up. Not bad for a stringy 6-foot-6 kid who joked on the subject of drug-testing: “Y’all can tell I’m not taking anything.”
But Gilman could not keep up with Ross, who streaked down the middle for a 42-yard score that put the Tigers up 16-3.
For a moment Gilman lay in the end zone, on his back, wishing he could turn back time. Or at least get to halftime with no further damage.
Nope.
Clemson drove down the field again, aided by a mindless roughing-the-passer call on Jerry Tillery. And then Lawrence fired one into the end zone. Vaughn tipped it … and receiver Tee Higgins cradled the ball in his right arm for a touchdown that felt like a death blow.
Halftime score: 23-3. Love returned to the game and made the first tackle of the second half. Safety Jalen Elliott appeared to make a diving interception two plays later. But a replay review revealed that the ball hit the turf.
Irish fans might have thought that the presence a replay official named Jon Bible would give them a prayer, but not so much.
A huge 50-50 call went against them in the first quarter. Cole Kmet stripped kick returner Derion Kendrick, and after Kendrick reached for the loose ball, it bounced along the sideline. Bible ruled the ball touched the white paint at the 13-yard line before Chase Claypool recovered it.
Kelly protested that the replay was inconclusive.
Mike Pereira, the former director of NFL officiating, tweeted: “Am I the only one that didn’t feel the Clemson fumble should have been overturned? Did the tip of the ball actually touch the ground out of bounds?
Was it indisputable? I don’t think so.”
The overturned call left Irish fans to grumble. Give them credit: They stuffed AT&T Stadium, Jerry Jones’ massive cathedral.
Notre Dame owned the building, so much so that 10 minutes before kickoff, Clemson took the field to a massive round of boos.
In addition, the bald eagle circling the field before the game found safe haven on the shoulder of a beefy Notre Dame fan wearing green. A good omen?
Nope.
Book panicked on a third-and-22 in the third quarter, firing into a crowd. Clemson turned that interception into another touchdown when the Irish miscommunicated on an up-the-middle rush that resulted in a 62-yard score for Travis Etienne.
Lights out.
And for the Irish, season over.