Irish earn more converts: 'Notre Dame is better than what people think they are'

NEW YORK – It was early in the week that Julian Love, vaunted technician and skilled decoder of game film, went up to Notre Dame’s defensive backs coach Todd Lyght and offered a prediction.

“I told coach Lyght, ‘I just have that feeling that we’re going to dominate them,’” Love recalled after Saturday’s 36-3 suffocation of 12th-ranked Syracuse at Yankee Stadium. “Like, I mean, yeah, they’re a good team. They average 44 points a game. They’re ranked. But I just knew.”

With the win, third-ranked Notre Dame moved to 11-0 and set up a Thanksgiving weekend showdown at the Coliseum with reeling USC. Win that one, and the College Football Playoff committee will have almost no choice but to include the Fighting Irish in its four-team festivities on Dec. 29.

Oh, it’s still possible Oregon athletic director Ron Mullens and friends will find a way to force, say, Georgia or Oklahoma into the national semifinals, but Notre Dame isn’t going to waste much time worrying about that now. Not when there are teams like Syracuse across the way and more games to win.

That’s what “sticking to the process” and “staying in the moment” really mean. It’s about embracing the pure challenge of competition — minute to minute, practice to practice, game to game — and then imposing your will on the dude across from you.

“When you look at teams like this, their scheme is what really gets people confused,” Love said. “To eliminate and negate that, you just attack them. Every blocker that tries to block you, run through them. Be aggressive. Because they’re not going to want to do all these little scheme plays, and you can (overpower) them.”

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It helped, of course, that Notre Dame was able to jump out to another fast start. With Ian Book back at the controls, the Irish led 13-0 after the first quarter, making it a run of 50 straight first-quarter points over the past four games.

For the year, the Irish have outscored opponents 112-23 in the opening quarter.

“That’s something coach (Brian) Kelly always preaches to us, a sense of urgency,” senior center Sam Mustipher said. “I think we take pride in that and we have that.”

Knocking Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey, a four-year starter, out of the game on the Orange’s third offensive series also simplified matters. Even before Dungey left with an announced upper-body injury, the Irish defense could feel a gem coming on.

“You get a feel for your opponent really early in the game, just overall tendencies and attitude of your opponent,” said Love, who again bounced all over the secondary to match up with all body types. “We basically went to the sideline after the first couple series and went, ‘All right, we can take these guys just straight up.’"

And that’s basically how it played out as Notre Dame held Syracuse to a season-low 234 yards on a whopping 73 plays from scrimmage (3.2-yard average). The Orange came in averaging 482 yards on offense, including a season-low 311 in a near-upset at No. 2 Clemson back in September.

Just one Irish opponent finished with fewer total yards, but Stanford’s 229-yard output on Sept. 29 came on just 51 plays.

Along the way Notre Dame piled up six more sacks and three interceptions (two by Navy transfer Alohi Gilman) to earn a few more converts, foremost among them Syracuse coach Dino Babers.

“There’s no doubt that is a fantastic football team,” Babers said of the Irish. “They’ve got really good players. Notre Dame is better than what people think they are.”

Book, Babers observed, was “slippery like an eel” with the traits of a “jackrabbit,” even coming off bruised ribs and a kidney contusion. And the defensive front sealed up any cracks as soon as they opened.

“We attempted to do some things, and they closed off some gaps with their length,” Babers said. “They’re very, very long as a defensive football team. That was a fabulous defense.”

It also was one that came within 10 seconds of Notre Dame’s first shutout victory in 60 games. Instead, you still have to go back to September 2014 and a 31-0 win over Michigan to find the last blanking by an Irish defense.

Just one other win in the Kelly era has come via shutout: a 38-0 win over Wake Forest on this same date in 2012.

Notre Dame’s last shutout away from home? That came on Aug. 31, 2002 at Giants Stadium, a 22-0 win over Maryland in Tyrone Willingham’s debut as coach.

When Syracuse kicker Andre Szmyt hit the left upright from 23 yards with 8:20 remaining, the shutout remained intact. But Babers, ignoring the boos from a pro-Irish crowd, sent Szmyt back out there at garbage time for a 28-yarder that accounted for the final score.

The Syracuse scoring drive, it should also be noted, came against Notre Dame reserves. 

“It's really simple,” Babers said. “We could run another play and we could even score a touchdown, and then maybe even do an onside kick, but we're not going to win. The other thing is that when you're running those plays you got a chance to get people hurt.”

As opposed to a field-goal attempt where, of course, there is no contact? Whatever, coach.

When the mini-controversy was raised, Love paused, smiled and shrugged.

“I mean, it was a good kick by the kicker,” he said. “He made it.”

Total domination.

Follow IndyStar Notre Dame Insider Mike Berardino on Twitter at @MikeBerardino.