Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 12, 2024 31 A Notre Dame win over Louisville was always going to be as messy as the Fighting Irish's white pants would have been in the South Bend rain if the House That Rockne Built still had natural grass for a playing surface. As messy as the Joyce Lot at 9 p.m. after a 3:30 p.m. kickoff. As messy as each team's exit up their respective Notre Dame Stadium tunnels, both sides needless jawing at another following the Irish's 31-24 victory. Style points were at a premium. They were also unnecessary. The Irish handed the No. 15 team in the country their first loss of 2024 and kept their own loss total at one in the process. That's all that mattered when head coach Marcus Freeman woke up, and he was able to go to bed as the man in charge of a program still very much in control of its College Football Playoff destiny. Yeah, we can talk about that now. It's officially October, and Notre Dame just passed one of the toughest two tests on its remaining schedule, the regular- season finale at Southern Cal being the other. With flying colors? Absolutely not. The Cardinals outgained the Irish 395 to 280 in total yards. In a game Notre Dame should have shut down midway through the fourth quarter when it regained a 14-point advantage, Louisville had the ball in the final three minutes only trail- ing by seven. Again, that was to be expected by many. There were rational Notre Dame fans and national prognosticators who honestly picked the Irish to lose at home to this Louisville squad, a very similar version of a Cards team that badly beat Notre Dame, 33-20, roughly one calen- dar year ago. So, while in a vacuum this game looked ugly, unsettling and annoyingly pains- taking, you have to remember football isn't utopian. It's hardly ever idyllic. If it were, there would have been a rainbow sprouting from somewhere beyond the edifices that enclose Notre Dame Sta- dium for over 70,000 people to see. No rainbows. No pots of gold. Just a brutally banged up Notre Dame team beyond thankful it did not suffer its sec- ond defeat of the season. Now the Irish get a bye week, and the most important player on the roster didn't give the "we're going to do noth- ing but study ball" blanket statement in his postgame press conference. Senior quarterback Riley Leonard openly re- marked that he's going to play some golf and go fishing between now and Notre Dame's next game against Stanford Oct. 12. He could get away with saying that because the Irish won. He wouldn't have gone there if the Irish lost. And make no mistake, the win was earned. While he didn't set a very high bar for himself to hurdle, Leonard still leapt over it and had his best game as a passer in his five-game Notre Dame ca- reer. He had twice as many touchdown passes in this one, two, as he had in his first four Notre Dame starts combined. He added a rushing score because, well, that's what he does. He's got seven of those this season now. Notre Dame turned Louisville over three times. The Cardinals didn't turn the ball over once in their first three games this year. The Irish broke up nine passes. Leonard didn't have any of his batted away by the opposition. He com- pleted 73.9 percent of them, too, while Louisville's Tyler Shough completed just 58.5 percent of his. In many ways, in spite of the optically clunky overall nature of the win, Notre Dame played a cleaner game than its counterpart. It deserved to hold serve at home and send the Cardinals packing as unhappy campers. In this same matchup last year, Notre Dame was turned over 5 times and probably deserved an even wider margin of defeat than it got. That's called turning the tables. It'll only mean something if Notre Dame comes out of the bye and stomps Stanford. Then goes to Atlanta and takes care of a Georgia Tech team Lou- isville beat by 12 points. And does not lose to either service academy, Navy and Army, despite both of them being 4-0. Virginia? The last time the Irish played them the game was over by halftime. Florida State? The Seminoles might have to fire Mike Norvell at halftime of one of their games this season after a 1-4 start. If Leonard lets his mind wander wait- ing for a bass to bite, he might come to the same realization I just laid out; even with an indefensible loss to Northern Illinois on the ledger, the path to set- ting up a showdown with USC is right in front of Notre Dame. That's only true because the Irish corralled the Cardinals by any means necessary. ✦ It wasn't always easy, but the Fighting Irish took down Louisville — one of the toughest opponents on their schedule — by any means necessary. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER 'A Win Is A Win' Has Never Meant More To Notre Dame Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA