Well that game sure felt a whole hell of a lot better than last year’s season opener.
In a game in which all eyes were on Everett Golson, the Irish rushed for nearly 300 yards as they simply crushed Navy 50-10. The return to the homeland was extremely successful and provided quite a bit of healing from last season’s opening day disaster.
Moments of Healing
There were two moments in today’s game that simply felt like we were exorcising demons from last season. The first was having our first drive actually result in a touchdown after we reached the red zone. Even better, the drive found paydirt after a sack. Even better than that was the Irish taking advantage of a huge Navy mistake in the form of a penalty that extended the initial drive. It was the first signal that this game would be different, but the second moment…
Oh my the second moment…
As Navy appeared to be well on their way to their first successful drive of the game, Stephon Tuitt recovered a fumble and ran it back 77 yards for a touchdown. We all were able to marvel as a 300+ monster outran the entire Navy squad on his way to the endzone. It may not qualify as a fat guy touchdown, but oh my was that fun to watch.
Moments of Frustration
Two botched extra points, the first of which followed the first TD, gave Irish fans reason to groan. Granted, neither had too large an impact on this game, but seeing such stupid mistakes is beyond frustrating. Some very sloppy kickoffs didn’t help either.
Golson was also far from perfect and made an INT that we’ve seen from Rees the past two seasons: locking on to a receiver, ignoring the rest of his reads, and throwing directly into double coverage. It was a mind-numbingly dumb play and despite the reason he did it, either a complete mistake or overconfidence that he could do anything against Navy, that needs to be corrected and quickly.
From the Box Score
Notre Dame would’ve had two rushers with 100 or more yards had GA3 just gotten on more. With his 99 and Riddick’s 107, it was quite an opening statement especially on the heels of Cierre Wood’s suspension.
Notre Dame was perfect on third down conversions until the second string entered the game (8 for 8). Granted, Navy helped us with one of these with a dumb penalty, but for the most part, our starters were clicking on all cylinders and sustaining drives.
For the “run the damn ball” crowd, you had to be happy: 46 rushes, 23 passes. That’s right, we ran the ball twice as much as we passed.
Manti Te’o got his first career INT — wrap your mind around that.
Red Zone Success: 6 scores on 7 trips — 5 TDs, 1 FG, and 1 INT.
Punt return yards: 1 return for 11 yards — POSITIVE YARDAGE!
Turnover ratio: +3 — POSITIVE TURNOVER RATIO!!!
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.
First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
