Notre Dame’s dream season ended in disaster in Miami as Alabama showed the Irish what championship football looks like. The Irish were thoroughly dominated from start to finish in every facet of the game by bigger, stronger, and faster athletes. Despite being humbled by the Crimson Tide, Notre Dame had an impressive season, and the following players were the most impressive in a game in which it was very difficult to find bright spots:
DaVaris Daniels
Notre Dame’s young receiver showed no signs of being hindered by the broken clavicle he was returning from versus the Crimson Tide. Daniels was one of the few players wearing an Irish uniform who looked like he belonged against an SEC defense as he set a career high in receiving yards with 115 on six receptions. Daniels is a physically imposing receiver and will see his role in the Irish offense increase dramatically next season.
T.J. Jones
The Irish’s number one receiver led the team in receptions versus the Crimson Tide with seven for a total of 90 yards. Jones and the other Irish receivers were the victims of a baffling game plan in which they targeted Alabama’s all-American corner Dee Milliner. Jones and the other receivers likely would have had more success attacking the middle of the field than they did on low percentage routes such as jump balls and deep routes down the sidelines.
Tyler Eifert
In his final game as a member of the Notre Dame football team the most prolific tight-end in Irish history had yet another strong performance. Eifert totalled six catches for 61 yards while being constantly double-teamed by Alabama defenders. Eifert had success breaking tackles and fighting for yards after contact against the great Alabama defense. The Irish will be in desperate need to replace his production next season.
Ben Turk
As sad as this choice seems it is the only one to be made. While other players on the Notre Dame roster had decent games they did more bad than good for the team. No player on the Irish defense is deserving of a player of the game award and no player on the Irish offense other than those mentioned above made more good plays than they did bad plays. However, Ben Turk played one of his best games of the season, averaging 42.8 yards per punt with a long of 50 and one inside the 20. Turk did his part to make the Alabama offense have to drive the length of the field to score touchdowns, unfortunately that didn’t matter due to the dominance of Alabama’s offense.
I would throw Golson and Big Louis Nix in the mix here too. NIx was the only one on defense who came to play and looked like he could switch uniforms and still start. Golson will be a star next year too and took a step forward last night.
What about Zeke? Played a fantastic game.
Motta, along with Manti, played a horrible game. Just awful. Don’t be fooled by the high number of tackles he had.
If you had told me back in August that Everett Golson would help lead us to a 12-0 regular season, then go 21 for 36 for 270 passing yards with one TD passing and another TD rushing with only one turnover in the National Championship game, I would have been estatic.
Figure in that he had no running game, and thus, no play-action passing game, makes his preformance all the more impressive.
He really should be at the top of this list!
Every time we lose a tight end I worry, but it seems ND always churns out top quality tight ends. I have a feeling this trend will continue.
I like Eifert here as your pick. In my opinion he DID make that catch on the first drive which was ruled out of bounds. We were soundly out played however, that was definetely a momentum killer. Couple that with the fair catch call and we were outta the game pretty fast. If we got the ball at the Alabama 5 or whatever it was in that instance and punch it in, maybe its a closer game but as everyone has stated here before, we got rolled. Im just saying we kind got screwed from the start…and Musberger was loving it
What about #47 on special teams? He made sure tackles every time he was on both, kickoff and punt coverage!