Notre Dame football will play for a national championship.
And isn’t the game the Irish used to earn that opportunity just so fitting?
Thursday night’s Orange Bowl put sixth-seeded Penn State in the driver’s seat again and again. Throughout the first half, the Nittany Lions punished Notre Dame in the trenches. Down the stretch, Penn State received multiple opportunities to drive down the field and leave Miami with a win.
But in its lowest moments, Notre Dame found a way. The path to a 27-24 victory sounds a lot like the journey the Irish have taken to reach this point — seemingly out of the postseason picture after Week Two and from that moment on needing to deliver each and every week just to stay alive.
Well, they’re alive, and now they’re 60 minutes away from the program’s first national title since 1988.
“So proud of this group. What a gritty performance, and they found a way when it matters most to get their job done,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. “Penn State’s a heck of a football team … It was a tough matchup, but these guys were resilient. They found a way to make a play when it mattered the most.”
The deciding play put graduate kicker Mitch Jeter in the spotlight for the biggest field goal attempt of his life. From 41 yards away, he lined up his shot to give Notre Dame a lead in the final 10 seconds. His teammates appeared anxious, yet their faith in Jeter remained unwavering.
“We all knew the kick was gonna go in,” senior quarterback Riley Leonard said.
Though the kick briefly faded right, the winds of college football glory brought it back through the uprights.
A kick for the ages. A trip to the national championship. A far cry from Notre Dame’s situation with 90 seconds to play in the first half.
At that point, Penn State led by a 10-0 score. The Nittany Lions had just gashed Notre Dame for a 15-play, 90-yard touchdown drive that spanned more than seven minutes, battering the depleted Irish front with successful run play after successful run play. Meanwhile, the Notre Dame offense had done next to nothing, punting twice and throwing an interception.
As the Irish, already down freshman left tackle Anthonie Knapp for the night with an ankle injury, settled into a two-minute drill at their own 40, the bad went worse. Leonard took a crunching hit that knocked him into concussion protocol. Behind the play, graduate right guard Rocco Spindler suffered an injury of his own, forcing him out of the game.
Getting outmatched badly in the Orange Bowl, Notre Dame called upon backup quarterback Steve Angeli. The junior did all he could, throwing for 44 yards on six completions to set up a 41-yard Jeter field goal before halftime. Still, Notre Dame’s prospects remained dicey, as twice during the drive Irish offensive linemen whiffed on blocks that put Angeli dangerously close to lost fumbles.
“It was a seven-point game, but it didn’t feel like that going into the locker room,” Freeman recalled. “As I told the offensive staff and the team in the locker room, we’ve gotta be able to run the ball, and we’ve gotta be able to stop the run. That’s not changing. We said that going into the game, and we’re saying that at halftime.”
To aid that gameplan, halftime cleared up Leonard’s situation, and he returned at quarterback to start the second half.
“I think our medical support team, first and foremost, did a really good job,” Leonard said. “We definitely took our time and evaluated my numbers from this summer when I took a brain test [compared] to what I performed in the tent.”
Operating with injuries on both sides of the line of scrimmage — some from Thursday night, some from earlier in the season — Notre Dame appeared a new team in the third quarter. The Irish took the ball first and marched for an eight-play touchdown drive that featured seven rushes, the last a three-yard scoring plunge from Leonard. Typical third-down running back Aneyas Williams starred on the drive, combining for 51 yards on a downfield catch and a red-zone run.
On the other side, Penn State didn’t complete a pass to its wide receivers all night, so Notre Dame’s secondary could play closer to the line of scrimmage to assist a struggling defensive line. The first Nittany Lion drive of the half ended with a massive tackle by sophomore cornerback Christian Gray on a third-and-two run play. The next finished on a third-down sack from graduate safety Rod Heard II.
With the game still tied at 10, Notre Dame had momentum and made good on it. The Irish, who converted on 11 of their 17 third downs overall, went three-for-three on a go-ahead drive that bled into the start of the fourth quarter. Sophomore Jaden Greathouse and senior Jayden Thomas made key third-down plays from the wide receiver position, moving Notre Dame down to the goal line. There, Leonard lined up next to sophomore running back Jeremiyah Love, who had struggled through practice all week with a lingering knee issue, for first-and-goal at the two.
“He was banged up, and he is a tough individual,” Freeman said. “The statistics maybe weren’t there in the first half, but him being out there means something to everybody on that offense and everybody on our team.”
Love got the carry and started left. Zion Tracy hit him low in the backfield, turning his back to the end zone, but he kept his footing. Nevertheless, three more Nittany Lions, including Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Abdul Carter, met him at the line of scrimmage. With his feet stopped at the two, Love leaned forward, reaching the ball over the plane while dragging Zakee Wheatley on his back for an improbable touchdown.
“It speaks volumes to the heart he has. He gave everything he had to this place,” Freeman said. “He did not have to play today, and nobody would’ve batted an eye. But he put team in front of himself and how he felt, and we’ve got a whole bunch of guys like that in the locker room, and that’s why we’re in this position.”
Penn State answered on the following drive, as quarterback Drew Allar used sizable completions to tight ends Tyler Warren and Khalil Dinkins to set up a seven-yard Nicholas Singleton touchdown run — tie game at 17.
On the next play, Leonard threw his second interception of the game. The Dani Dennis-Sutton takeaway meant the Irish had thrown two picks for the first time since the Northern Illinois loss. Five plays later, Singleton went in from seven yards out again for his third touchdown of the night, this one giving Penn State a 24-17 lead with less than eight minutes to go.
Penn State had seized momentum, and the Irish needed to do something about it. With some help from the Hard Rock Stadium playing surface, they sure did. On a snap from Notre Dame’s 46-yard line, Greathouse caused his defender to slip with a move off the line of scrimmage, leaving him all alone down the right sideline. Leonard found him, and Greathouse made one more juke to turn his third catch of the drive into Notre Dame’s longest passing touchdown of the season. In the final five minutes, the game went into a 24-24 deadlock.
Allar and the Nittany Lions had the first chance to go win the game on offense, but they couldn’t acquire a first down. Leonard and the Irish came close on the ensuing drive, but a third-down sack kept them just shy of field-goal range with 49 seconds left.
The Penn State offense had the ball again with two timeouts and 45 seconds remaining. Singleton ran to the 30 for a first down before Allar made a disastrous decision that put Notre Dame in a clear position to win. As the pocket caved in, Allar tried to bounce the ball at the feet of his receiver over the middle to keep the clock stopped. But the pass sailed, and Gray laid out for perhaps the most important interception in the modern history of Notre Dame football.
“I didn’t really think about anything after I caught the ball,” Gray said. “I just knew I was blessed, and I felt God over me after I caught the ball.”
“That’s what Christian Gray does,” Freeman added. “He makes plays when it matters the most.”
Set up at the Penn State 42 with 33 seconds left, the Irish didn’t need to do much.
“We knew we wanted to get the ball as close to the 30-yard line as we could. If we could’ve went down and scored, we would’ve,” Freeman discussed. “But we knew, at this moment, let’s get the ball at least to the 30, and, if we’re not gonna score a touchdown, let’s run as much time off the clock as we can.”
With a third-down completion to Greathouse, a 100-yard receiver for the first time in his career on Thursday night, Notre Dame eventually reached the Penn State 23. A dozen seconds remained, and Jeter took the field to send the Irish to the national championship game.
“He’s just a confident guy, man. There is no moment too big for Mitch Jeter,” Freeman said. “I had a lot of confidence in him in that moment [that] he was gonna do exactly what he did, and he did a great job at doing it.”
Penn State’s last-ditch laterals went out of bounds, and the game went final: Notre Dame 27, Penn State 24.
In just a week’s time, the Irish have won both the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl. They’ve outlasted all conference champions, silencing many narratives about their place in big games and the college football landscape. But the men in the gold helmets are proving something more meaningful than that this postseason.
“The biggest thing is just, culture wins,” Leonard said. “You see a lot of talented guys across our locker room, but you can see that anywhere in the country. But at the end of the day, it’s [about] which guys are putting their bodies on the line for the man next to them. Nobody’s thinking about draft stocks or next year — anything about individual glory. We’re all thinking about the man beside us, and we’ve proved throughout the season that culture wins, and it’s a special place for a reason.”
Now, it’s Coach Freeman’s 39th birthday, and it’s time for the Irish to determine their final opponent. Red-hot Ohio State and SEC runner-up Texas will meet Friday night at the Cotton Bowl in the second semifinal of the College Football Playoff. Once that game concludes, the preparation will begin for Jan. 20 back in South Bend.
“We’ve gotta get healthy and get back to work for one last guarantee,” Freeman said.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, where Notre Dame beat Georgia Tech on Oct. 19, will host that guarantee. The Irish will play for a national championship at 7:30 p.m. next Monday night.
