No. 9 Notre Dame (4-0) hosts No. 7 Cincinnati (3-0) at Notre Dame Stadium (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC) in each team’s biggest game of the 2021 season to date, and a few Bearcats players haven’t pulled any punches in pregame media banter.
Sophomore linebacker Deshawn Pace told Cincinnati.com first-year Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman “shouldn't have left” Cincinnati, where Freeman spent the 2018-20 seasons as the Bearcats’ defensive coordinator.
“So now, we just gotta go out there and show him why he shouldn’t have left,” Pace said.
Cincinnati quarterback Desmond Ridder had some fun at Notre Dame’s expense, too. Bearcats offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock coached at Notre Dame on two separate occasions for a total of 10 seasons. He knows what Saturdays in South Bend can be like: loud.
“I told him it shouldn’t be loud for too long,” Ridder replied, according to Brandon Saho of WLWT.
Are Pace and Ridder coming from a place of justifiable confidence or misplaced cockiness? The scoreboard Saturday afternoon will be the ultimate indicator of that. But even if there is some of the latter, the first three weeks of the season showed it could certainly be some of the former as well.
Pace leads the team in tackles with 25 through three games. He also has two tackles for loss and an interception. He was the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Week for notching 10 tackles and an interception in Cincinnati’s 38-24 comeback victory at Indiana.
Ridder has thrown for 748 yards with seven touchdowns and two interceptions. He has 20 carries for 72 yards and two touchdowns. Notre Dame players are not taking either side of the ball lightly in advance of Saturday’s top-10 battle. Graduate student offensive lineman Cain Madden said he didn’t see one player in Cincinnati’s front seven who the Notre Dame offensive line doesn’t have to worry about.
“Their dual-threat quarterback, he’s a good quarterback,” sophomore cornerback Clarence Lewis said. “Their receivers are pretty speedy guys. I’m happy to go against them, but I know that they’re definitely a good group.”
“They’re forcing a lot of turnovers, so we have to be very aware of the ball,” senior wide receiver Braden Lenzy added. “And it’s a high-powered offense, so we have to be aware of that. We have to be able to put a lot of points up.”
Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell took a different approach from his players in his Tuesday press conference. He lauded Notre Dame’s program, citing plenty of reasons why it won’t be easy for the Bearcats to go into South Bend and leave with a win — even if Cincinnati is a rare road favorite at Notre Dame Stadium.
Surely the messages he spewed to the media — about Notre Dame’s knack of playing well in the clutch, about the talent level on the Notre Dame roster and the dedication of the Notre Dame coaching staff to a culture of winning — have made it down to his own players.
If they haven't by now, they surely will by Saturday. Because as assertive as Pace and Ridder may be, if anyone knows Cincinnati isn’t going to just walk into Notre Dame Stadium and have its way it’s someone as grounded and self-aware as Fickell.
“I think that, more than anything, you gotta go about the process of making sure you stay focused and not spending too much of your emotions worrying about all the other things that are going on because it’s two top-10 teams,” Fickell said.
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