By Chris Schumerth | @ChrisSchumerth
Sports Capital Journalism Program
NEW ORLEANS – The 54 seconds that changed the postseason perception of Notre Dame football Thursday in the Allstate Sugar Bowl was orchestrated by players in each phase of the game that began their college careers on other campuses.
A series of sudden, decisive moments separated by halftime in the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal turned a 3-3 tie into a commanding 20-3 lead on the way to Notre Dame’s 23-10 victory.
The surge started with South Carolina transfer Mitch Jeter. Jeter arrived in South Bend with a reputation as an accurate kicker but not necessarily one with a huge leg.
Even so, he had only converted 53% of his kicks before the Sugar Bowl, though he has nursed a groin injury for much of the season.
None of that mattered against the Bulldogs. Jeter had already put his team on the board with 8:20 left in the second quarter when he lined up again at the end of the second quarter, this time from 48 yards, to give his team a lead with 39 seconds to go.
Jeter explained his recent success in a surprising way. “It’s more of being able to get more reps in practice,” he said, “…throughout the middle of the season we were really just trying to rest and get my body healthy…after the Southern Cal game being able to have a couple weeks to really just dial my craft back in.”
Duke transfer defensive end RJ Oben has also had a statistically quiet season, but made his mark in a big way. On first down after Jeter’s field goal, Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton dropped back to throw. Oben got to him from the blind side and was able to strip the ball before fellow defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka dove on it at the 13-yard line.
“These guys don’t always control the amount of plays they get,” Freeman said about Oben. “…RJ is a guy that no matter what the role is that’s determined for him, he puts everything into it.”
On the very next play after the Georgia turnover, Riley Leonard, Oben’s former teammate at Duke, delivered a strike over the middle to former Clemson wide receiver Beaux Collins. With Jeter’s extra point, suddenly a 3-3 tie had become a 13-3 lead within eight seconds, with 27 to go in the half.
The Irish had taken a lead that was not considered enough.
“I didn’t want to survive,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman explained. “I think that’s the natural tendency in a big game…No, let’s be aggressive.”
Wide receiver and kickoff returner Jayden Harrison returned two kickoffs for touchdowns in 2023 at Marshall and was on the field two seasons ago when the Thundering Herd upset Notre Dame in South Bend during Freeman’s third game as head coach.
That Marshall victory would begin to raise questions about Freeman’s future.
What happened at the start of the second half on Thursday would create a very different perception.
Harrison caught the second half kickoff on the right side of the field at the 2-yard line. He veered to the left, but after getting a couple blocks and evading a tackle, he swung back to the right and found his crease. Georgia kicker Peyton Woodring dove at him on the Notre Dame sideline but never really had a chance.
“That guy works so hard,” Jeter said of Harrison. “He is just such a baller.”
The 98-yard return – one game after Jeremiyah Love’s 98-yard run from scrimmage against Indiana – became a College Football Playoff record. It was the second-longest in Sugar Bowl history behind the 100-yard return by Andre Debose of Florida in 2013, longer than Al Hunter’s 93-yard touchdown that helped Notre Dame beat Alabama for the 1973 national championship.
When asked about the involvement of special teams, defense, and offense in those decisive 54 seconds, Freeman said, “That’s what it takes to win versus Georgia in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff…It’s not going to be one or two phases. If we expect to continue to move forward in the College Football Playoff it’s going to take all three phases.”
Since the 1994 Cotton Bowl victory over Texas A&M, Notre Dame’s nine previous appearances in major bowls had ended with losses by an average of 20.3 points. The two playoff semifinal losses were by an average of 22 points. With the exception of the 2012 run to the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game, a one-sided loss to Alabama, the Irish have gone through four coaching regimes and three decades of frustration with the whole country watching.
There’s more work to be done, though. “I might give them tomorrow off, maybe,” Freeman said. “Give them a chance to reset. But we’ve got to start game-planning for a tough opponent.”
That opponent is Penn State, one week from tonight, in the Capital One Orange Bowl.
