It was easy to watch Notre Dame’s game on Saturday afternoon and get a sense of déjà vu. Was this the Irish’s road matchup against Georgia Tech in Atlanta? Or was it a rerun of Notre Dame vs. Stanford the previous weekend in South Bend?
In both cases, the Irish struggled severely in the first quarter while falling into a quick 7-0 hole before suddenly hitting their stride on both sides of the ball to rattle off a huge scoring streak — 49 unanswered points against Stanford, 31 against Georgia Tech.
For the Irish, the key similarity between their last two games is simple: both ended with them on top when the clock hit zero. On Saturday, the scoreboard read Notre Dame 31, Georgia Tech 13, as the Irish secured a dominant three-possession victory, improving to 6-1 on the season and extending their winning streak to five games.
“Great team win,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said postgame. “Everybody had a part in it, there’s no one person that you try to give the success [to] and point out. It’s a group effort. It took everybody in that room to get their job done, to achieve the team glory that we aspire to have on Saturdays.”
For most of the first quarter, the Irish didn’t look like a team ready to achieve those lofty goals, but as mentioned earlier, that’s simply the way things have gone for Notre Dame for much of the season.
After receiving the opening kickoff, the Irish were forced to punt after a quick three-and-out. Notre Dame’s defense provided another opportunity to score by getting a stop of their own, but this time, the Irish drive was snuffed out when senior quarterback Riley Leonard was intercepted after overthrowing his target on a downfield pass over the middle of the field, a rare miscue from a player who hadn’t thrown an interception in any of Notre Dame’s previous five wins on the season. From there, Georgia Tech launched a 13-play drive that lasted more than seven minutes and culminated with the Yellow Jackets finding the end zone to take a 7-0 lead on the final play of the first quarter.
“He made a bad decision, he’ll be the first to tell you that. Those things happen,” Freeman said of Leonard’s interception. “He reloaded and came back with the right mindset … He did a great job after that interception of leading our offense.”
It indeed didn’t take long for Leonard to bounce back, as the stretch that followed was arguably the best of his college career. After managing only eight passing yards in the first quarter, he completed all 10 of his second-quarter attempts — part of a streak that grew to 12 consecutive completions — for 119 yards. He also continued his dominance in the red-zone rushing attack, scoring twice to bring his season total to 10 rushing touchdowns.
Leonard wryly offered a blunt assessment of his play when asked what he saw that led to the interception.
“Yeah, it’s more like what I didn’t see, I didn’t see pretty much anything,” Leonard said. “It was just a bad read, can’t just throw the ball up like that.”
He discussed the mentality that led to his improved performance following the turnover.
“I was like, ‘Alright, settle down, trust your eyes, trust your coaching and get the job done,’ and we did a pretty good job of that [after the interception],” Leonard said. “Settle down and play your game.”
The entire Irish team seemed to take the message of settling down and playing their game to heart after a difficult first quarter. Georgia Tech quarterback Zach Pyron started the game as a result of an injury to Yellow Jackets star Haynes King, but anyone unaware of that information could have easily believed that Pyron had been starting all season given how sharp he looked while dicing the Irish secondary in the first quarter. He completed all nine of his attempts for 81 yards while leading the Yellow Jackets on a long touchdown drive.
It was a different story in the second quarter. At the same time as Leonard was starting to catch fire, Pyron began to struggle, completing just two passes in the entire period while Georgia Tech was held scoreless. Meanwhile, Notre Dame found the end zone twice, first to tie the score and then to take the lead, outgaining the Yellow Jackets by almost 100 yards in the quarter to take a 14-7 lead and effectively wipe away any memory of the first quarter.
“I was proud of the way they responded, you go down 7-0 and we were able to respond. Defensively, [we] made the corrections necessary, and offensively, [we] really got it rolling those last two drives of the first half,” Freeman said. “This group just continues to believe.”
After closing out the first half on a high note, the Irish picked up right where they left off to start the third quarter, continuing to take control of the game. Much of that came defensively. After ceding the early touchdown, Notre Dame shut out Georgia Tech for the better part of the remaining three quarters, only allowing one more touchdown in the game’s final minutes with the outcome well in hand.
Notre Dame’s run defense was dialed in for all four quarters and was easily the most impressive aspect of the Irish’s performance, shutting down one of the nation’s top rushing attacks to the tune of just 64 yards on 29 carries. The pass defense, however, had a showing more similar to the trajectory of Leonard and the Irish offense. After struggling to slow down Pyron in the opening 15 minutes, Notre Dame held him to an 11-for-27 effort in the remainder of the game, in addition to tallying two interceptions in the fourth quarter. The first came from graduate safety Xavier Watts, while the second was a pick-six from sophomore safety Adon Shuler that gave the Irish an insurmountable 31-7 lead and cemented the victory in the closing minutes.
Additional standouts included graduate defensive lineman Rylie Mills — who was in the Yellow Jacket backfield all afternoon and recorded 1.5 sacks — and freshman cornerback Leonard Moore, who entered the starting lineup this week after the season-ending injury to star junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison and rose to the occasion with a tackle for loss and two pass breakups.
“We made some adjustments, tried to figure out what they were going to do offensively,” Freeman said. “The defense did a great job of adjusting. [Defensive coordinator Al] Golden has done an amazing job of doing that all season long.”
Immediately after halftime, the Irish offense would score its third straight touchdown, with sophomore running back Jeremiyah Love punching it in from one yard out, but the unit would slow down over the remainder of the game, not finding the end zone again. Luckily, the defense was able to pick up the slack, and while it didn’t end with the desired result, the offense was able to go on several long, steady drives that drained the clock and kept the ball out of Georgia Tech’s hands, preventing chances for a late comeback. The Irish finished the game with an advantage in time of possession by over 11 minutes.
Freeman attributed the Irish’s resiliency and performance in comfortably defeating a good Georgia Tech team on the road to the preparation that they put in on a daily basis.
“The team is becoming more and more experienced together. That’s when you take a big-picture look at the performance [and see that] this team is continuously getting better,” Freeman said. “I challenged them all week — you’ve gotta believe that there’s another level. If you believe it, you’ll be willing to put in the work.”
Having gotten past the Yellow Jackets, the Irish will now channel that work into next week’s game, a neutral site matchup with undefeated Navy that looms large as one of the Notre Dame’s biggest remaining challenges of the season.
Leading up to next Saturday's game in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the Irish will focus on addressing their slow starts, costly turnovers, and lapses in pass coverage. More importantly, they’ll strive to improve each day and keep finding ways to win — something they've done five times in a row and aim to continue with each game for the rest of the season.
“It’s a standard here, we’re expected to go in and win every single ballgame,” Leonard said. “And this team — as the year goes on — knows how to win and has a lot of confidence that we can win.”
