The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame followed up their disappointing
loss with another lousy performance that led to a 43-40 loss to the
Northwestern Wildcats. With all due respect to Northwestern, this is a game
that Notre Dame should have won, but they once again gave it away with too many
costly errors and turnovers. The Irish had a 40-29 lead in the fourth quarter before
the Wildcats scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion to trim their
deficit to 40-37. With the Irish trying to secure the game on their final
drive, senior running back and team captain Cam McDaniel coughed up the football
to give Northwestern a chance to kick a game tying 45-yard field goal with 19
seconds remaining. After the Irish failed to get a first down on their first
possession of overtime, Kyle Brindza missed a 42-yard field goal. That miss
allowed Northwestern to kick a game winning 41-yard field goal to stun the
Irish in South Bend.
Like last week, the offense had success moving the football
and scoring points, but the turnovers ultimately sealed Notre Dame’s fate. The Irish committed four turnovers on the
afternoon, with Everett Golson being responsible for two of them with an
interception and a fumble. Along with the aforementioned McDaniel fumble, Chris
Brown also put the ball on the ground when the Irish were knocking on the door
for another touchdown. Considering that Golson’s fumble also happened deep
inside the red zone, the Irish literally took 14 points off the board. Couple
that with Golson’s interception that was returned to the Notre Dame 5-yard line
that set up an easy Northwestern touchdown, those three turnovers were at least
a 21-point swing. Add the two missed field goals and a botch PAT attempt that
resulted in two points for Northwestern, and that is another 9-point swing.
Despite the mistakes, you have to give the Wildcats credit for capitalizing on
all of the miscues, but this routine is getting really old, really fast. Notre
Dame needs to clean up their mistakes right now before they find themselves
sitting at 7-5 at the end of the season. Although it is hard to point out the
positives from yesterday, it should be noted that wide receiver Will Fuller had
another monster game with 159 yards and three touchdowns on nine receptions.
Fuller now has 13 touchdowns on the season to tie him for the best in the
country. Quite frankly, it is becoming a farce that he has yet to be listed
among the 80-plus wide receivers on the Biletnikoff Award watch list.
While the offense is not doing the defense any favors with
all the turnovers, Brian VanGorder’s unit has been playing extremely poorly the
past five weeks. In fact, the Irish have surrendered 42.2 points per game over
their last five contests. While injuries have forced several freshmen and
inexperienced players into the lineup, the defense still needs to be better.
The most worrisome aspect of the defense has been the inability to stop the
opponent from running the football right down their throats. Especially in the
past two weeks, the loss of defensive leader Joe Schmidt has proved to be even
a bigger than anyone could have ever imagined. Notre Dame’s defense looks lost
out there right now, and that was evident more than ever yesterday when they
allowed a Northwestern offense to gain 547 yards of total offense and score 43
points. As a quick reminder, these are the same Wildcats that managed to score
just nine points last week against a miserable Michigan team. With a pair of
7-3 teams remaining on Notre Dame’s schedule, this defense will have to grow up
and improve very quickly if they want to finish the season with a couple of
impressive wins.
-Eric Tichelbaut
Twitter: @etichel07
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