Here is a quick look back at some of the highlights of Saturday’s devastating win over BC.
It Was Over When …
Roby Toma recovered Boston College fairly abysmal onside attempt. The Irish were able to run all but 15 seconds off the clock before punting back the ball back to BC for one final play.
Turning Point
Jonas Gray’s knee injury. Usually this is positive instance but Jonas’ injury seemed to deflate the team. It also altered the play calling and game plan for the rest of the game.
Three Good Stats
- 161 rushing yards — On a day when Tommy definitely didn’t have his best stuff and run blocking wasn’t as good as it’s been, ND still churned out 161 yards on 40 carries. With a struggling offense and a defense playing extremely well, ND still ate up clock and finished the game with a 6.5 minute edge in time of possession
- 100% FG percentage — Getting off his slow start (due to his being jinxed by DMQ), Ruffer connected on all 3 of his FG tries. Having attended ND during the last year of TY and 3 years of CW, it’s just nice to have a reliable kicker and rarely have to worry about field goal attempts.
- 47.% completion percentage/4.5 YPA — Those are the passing stats of Chase Rettig. I know he missed some open receivers and hasn’t played that well this year, but it is still impressive numbers to hold an opposing QB to. As anyone watching the games realized, the defense was not the problem. BC had 2 drives the entire game.
Three Bad Stats
- 16 points — This was a bad BC team. There was no way that the Irish should have been held to only 16 points. Some of this is due to the solid punting job by BC as ND has abysmal field position during the entire first half, but a majority of it was just lack of execution. A couple of ill-timed penalties killed the few promising drives that ND was putting together.
- 43% available years — Per Jay on TPG (link) we gained 43% of available yards on Saturday. That was our 2nd worst performance of the year besides Southern Cal. That is just not good at all. Saturday was just an ugly offensive performance.
- 0 Holding Calls for BC — I know this will sound homery and whiny but man, what does Aaron Lynch need to do get a holding call called against the OL blocking him. Check out 1:20 of this video (link) for an egregious one. Another one was the 2nd BC touchdown. Lynch is just mugged on every pass rush and is getting nothing from the refs. /rant over
Three Stars
- Jonas Gray– Just wanted to highlight Jonas for his outstanding season and even his play on Saturday. His knee injury just isn’t fair.
- David Ruffer — as stated above, 3 FG’s helped ND pull out the victory when the offense just wasn’t getting the job done.
- Jamoris Slaughter — Had two bone crushing hits (even if the second was negated by penalty) and was all over the field, playing out of position as the hybrid linebacker/safety.
Housekeeping:
- Jonas’ knee injury is expected to end his season.
- Cierre finished the game with 94 rushing yards, giving him 1,001. He is ND’s first 1000+ yard rusher since Darius Walker in 2006.
- While subjective, Manti definitely looked much healthier on Saturday than he did against Maryland which is important if ND has any chance at beating Stanford on Saturday night
- ND debuted at #22 in the latest BCS poll.
- 16, 35, 13, 15, 10, 19, 24, 14, 17 14, 14: The points surrendered by the starting defense this season. While not flashy or turnover producing, Diaco’s defense just doesn’t give up a lot of points. Stanford comes in having scored 30+ points in every game but 1 dating back to the beginning of the 2010 season. So something will have to give on Saturday night.
Next Week:
The Irish head out west to take on Stanford in the final game of the season. Staford is ranked #4 in the BCS and they open as 7 point favorites.This is the first game all year that the Irish aren’t favored.
- Florida State 18, Notre Dame 14: A Quick Recap - December 29, 2011
- Stanford 28, Notre Dame 14: A Quick Recap - November 27, 2011
- Notre Dame 16, Boston College 14: A Quick Recap - November 21, 2011
Matt Q. (DMQ)
I cannot believe the Irish won this game to Boston College. How dare they! Don’t they understand that Irish teams, particularly good Irish teams, never struggle with BC!? Shameful. If Lou Holtz were here, he’d have won this and every other game against inferior opponents by 30 or more points.
Who’s Ivory Covington?
OMG
Stupid comments and irrelevant
Matt Q. (DMQ)
If this is a spoof of what I think it is, it’s brilliant.
kyndfan
The BC students were singing/chanting as they walked out of the stadium. Only a little brother celebrates a moral victory. Just sayin
Matt Q. (DMQ)
Clearly people didn’t get my sarcasm.
Or maybe they did.
Anywho… I also have to figure all the typos in this post are due to Poot drinking away the pain of this… win.