SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Extrapolating anything concrete for the composite of the first four games of 17th-ranked Notre Dame’s football season was inexact and migraine-producing enough heading into Saturday’s home matchup with Miami (Ohio).
Then came the boos.
“We don't make decisions based off what the sentiment of the stadium is,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman pushed back at a question about having confidence in Duke transfer Riley Leonard continuing to lead an ND offensive evolution that’s shown some stretches of substance amid larger swaths of optimistic rhetoric and projection.
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Leonard himself claimed not to hear the catcalls before the Irish gathered themselves and slowly pulled away for a 28-3 victory at sold-out and happier-by-game’s-end Notre Dame Stadium, with the Irish (3-1) fending off what felt like, for a while, a rerun of their MAC attack from Northern Illinois on Sept. 7.
A Northern Illinois team, incidentally, that saw its storybook storyline crash and burn on Saturday, with an upset loss at home to Buffalo, 23-20, in overtime.
“I didn’t ask him about how he feels about people booing him,” Freeman said of Leonard. “People boo me. We can’t perform to make sure everybody cheers for us. That’s a part of the game.
“If you don’t do your job, people are going to boo you. If you let that affect the way you go out and execute the next play, then you’re not the right person for this job or to be our quarterback at Notre Dame.
“I hope he handled it the exact way that I would expect him to. You hear it? Great. Got that. What do you need to do to refocus to go out the next play and get your job done?”
It could be argued by anyone but the most intractable members of the Steve Angeli fan club that Leonard did get the job done. Eventually.
Maybe not to the level Leonard will need to next Saturday when Louisville (3-0) — likely to be the highest-ranked team on the 2024 Irish schedule when the polls drop on Sunday — comes to town for a 3:30 p.m. Notre Dame Stadium clash.
And it wouldn’t have mattered if Leonard had heard the crowd reaction to some first-quarter overthrows and a couple of three-and-outs and a five-play stalled drive on Notre Dame’s first three offensive possessions.
This is the same guy, after all, who in high school in Fairhope, Ala., had his mom start making him bracelets to wear off the field that had the words “You suck” inscribed on them. And had her send him pregame texts with the same message during his three seasons at Duke, at his request, to keep him humble.
And who made the switch to Notre Dame in January, in part, because he believed he needed to see the game differently, and process it differently. And to buy into a plan where his evolution as a passer synched up with the evolution of an Irish offense that in critical stretches of last season was too easily a prisoner of an opposing defensive coordinator with an eight-men-in-the-box itch.
“I’ve played a lot of football, a lot of collegiate football in my life,” Leonard said. “I’ve been through these situations where you might start slow, you might start missing easy passes. As a quarterback, it happens. I’ve just seen myself respond throughout the years multiple times. You saw it two weeks ago, how we responded as a whole last week. You kind of just learn who you are as a person, who you are as a player. When my back’s against the wall and I’m not performing to my best abilities, I tend to respond pretty well.”
Here’s what that looked like against the defending MAC champs (0-3), coached by former Irish assistant Chuck Martin.
Leonard’s 143 rushing yards against Miami, stacked on top of the 100 he accrued the previous Saturday in one half of play at Purdue, made him the first Irish quarterback since Carlyle Holiday in 2001 to amass 100 yards or more on the ground in back-to-back games.
His eight-yard scoring run 3:33 before halftime gave the Irish their first lead and the edge for good, 7-3. And his 50-yarder on a fourth-and-1 play provided the final margin as well as an opening for junior backup Angeli to get 4:01 of garbage time.
And passing?
Leonard threw his first TD pass of the year, a 38-yard strike to Clemson transfer Beaux Collins 65 seconds before halftime. He also drew a handful of Miami pass-interference penalties on deep balls.
And after misfiring on five of his first 10 pass attempts, Leonard went 11 for his last 15 to finish with 154 yards. All together, his 128.4 pass-efficiency rating was his best in a Notre Dame uniform.
“Obviously, I understand what this offense can evolve to,” Leonard said. “It's kind of just my job to guide it in that direction. Still figuring some things out, but I think every game we’re getting better at the things that we struggled with the game before.
“Obviously, with the deep ball, it gave me a lot of confidence to know I can throw the ball down the field. Something good happened the majority of the time we did that, whether it was a PI [pass interference penalty], guys making plays. One of the biggest things for me is I can underthrow a guy and have the confidence that he doesn’t always have to catch it, but the defender won’t. That gains a lot of trust in me.
“I underthrew Jayden Harrison in the end zone, and what maybe would have been a pick in some people’s eye on an underthrown ball, he went up and made a play. He dropped it at the end, but it gave me a lot of confidence. The deep ball’s getting better.”
It’s been a race against time in that regard with Leonard missing all but the first few days of spring practice with a second spring-semester ankle surgery, with ND’s starting left tackle — Charles Jagusah — being lost for the season and two more starting O-linemen missing on Saturday and beyond.
And newness pervading the receiving corps. And a new offensive coordinator and a new scheme, even if they prove out to be significant upgrades in time.
“We’re nicking and nacking all these little things and improving,” Leonard assured. “We’ve just got to sometimes stick to the basics and the fundamentals and remember the fundamentals of football, and we’ll really progress.”
No one has to remind Leonard how to be resilient. And next Saturday may be the inflection point of how far that can take a team still with playoff aspirations.
Against Miami (Ohio) it was enough to overcome some bad field position early. ND’s first five drives started at the ND 4, 36, 6, 18 and 19 yard lines. And enough to overcome some first-half Irish gaffes, including a muffed punt by Jordan Faison, a bad snap of an aborted field-goal attempt, and a Leonard fumble at the end of a long run.
And enough to overcome triple digits in penalty yards for the second time in four games this season. The Irish had 10 for 100 yards on Saturday.
The Irish defense played a huge part in transcending that as well.
Coordinator Al Golden’s unit got interceptions from vyper end Junior Tuihalamaka and cornerback Christian Gray, and eight pass breakups from the defense. That’s the most in a game since the 2018 season, a campaign that ended in the College Football Playoff in its old four-team format for the Irish.
Sophomore vyper end Boubacar Traore, making his first college start after grad senior Jordan Botelho was lost for the season last Saturday, was dominant in that starting debut with five tackles, two sacks, a QB hurry and a forced fumble.
Miami sixth-year QB Brett Gabbert started off 7-of-11 passing but ended the game 14-of-35 for 119 yards and two picks. His 57.1 pass-efficiency rating was the second-lowest in his 42 college starts and the lowest since start No. 4 his freshman season (46.9) against an Ohio State team that went 13-1 in 2019, made the CFP and finished No. 3 in the final polls.
“That's a heck of a job by our defense,” Freeman said, noting the field goal the Irish gave up. “But we're greedy.”
Greedy yes, but ready for their closeup? In a matchup that, for better or worse, will have a profound bearing on ND’s postseason trajectory?
Boos or not. “You suck” texts or not. Freeman is still all in on Leonard and what he may become.
“There's always parts to clean up,” the coach said. “And we've got to continue to look at the mistakes that he made and say, ‘OK, how do we do a better job of not putting him in a position to make mistakes? And where was the disconnect?’
“But we've got a lot of confidence in our quarterback that led us to a great victory today.”
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