SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Allowing 16 points should qualify as a good enough day for Notre Dame’s defense. It turned out to be three points too many in Saturday’s 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois.
One week after Notre Dame’s defense suffocated Texas A&M in a 23-13 road victory to open the season, the Irish defense looked more vulnerable against the Huskies (2-0). Particularly when it came to slowing down Northern Illinois running back Antario Brown.
Brown, an All-MAC selection last year, carried the Northern Illinois offense in the first half. He reached 199 total yards (126 receiving yards and 73 rushing yards) by halftime. The rest of the offense combined for 19 yards in the first half.
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The early performance of Brown gave Northern Illinois reason to believe it could beat the No. 5 Irish (1-1). After Notre Dame took a 7-0 lead on the opening drive of the game, Brown provided an equalizer with an 83-yard touchdown reception. He caught the ball between linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa and cornerback Benjamin Morrison and ran another 70 yards after making the catch.
“The very first pass: really good throw, really good catch in a two high coverage, and we've got to down the ball,” said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman. “We didn't get a chance to down the ball, and it goes for a touchdown.”
Brown then opened Northern Illinois’ second drive with a 28-yard run to put the Huskies in ND territory. A little hesitation in the backfield froze unblocked linebacker Jaylen Sneed and safety Xavier Watts, which allowed Brown to race to the outside after getting through the line.
Despite NIU’s offense only gaining two more yards in the next three plays, it was within range for Kanon Woodill to make a 42-yard field goal. With 3:41 left in the first quarter, the Huskies took their first lead of the game.
All it really took was a pair of explosive plays by Brown for Northern Illinois to score 10 points in the first quarter.
“NIU is a really good team,” said Notre Dame nose tackle Howard Cross III. “They’ve got a good front. They’ve got a really good running back. He’s definitely playing on Sundays. I’m saying that right now.
“But they’re a good team. When we play a good team, we’ve got to make sure that we’re ready for them.”
Two drives weren’t enough for Notre Dame to adjust to Brown. He started NIU’s third series with a 43-yard reception. This time a coverage breakdown left Brown running wide open on a wheel route out of the backfield. Linebacker Drayk Bowen, the nearest defender, was five yards behind Brown when he caught the pass from Ethan Hampton. Watts tripped up Brown to prevent a touchdown.
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Because the Huskies took over at their own 45-yard line following an interception, Brown’s catch and run put NIU back in field-goal range again. Notre Dame’s defense didn’t allow another first down, but Woodill converted a 21-yard field goal.
In NIU’s first three drives, it managed to accumulate 179 yards and 13 points. That’s as many points as the Irish gave up all game at Texas A&M and only eight fewer points than NIU could have scored on those drives with touchdowns and extra points.
Freeman blamed the explosive plays on Notre Dame’s “eye control” and a lack of setting the edges on defense.
“We let the ball get outside of us too much,” Freeman said. “That's not the Notre Dame defense we've built over the past three or four years. That's not a performance that we're proud of. But we've just got to get it fixed.”
The defense barely resembled the one that took Kyle Field last week. A week prior, Notre Dame limited Texas A&M to 246 offensive yards and 3.6 yards per play. Northern Illinois racked up 388 yards on 6.0 yards per play.
“They just outplayed us,” Watts said. “We just missed tackles, some missed assignments. They popped a couple explosive plays on that hurt us. They kind of just outplayed us in that aspect.”
Notre Dame’s defense did a much better job of limiting points in NIU’s next seven drives. The Huskies only scored again on a 35-yard, game-winning field goal by Woodill with 31 seconds left in regulation. Woodill redeemed himself for missing a 53-yard field goal on NIU’s opening drive of the second half.
The Irish offense and first-year punter James Rendell didn’t do a great job of playing the complementary football Freeman praised following the A&M victory. Quarterback Riley Leonard threw a pair of interceptions and led an offense with three three-and-outs, five drives of four plays or less and only four drives (out of 11) that lasted longer than two minutes.
Rendell, playing in just the second game of his college football career as an Australian import, averaged 36.8 yards per punt, a number limited by a couple of shorter punts that pinned NIU inside the 20-yard line. But his first punt went just 39 yards to the NIU 45-yard line and his fourth went just 38 yards to the NIU 40.
The Huskies followed Rendell’s first punt with its first field goal. The Irish managed to force a turnover on downs following Rendell’s fourth punt when linebacker Jaiden Ausberry broke up a fourth-and-2 pass by Hampton. But good field position on both of those drives only added more pressure to the ND defense.
Even when it wasn’t lighting up the scoreboard, NIU ate up yards and the clock. The Huskies won time of possession by a 34:38-25:22 margin. They outgained the Irish by 102 yards. And they did just enough to set up Woodill for his game-winning kick.
When Northern Illinois took over possession at the 50-yard line trailing 14-13 with 5:55 remaining in the fourth quarter following Leonard’s second interception, the opportunity to win the game was obvious. That NIU managed to do exactly that without a single touch for Brown — who finished with a game-high 99 rushing yards on 20 carries and 126 receiving yards on two catches — on its final drive is hard to comprehend.
NIU scratched and clawed its way to an 11-play, 31-yard drive that drained 5:24 off the game clock and left the Irish in scramble mode with 31 seconds left. Tight end Grayson Barnes picked up a third-and-1 on a jet sweep. Hampton, who completed 10 of his 19 passes for 198 yards and one touchdown, scrambled for three yards on a fourth-and-2 play-action bootleg. A seven-yard run by running back Gavin Williams gave NIU an easy field goal attempt.
The Irish limited Williams, who totaled 59 rushing yards on 17 carries, to one yard on third-and-2, which set up the 35-yard kick.
“It’s a tough situation,” Watts said. “They’re in field-goal range. It’s fourth down, and obviously you’re just trying to get a stop. Trying to grab the ball, trying to attack the ball as much as we can.”
Notre Dame’s defense could have kept NIU out of field goal range, but that proved to be too much to ask. A unit that saw five graduates make decisions to return to Notre Dame for another season rather than pursue an NFL career and coaxed three graduate transfers to join this defense via the transfer portal couldn’t have had much higher expectations this season.
And despite only allowing 29 points in the first two games, the Irish are 1-1. The path to the College Football Playoff has narrowed, but it’s still the motivator for some. But any talk of that is fruitless if the Irish play one more game like this. That applies to the offense and defense.
“We’ve still got 10 games left, four games [more] if we make the playoffs, right?” Cross said. “This isn’t the end of our season, and we know that. Yeah, this sucks. We know that. Everybody knows that. All of our fans know that. We know that. All of our coaches — everybody top down knows that.
“But I’m going to tell you all what I told everybody: ‘Use that. Use what everybody’s telling you. You’re going to be hearing all week that we suck. All right, use that, because in all due respect, in seven days, we’re on the field again. So, are we going to be all right, I guess it’s over in game 2? Or are we just going to keep rolling?’
“And I think that’s what we’re going to do. Let’s keep rolling.”
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