Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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20 OCT. 7, 2023 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY JACK SOBLE AND TYLER HORKA T hey could feel it in Durham, N.C., when the neon-green shirts filed onto the field. With Notre Dame staring at fourth-and-16 with 51 seconds left and a one-point deficit, stadium crew members in neon-green shirts walked along the sideline and lined up in front of the stands at Wallace Wade Stadium. Anyone who's sat in a student section recently knows what that means: field- storming watch. Some Duke students tried to sneak their way toward the front of the bleachers for a head start. A short time later, they went back to their seats. Graduate student quarterback Sam Hartman scrambled for 17 yards to con- vert the fourth down. One play later, ju- nior running back Audric Estimé found a seam and raced 30 yards for the go- ahead score. Notre Dame escaped Dur- ham with a 21-14 win over Duke, and the Irish moved to 5-1. "There's a lot to clean up," Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said. "But for those guys to keep battling, keep be- lieving, it's a great feeling as a coach for them." After the Irish offense struggled to get anything going throughout the second, third and fourth quarters, Notre Dame got the ball with 2:35 to go at its own 5-yard line, down 14-13. Rushing lanes were sparse. Open receivers were almost non-existent. Notre Dame's defense kept the Irish in the game, shutting Duke out until two touchdowns; one late in the third quar- ter and one early in the fourth quarter. There was little reason to believe Notre Dame could break through, need- ing 95 yards to score. But the Irish did anyway. "We knew that we had them," Estimé said. "We knew that something was go- ing to pop. We just had to stay strong." Freeman huddled the offense up and told them, "Win the interval." What happened before that moment didn't matter. He even heard a couple players repeating that phrase — "Win the in- terval. Win the interval." — before they trotted onto the field. "That's what they ended up doing," Freeman said. The drive began with a false-start penalty, which hampered the Irish all night. Hartman went to work, find- ing junior tight end Mitchell Evans on third-and-10 and freshman wide re- ceiver Rico Flores Jr. on the next play for a combined 43 yards. With junior wide receiver Jayden Thomas and freshman wideout Jaden Greathouse sidelined with hamstring injuries (Freeman hopes both can re- turn next week against Louisville), Ev- ans stepped up. He led the Irish with 6 receptions for 134 yards. However, an offensive pass interfer- ence penalty on sophomore wide re- ceiver Tobias Merriweather set Notre Dame back, and the Irish wound up with fourth-and-16. Hartman rolled to his right, pump- faked once and realized he needed to run. He had open field for about 14 yards before Duke defenders started closing in, then he quite literally threw himself at the Blue Devils to pick up the first down. "It was a lot of run-and-shoot," Hartman said. "There's not a lot of good calls for fourth and that long." One play later, Estimé ran for a 30- yard score to take the lead with 31 sec- onds left. Freeman said he would have preferred Estimé slide down at the 1-yard line to set up a field goal as time expired. Was Estimé thinking about that? "Not going lie, I wasn't," Estimé said. "I just saw the opportunity, and that's it." Duke's ensuing drive ended with a strip sack of junior quarterback Riley Leonard by Irish graduate student de- fensive tackle Howard Cross III. Cross finished with 13 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, 2 forced fumbles and the 1 sack. Previously, the Irish were 0 of 10 in recovering their opponents' fumbles. They got that one. "I'm ecstatic," Cross said. "There's really no other feeling like it." "I was yelling and screaming," Hart- man said. "It was great." Notre Dame visits Louisville at 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. That will be game No. 7. Halfway through the season, the Irish have a signature moment. CLUTCH Notre Dame drives 95 yards for game-winning touchdown to beat Duke, 21-14 Graduate student quarterback Sam Hartman's 17-yard scramble on fourth-and-16 was Notre Dame's biggest play during its game-winning 95-yard touchdown drive. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP