Pride can go only so far, and that is all Stanford has left to play for, while putting up another score in the ilk of 55-0 could help propel the Irish to the College Football Playoff for the third time in four years.įurthermore, Notre Dame has not given up a touchdown in its last three games. While that spread has risen four points since it opened on Sunday, it remains bafflingly low. PREDICTION: The sun is not far from rising on the Eastern seaboard, and Notre Dame remains a 20.5-point favorite, per PointsBet, with a combined point total Over/Under of 53.5. Phone calls, Rome meetings and ‘the best culture in college football’. If that meant throwing the ball and we were up 35 points, it was important that we played the game the right way for us.”īuchner finished with 17 yards on 3-of-6 passing with 67 rushing yards on five carries, not exactly an offensive explosion but still more than idling the offense in neutral. “From our standpoint, we wanted our quarterback Tyler Buchner to be in the game, regardless of what the score was, to run the offense. “Just the way to play the game for me has always been about, we’re going to play it the right way,” Kelly said Monday. Rather than limit his exposure to the playbook to tone down the blowout, Kelly and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees saw future value in turning Buchner loose. The Irish coaching staff very much sees Buchner as the program’s future, and that presented an opportunity to work in a game atmosphere. As Notre Dame demolished Georgia Tech a week ago, 55-0, it brought in freshman quarterback Tyler Buchner for a significant portion of the second half. If such a lopsided game unfolds this evening, do not look for the Irish to fully let up off the gas. Stanford has been outscored 210 to 86 in those six losses, for the most part far from competitive. And the Cardinal has paid karmically for that robbery, doing nothing but losing since and losing ugly. 3 Oregon to start October, but that win came courtesy of a questionable officiating call as much as anything else. The Cardinal is in the midst of a six-game losing streak. PREVIEW: Diminishing this rivalry week tempts chaos, but it is hard to imagine that chaos finding Stanford Stadium. The point is, not much channel surfing should be needed leading into the Irish season finale. 14 Wisconsin at Minnesota at 4 ET, an underappreciated rivalry as it has been played more than any other matchup in the FBS at 130 times. It may be a somewhat anticlimactic rivalry week on paper, but Fox does have a strong lineup throughout the day, beginning with No. And thus, the Fox Sports app should also offer a streaming option. In that regard, the beat writers have appreciated this season a bit more, though more noon kickoffs would be always welcomed. It is only the sixth night game for the Irish this season, more than most teams but anecdotally fewer than most Notre Dame years feature, the result of a schedule lopsided not only with seven home games but also with one neutral site game with a noon kickoff. PT sunset in Palo Alto, Calif., unfortunate for a broadcast that may be lacking in dramatic moments on this occasion.
Kickoff will come just a bit after the 4:52 p.m.
That may be partly a result of lengthened schedules - 12-game regular seasons becoming the norm only in the late 1990s - but that is still a 25-year stretch that cannot compare to the current one, not to mention the 2020 season was a shortened season and this one is not yet over but the record could already be set early in the evening along the Pacific coast. A win at Stanford (3-8) today will give the Irish 44 wins in the last four years, despite last season being shortened by a game, the most wins in a four-year stretch in Notre Dame history. 6 Notre Dame (10-1) will look to win its 11th game for the third time in the last four years. That habit traces back, with a few interruptions here and there, to that rivalry’s origin in 1926.ĭoubling down on spending Thanksgiving in California eventually made sense, adding some consistency to Notre Dame’s annual itinerary and, more importantly in the modern era, allowing the Irish coaching staff to spend the following week recruiting the West Coast, an efficient use of time at a crucial point in the recruiting cycle.īrain Kelly will spend all of next week checking in with expected early enrollees stretching from Washington to Arizona and then over to Dallas before they sign their National Letters of Intent in mid-December.īut before Kelly meets with his future players, No. Before that, the Irish headed west to end the year only in even-numbered years, on trips to USC. SAN FRANCISCO - Notre Dame has been ending its scheduled regular seasons in California every year for 24 years now, a stretch beginning in 1998.