Irish’s march to CFP quarters fueled by NIU loss
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
NEW ORLEANS — Notre Dame has won 11 straight games and averaged a nearly 30-point margin of victory during that stretch, but as the Irish prepare for Wednesday’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal game against Georgia in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, much of the attention remains on the one game they’ve lost.
Notre Dame’s 16-14 home loss to Northern Illinois in Week 2 was a low point for the Irish, but head coach Marcus Freeman said it also served as a turning point that ignited the team’s recent run.
“There were some valuable lessons in that loss,” Freeman said Monday. “It’s this constant chase for improvement — every week, every day — that we have been able to make, and we still continue to have that mindset.”
In the aftermath of that loss, Freeman told his team to “hold on to that pain” as a motivating factor and use it as a motivator to improve. Now that Notre Dame is among the last eight teams still playing for a national title, tailback Jeremiyah Love said he appreciates the reminders of the team’s nadir.
“We like it,” Love said of the NIU talk. “We don’t like that we lost, but we like the reminder. Keeping the pain with us — it’s a drive to be better. We like the little reminder that we fell short in that game, so if people keep doing it, we welcome it.”
Notre Dame had just gone on the road and upended Texas A&M in Week 1, and left tackle Anthonie Knapp said the Irish spent the next six days relishing the success.
That, he said, was a mistake.
“Coming off A&M, everyone was on a high,” Knapp said. “You get a little ego boost and you’re like, ‘Oh, NIU.’ We didn’t take preparation as important that game, and we got what we deserved.”
Against NIU, the Irish managed just 286 yards of offense, turned the ball over twice and averaged fewer than 5 yards per pass.
The conversation surrounding Notre Dame changed instantly. Suddenly the team riding the high of the win over A&M was instead answering questions about a one-dimensional offense and a transfer QB in Riley Leonard, who struggled to throw the ball downfield.
In some ways, however, it was a liberating moment, Leonard said.
“Once you lose a game like that, no one can say many worse things about you,” he said. “You can’t do anything but respond and not care and play freely, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Leonard, a transfer from Duke, had three offseason surgeries and missed all of spring ball, so the process of figuring out how he fit within Notre Dame’s offensive game plan was slow to develop. That showed against NIU, but the loss also galvanized a team around a mantra of owning the line of scrimmage.
Since the NIU game, Notre Dame has averaged 42.5 points per game, Leonard has 17 touchdown passes and just four picks and the ground game, led by Love, has blossomed into one of the most potent in the country.
More importantly, linebacker Jack Kiser said, the loss has put Notre Dame in a must-win scenario since mid-September, making this run through the College Football Playoff feel like familiar territory.
“This week [vs. Georgia] and last week [vs. Indiana], playoff games are do-or-die,” Kiser said. “But since Week 2, we knew if we dropped another game, we probably wouldn’t even be in the 12-team playoff. So it’s been a back-against-the-wall mentality. That has certainly carried us through the rest of the season. Who knows what this team would be like without that loss?”
Still, tight end Mitchell Evans said there’s a mindset that the NIU game defines Notre Dame more than the past 11 wins.
“It’s a stigma Notre Dame has that, ‘Oh they can’t do this or that,'” Evans said. “I think it’s because people want to be us, if I’m being honest. It’s Notre Dame. It’s the most prestigious university in the world. No one knows what we go through besides us, the people in our core. A lot of people hate the success we’ve had as a program.”
That’s part of what’s driving Notre Dame going into the Sugar Bowl. If the past 11 games haven’t been enough to erase the stigma of the NIU loss, certainly a win over Georgia would send a clear statement.
And if Leonard has learned anything over the past three months since Notre Dame’s low point, it’s that there’s still much left to prove.
“I don’t think we’ve come close to reaching our potential here,” he said.
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