Notre Dame-Virginia: The Week After
The contest this Saturday against 4-0 and No. 18-ranked Virginia qualifies as Notre Dame’s No. 1 “All-Cliché” game in 2019.
Terms such as “letdown” or “trap game” or “hangover effect” will be in abundance for at least a couple of reasons.
One, Virginia the week prior to playing the Fighting Irish had its supposed “tune-up contest” versus Old Dominion, which finished 4-8 last season. Then again, the Monarchs did shock Virginia Tech 49-35 last year prior to the Hokies playing Notre Dame.
It wasn’t a cakewalk for the Cavaliers, either. Old Dominion took a 17-0 first half lead and still was ahead 17-14 at the start of the fourth quarter before the Cavaliers rallied for a 28-17 victory.
A week earlier, Virginia trailed Florida State 17-10 entering the fourth quarter, but quarterback Bryce Perkins steered 75-, 75- and 72-yard marches on the final three possessions to propel a 31-24 Cavaliers triumph. On those three marches, Perkins completed 15 of his 17 passes for 150 yards. Such comebacks can have a galvanizing effect on a program.
"If you look at the last couple of times now, they have been down in games, they have come back from deficits and won,” said Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly. “A confident team, a well-coached team — one that you're going to have to beat them. They're not going to give you the game.”
Second, and probably more significant, Kelly’s crew will be coming off what was basically advertised as a mini-College Football Playoff the previous week at No. 3 Georgia. No matter the result, this would have been categorized as a game that was going to take an emotional toll.
Had Notre Dame won, the euphoria of such a conquest as a 14-point underdog would have made the Irish ripe for an upset. Unfortunately, the hard fought 23-17 defeat now raises questions about whether the dejection of defeat could have lingering aftereffects.
However, in the last two years Notre Dame has responded well to these kind of contests in which an “upset special” was a popular pre-game theme.
In 2017 the Irish crushed archrival and No. 11 USC 49-14, but then was expected to have a letdown the following week versus a strong North Carolina State unit that was ranked No. 14.
The Wolfpack did take an early 7-0 lead on a blocked punt, but Notre Dame took complete control thereafter in a 35-14 win.
Last year Syracuse was deemed the perfect trap game at Yankee Stadium the week after the Irish had Senior Day versus Florida State and the week prior to traveling to USC. Plus, the 8-2 Orange had nearly upset Clemson earlier in the year, and were averaging more than 40 points per game.
Instead, Notre Dame played its most complete game of the season in a 36-3 thumping of Syracuse.
Virginia indeed poses a challenge the way top-15 North Carolina State and Syracuse did the past two seasons, but if Notre Dame comes out in the right frame of mind and with strong preparation (and "saves the letdown" for Bowling Green Oct. 5), it should be a prohibitive favorite again.
Safety/captain Jalen Elliott — a native of Richmond, Va., — has seen the mental framework with how the program has operated the past years at keeping an even-keeled demeanor while maintaining a consistency in attitude toward competition. In other words, “process over outcome.”
“We have never been too tied into the rankings and all of the outsiders,” Elliott said. “It’s so important for us to stay locked into each other …right now that’s Virginia.”
Still, history is vast with Notre Dame having the proverbial letdown “the week after.”
Perhaps the three greatest “what tho’ the odds” victories by the Fighting Irish were the One For The Gipper-upset of Army in 1928, the epic comeback at Ohio State in 1935 that was voted as the greatest college game in the first century of football (1869-1969), and the stunning defeat of Oklahoma in Norman in 1957 to snap the Sooners’ NCAA-record 47-game winning streak.
Here’s the rest of the story: On all three occasions, Notre Dame lost at home the following week.
Of more recent vintage were the 31-24 win over No. 1 Florida State in 1993 to move to 10-0 and No. 1 — only to lose at home to Boston College the next week (41-39). Or defeating No. 5 and defending co-national champion Michigan in 1998 and the No. 3 Wolverines at Ann Arbor in 2005 — and then falling the next week, both times to Michigan State.
In Kelly’s first nine seasons, maybe the most celebrated victory against a ranked team was at No. 8 Oklahoma in 2012 (30-13) — and then the next week a 4-4 Pitt outfit held a 20-6 advantage in the fourth quarter at Notre Dame Stadium before the Irish prevailed 29-26 in triple-overtime.
There will always be a wariness "the week after."
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