Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 23, 2023 27 AUDRIC ESTIMÉ PRODUCES CAREER GAME Central Michigan was down 34-17 when Notre Dame took the ball with 8:36 left in the fourth quarter. The game, for all intents and purposes, was over. The Chippewas had fought hard, but the Irish pulled away late and were content to start a long, clock-bleeding drive to salt the game away. Audric Estimé, however, had other plans. The junior running back, who en- tered that drive with exactly 100 yards in the afternoon, rammed the ball up the middle and hurdled CMU redshirt sophomore safety De'Javion Stepney for 22 yards. Two plays later — with a 13-yard Estimé run in between — he hurdled again, this time over redshirt sophomore safety Elijah Rikard. After leaping over Rikard at the Cen- tral Michigan 37-yard line, Estimé kept running until finally chased down at the 6-yard line. He ran for 76 yards on three plays, giving him a career-high 176 in the afternoon. And his burst of speed on the last one made it look like he could keep going. Estimé is 5-foot-11, 227 pounds. Peo- ple that size are not supposed to move like he does. "That's the goal," Estimé joked when asked if he would join the Notre Dame track team. "If they allow me to join, why not?" The tailback from Nyack, N.Y., likes to smile when he talks to reporters or when he hangs out on the sideline and things are going well. He is, as junior of- fensive tackle — and Estimé's roommate — Blake Fisher once put it, "a clown" and "just a comedian." On the field, though, Estimé is all business. You can see it in his demeanor. The best way to describe it might just be that he runs angry. "Trust me, it's not fun tackling a guy like that," said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who played linebacker at Ohio State and briefly in the NFL. "Those hits take a toll on you as a player, I'm sure, as a defender." Estimé downplayed his individual ac- complishment, saying what matters at the end of the day is the win. He also credited his teammates for his career- best performance. "I saw the offensive linemen playing a great game," Estimé said. "I saw Coach [Gerad] Parker giving great calls and ev- eryone executing, doing their one in 11 and giving 110 percent effort. That's all you can ask for." Ninety-two of Estimé's 176 yards came in the fourth quarter. For the sec- ond game in a row, Notre Dame caught a second wind in the final frame to turn a game in doubt into a blowout. Estimé was the catalyst behind that in this game, and that kind of effort from the leading rusher is contagious. "We're just a team that will fight for all four quarters, no matter what," Estimé said. "Coach Freeman always prides, 'One day, one life.' 'One play, one life.' And if we're playing 100 plays, each individual play is going to be its own. And we just got to give 110 percent that play." NOTRE DAME DEFENSE REBOUNDS FOR PRODUCTIVE DAY Notre Dame forced Central Michi- gan into a three-and-out on the Chip- pewas' first offensive possession. It seemed like it was going to be another business as usual type of day for the Irish defense, even playing without JD Bertrand at linebacker and DJ Brown at safety. That's 11 years of experience on the sideline. Turns out, those 11 years would have been helpful on Central Michigan's sec- ond drive of the day. The Chippewas started at the 35-yard line because Notre Dame's Spencer Shrader kicked the ball out of bounds, and two plays later sophomore defen- sive end Joshua Burnham was flagged for a needless roughing the passer pen- alty on an incompletion on second- and-5. From there, CMU rattled off gains of 16, 9, 8, 6 and 6 yards to get into the end zone and tie the game at a touchdown apiece. It was not a very shut-down, elite defense type of drive for Notre Dame, especially considering the pen- alty and multiple missed tackles. "We did not tackle well in those first couple series," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. "We can't miss tackles." Notre Dame missed less of them in the second half. How? "I said, 'Go out there, don't beat Notre CENTRAL MICHIGAN GAME NOTES BY JACK SOBLE AND TYLER HORKA Estimé racked up 92 of his career-best 176 yards rushing in the fourth quarter, helping the Irish salt away their fourth straight victory. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER