Wrong Direction: Duke Beats Notre Dame
In his postgame media address after one of the worst losses in his seven seasons in South Bend, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly tried to stay calm.
After watching his Fighting Irish team get pushed around by Duke in a 38-35 loss at Notre Dame Stadium, the 54-year-old Kelly lasted just a couple minutes before really speaking his mind.
“I told our guys essentially that we’re going in the wrong direction,” Kelly said.
With less than a minute to go, junior quarterback DeShone Kizer took the shotgun snap, looked left and threw a pass toward sophomore wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown. Once the pass fell incomplete, Kelly’s Irish had suffered their third loss in the month of September, making those preseason darkhorse College Football Playoff projections look all the more far fetched.
In Notre Dame’s last six games against Power Five conference teams, the Irish are 1-5.
“They competed, they want to win, but we’re not doing the things necessary to win games,” Kelly said of his team. “It’s hard to point them all out to you in a press conference right now, but we’ll have to do some … we’ll have to do a lot more work to get this group to start winning.”
Notre Dame was a 21-point favorite against Duke, putting the loss up there with Kelly’s defeats to Tulsa and Navy in 2010.
Going about fixing this edition of the Fighting Irish likely won’t be easy. Against the Blue Devils — who had rushed for a combined 154 yards against Wake Forest and Northwestern during its 1-2 start — Notre Dame allowed 208 yards on the ground and 498 total, exposing a suspect defense once again.
The Atlantic Coast Conference opponent got 121 rushing yards from senior running back Jela Duncan, a 24-of-32 passing performance from redshirt freshman quarterback Daniel Jones and a kick return touchdown from junior Shaun Wilson.
The final blow was a 19-yard field goal by freshman kicker AJ Reed, giving the Blue Devils their final advantage with 1:27 remaining in the game.
“We found a little bit more out about ourselves today and what our personality has to be to win,” ninth-year Duke head coach David Cutcliffe said. “We did the things that we had to do to give ourselves a chance to win on the road, and then found a way to win it in the fourth quarter.:
Notre Dame wasn’t without its standouts. Kizer threw for a career-high 381 yards on 22-of-37 passing to go along with two touchdowns, and St. Brown finished with 116 yards and a touchdown — his first-career 100-yard game.
But it was a late-game interception by Kizer — projected by many as a first-round pick in next year’s NFL Draft — that set up Duke’s go-ahead scoring drive. Backed up deep near his own end zone, Kizer was intercepted by Duke senior safety Deondre Singleton, giving the Blue Devils the ball at the Notre Dame 45.
“We’re always held to a higher standard,” said Kizer, who was among the players who drew criticism from Kelly after the game. “What Coach Kelly comes in and tells the media is one thing, but we understand that in order for to us win football games we’re going to have to come out with a fire and a sense of urgency, the thing that’s he’s been preaching all week.
“And this week we came out with a little more, but we have to execute what we do, and today we didn’t.”
Notre Dame led 14-0 in the first quarter, and it looked like the Fighting Irish (1-3) would have their way with the Blue Devils. Kizer led a 75-yard drive on the team’s opening possession, capping it with an eight-yard touchdown run. The Notre Dame defense then forced a three-and-out, and on the ensuing possession, Kizer found freshman wide receiver Kevin Stepherson for a 44-yard touchdown with 8:44 left in the first quarter.
Duke immediately cut into that lead with a momentum-shifting 96-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Wilson to make it 14-7.
Wilson was filling in for an injured DeVon Edwards — who is out for the season after tearing ligaments in his knee on an early kick return against the Irish. The Blue Devils rallied around the misfortune, which impressed Cutcliffe, whose team was able to rebound from back-to-back losses.
“We practiced in the mornings, really early,” Cutcliffe said. “And when we hit the field Tuesday morning, you felt like you were coaching a different team. So you can’t turn those things on out there on Saturday. Tuesday and Wednesday show up on Saturday.”
After a Notre Dame three-and-out, Duke came right back with an eight-play, 78-yard touchdown drive to tie the game at 14-14. Duncan went right up the middle for an 18-yard touchdown.
Duke then added two touchdowns in the second quarter — a 25-yard catch by Quay Chambers and a 32-yard reception by Anthony Nash — while Notre Dame scored once on a 13-yard run by sophomore running back Dexter Williams. Duke held a 28-21 halftime advantage.
In the second half, Notre Dame scored once in the third quarter — a nine-yard run by sophomore running back Josh Adams to tie the game at 28-28 with 4:54 left in the quarter — and once in the fourth, a 12-yard touchdown catch by St. Brown to give Notre Dame a 35-28 lead with 7:46 left in the game.
The Blue Devils responded, needing just three plays to go 78 yards to tie the game. Jones found Nash on a fake-run pop pass down the left sideline for a 64-yard touchdown.
“We were, as a team, executing at such a high level,” Jones said. “We weren’t perfect by any stretch, but overall we were executing more consistently than we had been.”
Kelly said after the game that every position — including Kizer’s — would be evaluated. There will be personnel changes, Kelly said, though he noted he feels better about his defensive coaching after the loss.
As for the players, who had an overall lack of energy against the Blue Devils, this season has not started like any of them hoped.
“The idea is to keep improving on what the message is,” senior offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey said. “The message cannot change. We’re 1-3. There’s a sense of urgency to get better, change our attitudes and fix what’s going on with our football team.
“We’ve got to play consistent throughout [each game]. There’s no other way around it. We just have to do it.”
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