Focus, Intensity, Attention To Detail Key To Notre Dame’s Stretch Run
The path to the College Football Playoff is set for Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish are 7-0 and are now up to No. 3 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. Not one of Notre Dame’s final five opponents is currently ranked, and only Syracuse (three votes) actually received votes in the poll.
Should be easy for Notre Dame run the table … right?
No, it definitely won’t be easy. Winning in college football is not easy, and Notre Dame will have to bring laser focus, intensity and an attention to detail into each matchup if it is going to run the table and earn its first ever berth into the College Football Playoff.
The last three weeks have shown very clearly just how hard it can be to win college football games, and it is even harder when playing away from home, which Notre Dame does in four of its next five games.
Eight top-10 teams have lost in the last three weeks, and all but one of those defeats was on the road or on a neutral field. Four of those losses were to unranked opponents. None were in matchups of top-10 teams. The last team to lose a top-10 battle was Stanford in week five … to Notre Dame.
Starting in week six, the No. 5 LSU Tigers lost on the road to No. 22 Florida by a 27-19 score. No. 7 Oklahoma lost 48-45 on a neutral field to No. 19 Texas. It was a game in which the Sooners were losing 45-24 at one point. No. 8 Auburn got beat 23-9 on the road by unranked Mississippi State.
A week later, No. 13 LSU hosted No. 2 Georgia, and this time the Tigers came out on top, beating the top-10 Bulldogs by a 36-16 score. No. 6 West Virginia lost 30-14 on the road to unranked Iowa State. No. 7 Washington lost 30-27 on the road to No. 17 Oregon, and No. 8 Penn State lost 21-17 at home to unranked Michigan State.
Yesterday, the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes couldn’t do what Eastern Michigan did earlier in the year, which is go on the road and beat Purdue. The Boilermakers began the season 0-3, losing home games to Northwestern, Eastern Michigan and Missouri, but when the Buckeyes came to town they were at their best, spanking Ohio State by a 49-20 score.
Seem familiar? Well that’s because it is. Last season, the No. 6 Buckeyes lost on the road in October to unranked Iowa by a 55-24 score.
Since its last national title in 1988, Notre Dame has learned this lesson in every season but one (2012).
In 1992, Notre Dame finished the regular season with a 9-1-1 record, and it lost 33-16 at home to No. 19 Stanford.
In 1993, Notre Dame climbed to No. 1 in the polls after beating No. 2 Michigan on the road in September and beating No. 1 Florida State at home in November. A week after beating the Seminoles, the Irish lost at home to Boston College, preventing the Irish from playing for the title.
In 2002, the Irish started the season 8-0, climbing all the way up to No. 4 in the polls after beating No. 21 Maryland, No. 7 Michigan, No. 18 Air Force on the road and No. 11 Florida State on the road. When Notre Dame finally lost, it was a Nov. 2 home contest against a Boston College team that came into the game 4-3.
In 2015, 7-1 Notre Dame was ranked fifth in the initial CFP Rankings and climbed up to No. 4 over the next two weeks. Back-to-back ugly wins over 3-6 Wake Forest and 3-7 Boston College knocked Notre Dame out of the top four even before it lost its final regular season game against Stanford.
Last season, the Fighting Irish spent the first two weeks of the CFP rankings at No. 3, but then it went on the road and got whipped by a Miami team that barely beat teams like Florida State (7-6), Georgia Tech (5-6), Syracuse (4-8) and North Carolina (3-9). In fact, Miami won those four games by a combined 18 points, but it beat Notre Dame by 33.
We will find out if this Notre Dame team is different. Four of Notre Dame’s final five opponents currently have a winning record, and its opponents have a combined 19-16 mark.
Notre Dame is obviously more talented than each of those teams, but Ohio State had more talent than Purdue, Oklahoma had more talent than Texas, Auburn had more talent than Mississippi State, West Virginia had more talent than Iowa State and Penn State had more talent than Michigan State.
To win out the Irish will have to be at their best. Performances like we saw against Ball State, Vanderbilt and Pittsburgh could end up with Notre Dame taking a loss. That means both sides of the ball and the special teams will have to play more consistent football. It means the Irish must play with intensity every week, something that is much harder to do than fans think.
Winning out will also require that the Notre Dame coaches and players become obsessed with self-reflection. What that means is making looking at yourself and being critical of your daily performance the number one habit. It means setting a very high bar for how you go about your business every single day. It is about setting a standard that goes beyond just breaking down and evaluating the opponents, it’s about setting a championship standard for yourself
If Notre Dame brings that out every Saturday from now until the final rankings come out the outcome of each game will be about talent versus talent. If that is what determines the next five games for the Irish the season will end with Notre Dame fans feeling very, very happy.
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