Notre Dame’s ‘Mr. January’ puts Irish in CFP final
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — There were moments this season when Mitch Jeter simply could not make a kick, as injuries to his hip and groin ruined his form and threatened to sink his confidence.
But over the past month, as he got healthy, he turned into “Mr. January.” As a result, Notre Dame is headed to its first national championship game since 2013, with an opportunity to win its first title since 1988.
The Irish say they have built their season on resilience — and it is possible nobody on the team embodies that more than Jeter. As he lined up for a 41-yard field goal attempt with the score tied at 24 and 12 seconds left on the clock against Penn State on Thursday night, all he could think was: “Let’s go make it.”
Jeter pushed the football through the uprights to give Notre Dame a 27-24 win in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl. In doing so, he became the first kicker to make a go-ahead field goal in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.
“Coach [Marcus] Freeman talks a lot about delayed gratification,” Jeter said. “He’s been talking like that all the way back to Week 2, when the [loss to Northern Illinois] happened. So it’s kind of been my mindset, going through an injury, having delayed gratification now to be able to come out and give our team a chance to go win a national championship.”
In addition, Freeman is the first Black head coach to have a chance to win a college football national championship.
Jeter was not the only player who stepped up big Thursday night. Many of those clutch performances came from unexpected players. Cornerback Christian Gray came up with a huge play to set up the game-winning field goal, when he intercepted Penn State quarterback Drew Allar with 30 seconds left.
Defensive coordinator Al Golden called the play by the sophomore “amazing” because he recognized what Allar was doing and beat his receiver to the ball.
“Christian got a great break on it,” Golden said. “And generally speaking, that kid works really hard on his hands, so if he has an opportunity to catch it, he usually does.”
Added Freeman: “In that moment, Christian had to make a play and he did and was a huge reason why we won that game.”
A game that was an offensive slog for the first three quarters turned into a back-and-forth contest in the fourth, as the teams combined to score four touchdowns in less than 10 minutes.
Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love, playing with a knee brace and at less than 100%, got the scoring going in the final quarter with a remarkable second effort from the 2-yard line, when he jumped through one tackle, stayed on his feet and dragged a defender with him into the end zone as his legs refused to stop moving to give the Irish a 17-10 lead.
Love usually celebrates his touchdowns by making a heart shape with his hands. But he forgot in the heat of the moment.
“I don’t know what I was on that play, but I felt like some extra strength,” Love said. “I just wanted to scream and rage. I just felt like the Hulk or something. I wasn’t even thinking about throwing up the heart. It was just expressing the dominance I just asserted over them.”
Penn State answered with two touchdown drives to take a 24-17 lead with 7:55 remaining. That is when Irish sophomore wide receiver Jaden Greathouse took his turn in the spotlight. On second-and-8 from the Notre Dame 46-yard line with 4:38 to go, Riley Leonard stepped back to throw. Greathouse made a move on Cam Miller, who fell down — leaving Greathouse wide open in the middle of the field.
Leonard lofted the ball, and Greathouse caught it. He had a safety to beat, and one juke move later, Greathouse was in the end zone for a 54-yard touchdown pass to tie the score at 24.
“While I was out there, I really got a flashback to my 7-on-7 days in high school, and it was a similar play,” Greathouse said. “And I was like, ‘I just need to cut inside and I’ll be in the end zone celebrating.'”
Greathouse finished with seven catches for 105 yards and a score — the first 100-yard game of his career. He missed two days of practice earlier in the week because he was sick but said he woke up Thursday and believed, “Tonight is going to be my first 100-yard game.”
That brought things back to Jeter and his opportunity to break a tie at 24. His injury saga goes back to Week 4, when he took a hit to a hip on an errant field goal snap against Miami (Ohio). He played through it, but a few weeks later against Stanford, he injured his groin. As time went on, his bones were not in perfect alignment — and that affected his form.
Jeter missed four of his five field goal attempts in the final four games of the regular season. His father, Andrew, works as a chiropractor and offered to help get his body back into alignment. He would come to South Bend on Thursdays and then stay for several days to help Jeter get his body aligned so everything could heal properly.
“Bones were in places that they shouldn’t have been,” Jeter said. “That was my femur, my back, my hips. He was able to move those bones back into position where they’re supposed to be, which allowed the healing process to almost accelerate.”
Once the playoffs started, Jeter felt 100%. It has shown in his performance, as Jeter has gone 7-of-8 in three playoff games — including several clutch kicks in the quarterfinal win against Georgia too.
Quarterback Steve Angeli — another player who stepped up big, leading a field goal drive late in the first half with Leonard out of the game — said the team has nicknamed Jeter “Mr. January.”
“He is a confident guy, man,” Freeman said. “There is no moment too big for Mitch Jeter. I had a lot of confidence in him in that moment that he was going to do exactly what he did, and he did a great job at doing that.”
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
Roki Sasaki, the prized Japanese pitching prospect who has had scouts drooling over his potential since high school, has chosen the Los Angeles Dodgers as his major league team, he announced on Instagram on Friday.
Sasaki called this “a very difficult decision, but I will do my best to make it the right decision when I look back after my baseball career.”
The Dodgers, long viewed as the favorites for Sasaki, had recently emerged as one of three finalists for the 23-year-old right-hander, along with the Toronto Blue Jays and San Diego Padres. On Friday morning, the Padres began agreeing to deals with their prospective international signees in the Dominican Republic, a clear sign throughout the industry that they were out on Sasaki. The Blue Jays thusly acquired $2 million in international-bonus-pool space — along with center fielder Myles Straw — from the Cleveland Guardians in hopes of enticing Sasaki further.
It ultimately did not matter. A Dodgers team coming off a World Series title with a roster headlined by Japanese countrymen Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto again landed one of the biggest prizes of the offseason.
In the Dodgers, Sasaki joins a team that has built a reputation as one of the best at developing talent and one that expects to field an incredibly deep rotation in 2025. Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow return from last year’s group. Ohtani, who will resume his duties as a two-way player, will be added. Blake Snell signed a five-year, $182 million contract in November. Clayton Kershaw is expected to return at some point, as well. And younger arms such as Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Bobby Miller remain in the organization, making it easy for the Dodgers to field a six-man rotation that would lessen Sasaki’s acclimation process.
Because he is under 25 years old and spent less than six seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, Sasaki essentially will sign a minor league contract and follow the path of a player selected in the amateur draft — able to be optioned to the minors, scheduled to earn close to the major league minimum during his first three major league seasons and unable to become a traditional free agent until attaining six years of service time.
Teams were limited to giving Sasaki only their international bonus pools, which ranged from about $5.1 million to $7.5 million at the start of the signing period.
Sasaki features a mesmerizing splitter that has been lauded as one of the world’s best secondary pitches and pairs it with a fastball that reaches 100 mph, adding a slider that has also been deemed a plus pitch. In four seasons with the Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki posted a 2.02 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP and 524 strikeouts against 91 walks in 414 2/3 innings.
In an April 10, 2022, start against the Orix Buffaloes, Sasaki pitched a perfect game while setting an NPB record with 13 consecutive strikeouts. Seven days later, he took the mound again and fired eight perfect innings before being removed from his outing. The following spring, Sasaki showcased his talents on a global stage, forming a star-studded rotation alongside Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga and Yamamoto for a Japanese team that won the World Baseball Classic.
For years, major league scouts and executives descended upon Japan to catch a glimpse of Sasaki and salivated over the possibility of him someday being posted. When it finally occurred in early December, upwards of 20 teams made initial pitches, doing so with videos and letters and even books. Sasaki flew to the L.A. headquarters of his agency, Wasserman, later that month and conducted meetings with at least eight teams — the Dodgers, Padres, Blue Jays, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants.
Earlier this week, five of those teams were informed they were out of the running, prompting Sasaki to take follow-up meetings in Toronto, San Diego and L.A. before coming to his decision.
Sasaki needed to select his new team between Jan. 15, the start of this year’s international signing period, and Jan. 23, the expiration of his posting window. His presence in the international amateur market left prospective signees of the three finalists in limbo on deals that are verbally agreed to years in advance, causing particular consternation within the Dominican Republic. The Dodgers, Padres and Blue Jays needed to not only free up their international bonus pools for the potential of landing Sasaki, but entertain the possibility of trading for additional space in hopes of enticing him further.
Sasaki starred in Summer Koshien, the prominent Japanese high school tournament, and was taken No. 1 overall in the NPB draft in 2019. The Lotte Marines handled him carefully, restricting him to bullpen sessions and simulated games in 2020 and limiting his workload whenever possible thereafter. Sasaki’s numbers were down a bit last year, his ERA rising to 2.35. His four-seam fastball went from averaging roughly 98 mph to 96. At one point, shoulder fatigue cropped up. There are concerns about how Sasaki will handle a major league workload, and many will acknowledge that his command needs improvement.
But few doubt his ceiling.
Within these next handful of years, several prominent evaluators believe, Sasaki could be an annual Cy Young contender.
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