Rewatch Notes | Oklahoma 2012
“Notre Dame is relevant again.”
A lot of people would say that Notre Dame was always relevant in college football, even when they were bad. But in the context that Brent Musberger mentioned it when Theo Riddick sealed their win with a final touchdown, he wasn’t wrong.
This is the win that made Notre Dame relevant as a national championship contender. They beat the 8th ranked team in the country on the road. They held the 2nd ranked offense in the country that season (according to SP+) to 13 points. They earned a signature win against a program that had averaged 10 wins a season over the previous dozen years.
That’s why, in my opinion, beating Oklahoma in 2012 remains the best win of Brian Kelly’s time at Notre Dame.
He’s had some other big wins since then and the recent run is impressive, but he hasn’t had a road win as good as this one since then. It’s the first game I chose to rewatch and do notes on during this football hiatus.
And boy, was this ever an interesting game to watch again eight years later.
- Before I get into specifics throughout the game, there were some things statistically that stood out both from the box score and other things I tracked personally.
We can start with 27.7% of Notre Dame’s yards coming on two plays: the Cierre Wood touchdown run and the bomb from Everett Golson to Chris Brown.
In so many ways, that was the difference in the game. Oklahoma broke off one play of over 30 yards on a well-designed fake screen that sucked in the Irish linebackers. They scored their only touchdown on that drive.
Notre Dame scored touchdowns because of their two plays that were longer than 30 yards.
- It seems unbelievable now, but wasn’t being talked about much at the time. Brent Venables was pushed out at Oklahoma for Mike Stoops after OU finished 7th in SP+ the previous season. In 2012, the first solo Mike Stoops defense, they dropped to 28th.
- Notre Dame rushed for 106 yards in the first half. OU rushed for three.
Overall OU was out rushed 215 to 15. Winning the line of scrimmage was a huge factor in a tight game and the Notre Dame defensive line did that, but the most underrated part of the rushing attack for Notre Dame was Golson. His 10 carries for 66 yards were huge.
- It’s incredible to think Notre Dame won this game with Tyler Eifert only catching three passes for 22 yards, but his presence was a huge factor in opening up other things on offense. Oklahoma doubled him consistently.
- 14 of OU’s 22 rushes went for three yards or less. Their longest run was seven yards.
I think everyone remembers how conservative Bob Diaco was calling his defense and this game was no different. His guys tackled well, though. OU put the ball in play 60 times and Notre Dame only missed nine tackles. That’s another reason why they only gave up one big play.
- I guess it’s hard to argue with the results, but watching Notre Dame drop 8 so many times was a tough rewatch because they never got any pressure with three. OU quarterback Landry Jones settled for underneath stuff the whole game, but he still managed to throw for 356 yards.
He was much less effective when he faced pressure. He was 31 of 40 and averaged 8.1 yards per attempt when not pressured. He was 4 of 11 and averaged 3.0 YPA when he was pressured.
I get it, the strategy worked because OU couldn’t put it in the end zone, but I do think ND should have brought four or five rushers more. Out of the 10 times Notre Dame blitzed, they had seven pressures and a sack. They only pressured Jones five more times the entire game.
- I must have completely forgotten that this game happened the same day as the James Harden trade to the Houston Rockets and also the same day Marcus Lattimore suffered his career-ending leg injury.
Pretty eventful day in sports.
- It’s insane that Notre Dame didn’t play with at least five defensive backs on the field for most of this game or that they couldn’t because they didn’t have five they could trust. You couldn’t do that in today’s college football.
That’s the biggest thing that makes this game feel like it happened 25 years ago instead of eight. OU was seen as being ahead of their time playing a spread offense but they were downright conservative compared to the offenses of 2020.
- On to the game…
I remember OU having success on the first drive, but must have blocked out the bad snap that blew it up for them when they got into ND territory. They lost 19-yards and were forced to punt.
- Zeke Motta did a nice job of defeating a block on the perimeter to blow up the bubble screen at 14:09 of the 1st quarter. In today’s defense Motta is 100% a Rover and would have had a much more productive career at Notre Dame.
- Moving on to the second defensive series, here’s another thing that you would never see today: two players like Carlo Calabrese and Ishaq Williams dropping into coverage. Williams had a bad bust for 21 yards when OU leaked a back out of a split set.
Williams should have had that back in man coverage and Calabrese bit hard on a run fake. This was a much simpler time when it came to run fakes. These days I wouldn’t even call it play-action if you don’t see a guard pulling.
- Diaco did dial up a couple of blitzes to get a stop on this drive. Bennett Jackson came from the boundary and blew up a run and Dan Fox blitzed from depth on 2nd down to get pressure. Fox took a bad angle to the ball carrier on the first series, but he was very effective when asked to blitz. His lateral movement was an underrated part of his game.
- Louis Nix tipping the ball at the line on 3rd down forced a field goal. He had five deflections that year and had a knack for it. He owned OU center Gabe Ikard for most of this game. -
If they gave out assists on touchdowns, Eifert deserved an assist when Wood took it 62-yards to the house on the next drive for Notre Dame. Both the corner and safety Tony Jefferson (1) were so focused on bracketing Eifert that they ignored the run.
Jefferson had his eyes on Eifert the entire time and that left the middle of the field wide open once Wood got past the second level. That part of the play overshadowed what a great job Chris Watt and Zack Martin did on the play with their double and Martin coming off of it to pick up the linebacker.
- On the third defensive series you could see that Jones had happy feet even if he got a whiff of pressure. He didn’t give his receiver a chance to make a play on 3rd down.
- On the third series on offense, I did not recall ND going to Brown deep earlier in this game. He got deep off of play-action and Golson gave him a chance at potentially a touchdown. It might have been a smidge too long, but I thought Brown should have had it.
- On the fourth series on defense at 1:10 of the 1st quarter, ND did get pressure by bringing Fox and allowing Stephon Tuiit a chance to be one on one vs the right guard. It his rush that forced a check down for a loss of three. Tuitt tied for a team high three pressures.
- On the next offensive series, ND ended up with a field goal and could have had more if Golson worked through his progressions quicker. DaVaris Daniels was wide open over the middle on a failed 3rd down attempt.
There were a couple of big conversions on this drive thanks to Golson, though. One of them came when ND motioned to empty for the first time and took the linebacker out of the box to make it five on four up front. This was easy yards with Golson.
- On the fifth defensive series, it was very weird that Jones checked into something on 3rd down after seeing the threat of the blitz and they still didn’t pick up Manti Te’o coming from depth for the sack at 12:08 of the 2nd quarter.
Maybe the back wasn’t paying attention? It was a costly miscommunication.
- Jones was pretty much a statue in the pocket and yet Notre Dame rarely ran stunts up front. That was definitely strange given what we see from the movement from the line today.
- What a disaster by the broadcast on the holding call that brought back a Blake Bell touchdown on the next defensive series. There was an issue with the microphone of the referee, but it still took them a significant time to realize that it was not a touchdown.
It was a blatant holding call on Prince Shembo. He was tackled.
- Shembo got pressure later on the drive to help force a field goal. It was a huge mistake to not have him rush the passer more often. He tied with Tuitt for pressures with far less chances to rush.
- The next offensive series ended up with a missed field goal by Kyle Brindza. He made up for it later, but this was a huge miss at the time. Again offensive coordinator Chuck Martin went with this motion to open up the numbers inside. It worked again to help get ND into field goal range.
Seeing that was just a reminder of how much less motion I saw from here than I do when watching games now.
- Golson did a really good job in this game of not forcing the football into bad situations. He probably could have let the ball go sooner on some throws, but his ball placement on 50/50 balls made up for some of that.
- After Golson got knocked out of the game for a play, Tommy Rees came in and pulled a Tommy Rees when he made sure to check into the right protection before converting on 3rd and 7 with 49 seconds to go in the 3rd quarter.
What a luxury to have someone like him come in for those situations.
- If you had to pick one series that best describes this game for OU’s offense, it would be the seventh series in the 3rd quarter when Jones went 6 for 6, but they still punted.
- After a 3-and-out by ND, OU came out and hit on their big play. This was the only one that looked like today’s offenses.
The rush stops because of the tunnel screen. The linebackers get sucked in because of the tunnel screen. Jones doesn’t throw the tunnel screen and hits a receiver over the vacated area in the middle for 35 yards.
It was a great call and design by future Central Florida head coach Josh Heupel.
- The defense had OU stopped, but Heupel maanother gutsy call when they leaked the fullback out of 4th and 2 with Blake Bell dumping it off for the first down. He would score a couple of plays later, the first rushing touchdown the Irish gave up that the broadcast never stopped talking about.
Even on that play, Ishaq Williams had Bell in the backfield for a tackle for loss. Williams, a former 5-star recruit, finished his ND career with only eight Havoc Plays in 34 games.
- With the game tied with less than 10 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, the next drive was huge. So for Golson to hit Brown for 50-yards on a 2nd and 4 play-action pass, it goes without saying it was the play of the game. The Irish were 59.1% run in this game and 57.0% on the season. That’s a big reason why the safety came up and it left Brown open with inside leverage on the post.
Notre Dame eventually scored after Golson found Riddick leaking out of the backfield for a 1st down and Golson later scored on a designed run. It was a terrific job on the double team by Braxton Cave and Mike Golic Jr. that helped him Golson get in.
- Te’o had his pick on the next series and to be honest, this is the kind of call that would have stuck the other way if they didn’t initially call it an interception. I really don’t know if it bounced off his hands or the ground.
- Notre Dame finished the game with seven straight plays of 13 personnel (one back, three tight ends). It was punctuated by Riddick’s touchdown. This final score did not come close to showing how close this game was. It really came down to a handful of plays and Notre Dame made them. Oklahoma did not.