Instant Reaction | Notre Dame 31 Louisville 24

It was a bit of a sleepy experience heading into Notre Dame Stadium this afternoon. There wasn’t a huge buzz coming into the game.

That seemed to be the case for Irish fans and Louisville fans as well. They gave back some of their allocated tickets, which was surprising given that they went to the ACC Championship game last season and are off to a 3-0 start.

Any energy that was lacking was quickly injected into everyone’s veins immediately. There were wild swings of momentum in the first quarter and big plays were happening at a rapid pace for both teams.

Eventually, things got settled. Notre Dame managed the game and the chaos started to subside. At least in terms of scoring it did. The injuries kept piling up and it looked like the Irish could have been in deep trouble as their depth was stretched to the limit on defense.

The players and the coaching staff had to be resilient in order to get the job done and that is why they ultimately came out with a hard fought win. It was one Notre Dame needed desperately.

- Jeff Brohm came out and was in his bag as a play-caller. He seemed to have the pulse of Notre Dame’s defense and called about as great of a first half as I can recall from an opposing head coach/offensive coordinator. With all of the injuries suffered by Notre Dame, one would think he would have kept building on it and wore the Irish down.

That didn’t happen as Al Golden’s defense made some decisions at linebacker to roll with Drayk Bowen, Jaiden Ausberry, and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa while patching together what they could from a secondary that was down Ben Morrison, Christian Gray, and Jaden Mickey after he made the decision to transfer.

To be down to that at one point while also missing their top three edge defenders (Jordan Botelho, Boubacar Traore, and Josh Burnham) and still somehow holding an explosive Louisville offense to 24 points was amazing to witness.

Notre Dame gave up some plays. Many of them were spectacular ones by quarterback Tyler Shough and receivers Ja’corey Brooks and Caullin Lacy. The Irish defense made plenty of plays of their own and finished with a 25% havoc rate and held Louisville to 1 of 5 on 4th down.

Given the context of who they were missing, it was an incredible performance.

- Riley Leonard was great to start this game. He might not have been as good in the second half, but more of that had to do with the pieces around him.

It said everything about how well Leonard played that when he came back after getting the wind knocked out of him, the crowd cheered his return. That was unimaginable as recently as last week.

Notre Dame’s offensive line was losing badly up front in the second half and the offense could have lost the game for the Irish because of that. The fact that Louisville’s havoc rate was only 13% was primarily due to the job Leonard did to keep them out of negative plays.

- The offense was in a bad way in the second half until Mike Denbrock dialed up a couple of brilliant plays to produce what was ultimately the game-winning score.

The shot play to Jayden Harrison that sold the rub route and the throwback screen to Jeremiyah Love were brilliant and brilliantly timed.

- Losing Traore in this game after already losing Botelho is absolutely devastating. Maybe there will be more positive news about Traore than expected, but it’s rare for a non-contact injury like that to end up more positive than people expect.

I don’t think the focus should be about an injury after a win like this, but it’s hard to overlook how Notre Dame has lost their projected top-three offensive linemen and now their top two Vypers. Bryce Young and Loghan Thomas are probably not ready for the roles that they are going to have the rest of this season. They have no choice but to grow up quickly because the defense needs them to.

- There were so many things going against Notre Dame that should have led to them losing this game.

A fumbled kickoff return to start the game. Mounting injuries that saw Notre Dame playing four true freshmen on the field at the same time. A stalled offense in the second half that managed to only have four first downs.

This was a game that Marcus Freeman couldn’t afford to lose. The luck of the Irish only seemed to be bad luck for large stretches of this game, so it maybe seemed like Notre Dame was supposed to lose.

But his team found a way and now they get to go into the bye week with a big win and a chance to get some reinforcements back for when they play Stanford.

Freeman needed this win. Notre Dame fans needed this win. They all got what they deserved and were able to avenge last season’s loss to Louisville in the process.

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