Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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because Everett plays great at Oklahoma running and throwing. — Chuck Martin nett Jackson made eight (seven solo). Neither player had started a game at the college level until this season. Lost in the Notre Dame football win at Oklahoma were the 15 receptions (for 181 yards) by Sooners wide receiver Jalen Saunders. That's the most catches ever in a single game against Notre Dame. The previous high was 14 by three players — Jim Price of Stanford in 1989, John Jackson of USC in 1989, and Robert Lavette of Georgia Tech in 1981. The attendance at the Notre DameOklahoma football game in Norman of 86,031 marked the largest crowd ever to see a sporting event in the state of Oklahoma. Every week during the year it's about where can our next opponent hurt us? Where do their strengths match up? Okay, we can't let them do this. They may beat us and be good enough to beat us. Offensively, how can we manage this to give ourselves a chance? And every week we did a very good job of not allowing the team to do things we didn't want it to do. We didn't always do all the things we wanted to do at the level we wanted to do them. But we also look back at the way we played the game — how we thought we could win. And Oklahoma is the best example of that. Exactly what we said on Thursday going into the Oklahoma game we executed on Saturday. There were things we worried about that hurt us in that game, but it didn't cost us the game. If we felt like we were mismatched here, we'll protect it, and rely on our strengths. And everything we said on that Thursday meeting is exactly how the game played out. If you sat in the Thursday meeting and watched the Saturday game, it would be, okay, they said A, B, C, and D needs to happen for Notre Dame to win on the road at Oklahoma as a 13-point underdog. Well, A, B, C, and D happened and probably better than we hoped. And the team believes even more. — Chuck Martin We never really had this crescendo moment where we sat down and thought something had happened that told us we would be successful this year. We set up the business of the day every day so we don't even have time to look at and think about those things. We're just interested in having the very best defense we can possibly have that particular day, and when you focus that kind of energy and that kind of intense, drilled-down focus on a job, we really don't spend a lot of time thinking about anything else. — Bob Diaco There were plenty of defensive heroes for Notre Dame in the football win at Oklahoma — and none bigger than Manti Te'o with his 11 first-half tackles plus a sack and interception. But don't overlook the tackling of the Irish corners — true freshman KeiVarae Russell made nine tackles (six solo), and Ben- This excerpt from Faith Restored: The Resurgence of Notre Dame Football by John Heisler is printed with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information, visit www.triumphbooks.com/ FaithRestored.