Overreactions: Notre Dame Survives Insane Game, Tops Louisville

The first half of yesterday’s Notre Dame—Louisville game felt like three games in one. Both teams traded mistakes in a fast-paced, high-scoring first quarter before a hangover hit both teams, settling things down. In the end, the Irish made fewer mistakes and held on for a 31-24 victory over #15 Louisville, their second win over a top-25 team this season. There’s a lot to unpack in this one, though.

Notre Dame started as poorly as possible.

Big home game against a top-25 opponent that ruined your season a year ago. Notre Dame gets the ball to start the game. And they fumbled the opening kickoff. Then, Notre Dame’s sudden change of defense gives up an easy score to Louisville without putting any stress on the Cardinal’s offense. Louisville head coach Brian Brohm was dealing with his calls on that drive, but for a team that has preached starting fast at home, it was the worst possible start anyone could have imagined. For as great as it was to win, it’s also another sobering reminder that, for whatever reason, Marcus Freeman seems to have a tougher time getting his squad focused early at home than on the road.

The crowd already didn’t have any buzz to it at all for what was a big game against ranked opponents. Reports on the ground said that there wasn’t any buzz on campus before the game, either. That is also a problem. Still, the slow starts must be corrected because it could have easily cost Notre Dame this game.

Louisville turnovers saved the Irish in the first half

Luckily for Notre Dame, Louisville was in a giving move and made way more mistakes than the Irish early on, and Notre Dame capitalized on them all. After Notre Dame’s best drive of the season tied the game, Louisville was backed up near their endzone but ripped off a 45-yard run by Tyler Shough that ended with a fumble because of a great hustle play by true freshman Leonard Moore. Moore made a hell of a play, but the Irish got lucky since Shough was already at midfield when he coughed it up. Notre Dame scored on a beautifully designed play that schemed open Jaden Greathouse.

On the Cardinals’ next drive, the Irish defense settled in and forced a three-and-out, which ended with a bad snap on the punt and Notre Dame with the ball inside the 10. Another touchdown followed.

Later in the half, Louisville was marching again and had what looked like an easy third-down conversion, only for the ball to be dropped by Ja’Corey Brooks before bouncing right into the hands of Xavier Watts. The Irish only got a field goal off of it, but that was at least a 6-point swing right before the half. If Brooks holds on, Lousiville has a first down inside the Notre Dame 30 down 21-14, with a chance to cut the lead to four or tie the game going into the half. Instead, Notre Dame took a 24-14 lead into halftime.

Notre Dame did a great job capitalizing on all Louisville errors. Still, the Irish also got lucky on each of them since two were almost unforced errors and another game after surrendering a huge gain.

Injuries are mounting for Notre Dame

The Irish came into the game down some starters and might have lost another. Boubacar Traore replaced Jordan Botelho, who the Irish lost for the season and went down with his own injury. No update was given, but Traore went down after an awkward leg plant, and that kind of injury tends never to go well. He was quickly ruled out for the rest of the game and was visibly upset after leaving the blue tent. Traore was playing at a very high level for the Irish before the injury.

Injuries hit the secondary hard this game, with Christian Gray getting a late scratch and Benjamin Morrison getting knicked up later. Jaden Mickey’s transfer earlier this week was felt hard yesterday, forcing Mike Mickens and Al Golden to get creative. Morrison returned to the game, and Gray’s injury didn’t sound too serious post-game, but we’ll have to wait to hear about Traore.

Freshmen stepped up big time for Notre Dame

With Gray out and Mickey in the stands, freshman Leonard Moore got the start and played well overall. Moore was the obvious target once Louisville realized Gray was out, and he held his own. Yeah, he gave up some plays, but Louisville receivers also made some insane catches on the day. There weren’t any times when Moore just let someone free or broke down in coverage. For a true freshman making his first career start, he played well.

Defensive ends Bryce Young and Lohgan Thomas saw some extensive playing time with Traore out and held their own as well. For a moment, it looked like Thomas had a hand in what could have been the play of the game when he scooped up a Shough fumble and returned it for a touchdown, only for it to be called back after replay review.

Kygnston Villiamu-Asa continued playing at a high level for the Irish and made one of the defensive plays of the game with a big sack in the third quarter. The freshman linebacker used a beautiful dip move to come in almost untouched to make the stop. Big-time contributions from true freshmen on defense helped get the win.

Jeykll & Hyde from Mike Denbrock

Notre Dame OC Mike Denbrock had Louisville on its heels early, but the Irish offense was almost non-existent for long stretches of the game. After a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive on their first drive, the Irish had just one more drive all game long that lasted more than five plays.

Denbrock cooked up some of his best calls of the year in the fourth quarter to get Jayden Harrison wide open for a big gain and to get Jeremiyah Love the ball with a convoy of blockers for a touchdown to give the Irish a 14-point lead.

There were some real head-scratchers from Denrbcok throughout the game, though. With the Irish up two scores, Denbrock called a predictable QB power run with Riley Leonard on a 4th and 3 that got stuffed by Louisville. Then, with the Irish trying to run out the clock with four minutes remaining, Denbrock called one of his worst drives of the game with two designed Leonard runs and yet another sprint-out pass for Leonard on third down that was also stuffed. Louisville was on to Notre Dame’s plan to get Leonard on the run in the passing game by that point. It was an utterly uncompetitive set of downs for the Irish. Denbrock has to do better in those situations.

Al Golden responds to a rough first-half

Notre Dame was fortunate that Louisville only had 14 points at halftime because the Cardinals were moving the ball well. If you don’t subtract the 45 yards that Louisville lost on the bad snap punt, they had over 250 yards of offense in the first half alone. That doesn’t happen to Al Gollden’s defense at Notre Dame. Brohm had him in a blender in that first half, though, and the Irish got let off the hook a bit by all of those Louisville blunders.

Golden showed Brohm why you must capitalize on his defense when you have the chance in the second half. Notre Dame’s defense was much better after halftime, even with the injuries mounting. Everything was hard for Louisville in the second half. Even their lone touchdown of the half came on a great catch after they had to convert multiple third/fourth downs—great adjustments made by Golden at halftime.

Rylie Mills has entered the chat

Notre Dame has not gotten a lot out of 5th year senior Rylie Mills this season… until the second half of the Louisville game. Something appeared to awaken Mills at halftime because in the second half, Mills played his best football of the season. He picked up his first sack of the season and was credited with 3 “stops” from PFF after only have 3 stops total in the first four games combined. A “stop” from PFF is a tackle that results in a play being a failure (ie not a tackle 20 yards downfield after a big gain). Notre Dame needed more from Mills than it was getting, and at least for the second half he delivered. Notre Dame needs that Rylie Mills the rest of the season with the injuries it is suffering on the edge.

Mental errors need to be addressed

Last week, Adon Shuler had a personal foul penalty that negated a big third-down stop, which caused Marcus Freeman to lose his mind. This week, Jordan Clark one-upped Shuler, by far, for the worst penalty of the season. Clark head-butted a Louisville receiver well after the play and is lucky he was only given a 15-yard penalty. Because of the injuries in the secondary, Clark stayed on the field, but the situation warranted a benching. It was the worst penalty I remember a Notre Dame player taking since Jerry Tillery’s outburst against USC in 2016, which resulted in him being benched to end that game. Clark is lucky he didn’t suffer the same fate. There is simply no place in the game for that.

Jeff Brohm’s inner Bob Davie

Louisville’s blunders weren’t limited to its players. Jeff Brohm’s game management on Louisville’s last drive was truly Davie-esque. Facing a fourth and short, Brohm looked confused and unsure of what was going on as the clock ticked and ticked and ticked. Eventually he made a play call that got in too late and since they had no timeouts left from his poor clock management earlier in the half, they inexplicibly took a delay of game on 4th and less than one with the game on the line. That’s an inexcusable mistake for a head coach.

Maybe Brohm thought the spot would be reviewed and was waiting to see what the officials would do. Still, even in that scenario, you can’t get caught watching time tick off the clock. It was a brutal sequence of events after he had already wasted all his timeouts early in the half.