Notre Dame resiliency tested, then it delivers
DURHAM, N.C. — If the previous Saturday night for the No. 11 Notre Dame football team was heartbreak, this Saturday night was heaven.
If the last one was miserable, this one was magical.
If that last one was a fourth-quarter collapse for the ages, this one was a fourth-quarter comeback for the ages.
Unfiltered, unapologetic, unflinching college football euphoria spilled from the pores of every Irish player and coach and even administrator. Notre Dame was dead. Then it had a pulse. Then … whoa.
Hang around this crazy world of college football long enough and you’re sure to see everything. Games that end in crazy ways. Players who make plays that they have no business making. Watching the final minutes of a game that’s about to go one way, only for it all to be turned on its collective head and go the opposite.
It’s maddening, mind-numbing and amazing all in one final, definitive series.
That’s what we were treated to with a full moon watching over Wallace Wade Stadium on the last day of September after what Notre Dame (5-1) delivered in the closing minutes against No. 14 and previously undefeated Duke (4-1).
It was impossible. It was improbable. In the end, it all was so fittingly Irish. It was their time to bounce back after having their hearts shattered the previous week. Time to show a resolve that few thought possible. Time to offer some fight and just go and grind out a 21-14 victory when another loss seemed imminent.
These Irish battled. These Irish believed.
“Great teams find a way to win when it matters most; they find a way to execute,” said head coach Marcus Freeman. “That’s a sweet victory.”
The Irish surely would cherish this one. The rest of us first had to make sense of it.
Pinned against its own 3-yard line with 2:35 remaining, Notre Dame faced the longest of odds against a defense it was unable to do much against most of the night. The Irish could run the ball at times. They could pass it at others. They couldn’t get into the end zone. Hadn’t since their first drive of the game before sunset.
When this team, this program, this season absolutely had to have all of it, they had all of it. The blocking, the playmaking, and the belief. Notre Dame also delivered on its last drive because it had a defense that didn’t let up and it had Sam Hartman at quarterback.
When Hartman was handed a fourth-and-16 from the Duke 47 with 57 seconds left, he looked and looked and waited and waited and then took off as if his life — his college career — depended on getting that first down. One way or another, he was going to get it.
“Shoot, it was a lot of just run and shoot,” Hartman said. “There’s not a lot of good calls for fourth and that long. We battled. Surreal. Super happy going home with a (win).”
Hartman did something on that fourth-and-16 that he couldn’t do on two separate occasions against Ohio State. He ran for 17 yards and got the first down. It didn’t officially win the game, but it kind of sort of did.
The decisive drive took 10 plays. It went 95 yards. It took two minutes and four seconds. Why then? Easy, said tight end Mitchell Evans — “champions respond.”