Jonathan Doerer starts his rebound campaign on a high note: 'He's our guy'
Notre Dame junior safety Kyle Hamilton knew fifth-year senior kicker Jonathan Doerer could handle the daunting task presented to him.
Not because he trusts Doerer’s right leg and experience – which he does – but rather, because the din from the 68,316 Tomahawk-chopping, garnet-clad folks in the Doak Campbell Stadium stands seemed subdued to him.
Why? Because Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly inundated his team with it all week as part of the preparation for Sunday’s opener at Florida State. The Irish practiced not only with piped-in crowd noise as a backdrop, but included Florida State’s specific chants and songs as a soundtrack. They watched videos of the stadium chopping in unison and Osceola planting the flaming spear at midfield.
By the time the highest-pressure moment of the game rolled around, the pandemonium was hardly a bother to Hamilton. He assumed it would also be no issue for Doerer.
“I was so confident he was going to make that, because coach Kelly has been blasting that fight song in our ear all week long,” Hamilton said. “He has made multiple kicks from that distance and further in practice. It was honestly quieter when he actually kicked it than when coach Kelly was playing it. It was a little much at practice, but he prepared him for the situation.”
Sure enough, Doerer swung his right leg into a 41-yard field goal attempt and sent the ball between the north end zone uprights, giving Notre Dame a 41-38 overtime win over Florida State. The Irish could leave Tallahassee happy instead of shell-shocked from squandering a 38-20 advantage.
“I trusted him,” graduate senior quarterback Jack Coan said. “He’s our guy and I knew he was going to knock it through. He did. Unbelievable job by him.”
In the small-picture view, the kick rescued Notre Dame from disaster after it blew the 18-point lead it held late in the third quarter. Viewed through the zoomed-out lens, the field goal offered some evidence Doerer can be the weapon he was for Notre Dame in 2019 and the first half of 2020 before a surprising slide to end last season.
Doerer made just four of his final nine field-goal attempts to end 2020, a rut that included a clanged 24-yard try in the ACC Championship Game and a pulled 32-yarder at North Carolina. It was a bizarre break in character for a kicker who was 28-for-34 (82.3 percent) from 2019 through the Irish’s Nov. 7, 2020 win over Clemson.
Doerer blamed his rut on burning out from doing too much kicking practice in the spring 2020 height of the pandemic. There was nothing else to do but kick. He wore down during the season, he said, and it showed.
The fall camp version of Doerer looked and sounded refreshed, and it carried over into the season-opener. He made a 58-yard kick in warmups. His 48-yard field goal in the second quarter would have been good from several yards further back. Those were encouraging signs, albeit fairly modest ones.
All of a sudden, in a game Notre Dame led by 18 points in the third quarter, another test arose. The hardest kind, no less: a walk-off field goal attempt. A make provides even more reason to believe 2020 was a blip that’s now behind him. A miss allows doubt about him to linger.
Doerer’s kick from the right hash marks hit the field goal netting just to the left of the Allstate logo’s hands. It looked good from the start. Doerer took off toward the opposite end zone, ripped off his helmet and let teammates mob him. He earned the game ball shortly after.
Test passed.
“That’s such a great way,” Hamilton said, “for him to build confidence coming into the season.”
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