Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 7, 2023 31 S am Hartman stood on the sideline all by himself. Then he sat speech- less next to Notre Dame quarter- backs coach Gino Guidugli. When Duke scored a go-ahead touchdown with 9:17 left in the fourth quarter, he grabbed his helmet and paced back and forth wait- ing for his turn to take the field. Through the lens of a pair of binocu- lars peering down from the press box at Wallace Wade Stadium, Notre Dame's graduate student quarterback was a little uncomfortable with what was un- folding between his No. 11 Fighting Irish and the No. 17 Duke Blue Devils. Hartman didn't have an easy day at the office. It wasn't a sit still on the bench and only get up when it's time to go score more points type of game for the Notre Dame offense. The Irish were antsy. Angst pervaded their visiting sideline. It wasn't just Hartman feeling it either. It was danger time all around for Notre Dame. Heck, head coach Marcus Freeman might have been the most affected. The Fighting Irish only lost back-to- back games one time from 2017-21, the heyday of the Brian Kelly era, and those losses came in the ACC Championship Game versus No. 4 Clemson and the Rose Bowl versus No. 1 Alabama. Free- man, meanwhile, was incredibly close to dropping back-to-back games for the second time in as many seasons, his first two on the job in South Bend. Walking out of Wallace Wade with a loss would have raised questions about Freeman's competence, especially con- sidering the Irish were penalized 12 times for infractions that just should not occur over and over when the No. 11 and No. 17 teams in the country meet under primetime lights. Those types of questions already swirled from South Bend to Durham, Los Angeles to New York and every- where in between after Notre Dame only had 10 players on the field for two cru- cial plays in the final moments against Ohio State. Imagine if Freeman's team completely shot itself in the foot in a one-point loss to Duke, snapping what is now a 30-game regular season win- ning streak over ACC opponents and si- multaneously shattering optimism of so many Notre Dame fans who want noth- ing more than for Freeman to succeed as the man in charge of this program. Relax. Breathe. Absolute heartbreak has been put on hold. Notre Dame rose to the occasion, saved face and saved grace with a come-from-behind, last- minute victory over the Blue Devils. And the Irish made it happen against in rather shocking fashion. Hartman was a hero in leading the game-winning 95-yard touchdown drive. He accounted for 69 yards on the march. Freeman confidently stuck two fingers in the air to tell his offense to stay on the field and try for a two-point con- version to go up by a full touchdown and an extra point with 31 seconds left, and Hartman delivered again on that play. Somehow, two minutes and four sec- onds of an offensive masterclass from Hartman and company drowned out the dozen penalties, largely ineffective running game, a blown coverage that resulted in the team's first deficit of the day and whatever other negative things you can recall from Notre Dame trailing 14-13 late into the fourth quarter. There were plenty of them. "What we can't do is let the outcome cloud our eyes from the mistakes we made," Freeman said. "We have to make sure we are as aggressive in cleaning up our mistakes and attacking our mis- takes, learning from them and realizing why we made those mistakes as we were last week." Let's be honest, too; Kelly's teams won games the same exact way. All the time. Just think of Toledo and Vir- ginia Tech in 2021, an 11-1 season for the Irish. Notre Dame did not play well for 60 minutes in those games. Maybe the Irish didn't even play well for 30. But they won, and they kept the sea- son alive by doing so, and that's exactly what Notre Dame did in Durham — even when it looked like the most remote of possibilities. It turns out, none of the standing on his own or solemnly sitting by Guidugli or anxiously striding back and forth meant Hartman was shying away from the moment. It meant the opposite. He was just biding his time in the middle of a 60-minute football game. And when his time came, he capital- ized. "We battled," Hartman said. "We didn't panic," junior tight end Mitchell Evans added. "We didn't flinch. We weren't scared. We didn't back down." It wouldn't be fair to say any of that happened in the loss to Ohio State, but the Irish certainly didn't rise up against the Buckeyes in the way they did against the Blue Devils. Doing so against the for- mer would have meant more, but fail- ing to do so in back-to-back ballgames would have been beyond troubling. You can forget about that though. On to the next one. "Great teams find a way to win when it matters the most," Freeman said. "They find a way to execute when it matters the most." ✦ GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman avoided losing back-to-back games for the second time in as many seasons. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP Notre Dame Reverses Fortunes, Gets Job Done 'When It Matters The Most'