Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Notre Dame's holder all season, but a series of difficulties that bottomed out with a botched placement at Arizona State led to Zaire taking over the du- ties. The change in habit may have affected Brindza's approach, including on his final miss. "He's got a new battery in there," Kelly said. "He's probably thinking a little too much. … He starts think- ing about the hold and then you get into rushing your mechanics. Unfor- tunately it hurt us today." After Kelly's display of a lack of faith in Notre Dame's kicking game, North- western fifth-year senior quarterback Trevor Siemian ran up the middle on a broken play for a six-yard score with 4:10 remaining in regulation. At first, it appeared Notre Dame broke up the subsequent two-point conversion, but a defensive pass interference call on freshman safety Drue Tranquill gave the Wildcats another try from half the distance, and sophomore running back Warren Long gained the needed yard and a half to cut the Irish lead to 40-37. Notre Dame methodically drove 33 yards over six plays, eating up more than two and a half minutes, before senior running back Cam McDaniel coughed up the ball to open the door for Northwestern to tie it. Nine plays and 44 yards later, the Wildcats did just that when Mitchell split the up- rights from 45 yards out with 19 sec- onds remaining. "In that situation, it's just inexcus- able to put the ball on the ground, even if you're down," McDaniel said. "I didn't do that. I didn't take care of business." McDaniel's fumble was one of four Irish turnovers, including both an in- terception and a fumble by Golson — the fumble coming only seven yards away from the end zone. Junior wide receiver Chris Brown fumbled even closer to a score, right at Northwest- ern's goal line. "The thing that stands out is we have the game pretty much in our hands, and we turned the ball over," Kelly said. "We've had too many op- portunities to score points. … Those are critical errors." Aside from those four turnovers, Notre Dame had little trouble moving the ball against the Wildcats. Golson threw for 287 yards on 21-of-40 pass- ing, Fuller ended with nine catches for 159 yards and sophomore running back Tarean Folston ran for 106 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries to help the Irish to 498 total yards. "We did okay, not good and not hor- rible," Golson said. "Somewhere in the middle. There were just a couple plays, even in overtime, where I look at myself and say there's a couple throws I could have made." Northwestern had even less trouble moving the ball against Notre Dame, gaining 547 yards on 96 plays while converting only 9 of 19 (47.4 percent) third downs. Siemian threw for 284 yards and ran for 32 more. Freshman running back Justin Jackson and senior Treyvon Green gashed the Irish for 149 and 67 yards, respectively, averaging 6.6 yards per carry between them. "It's a lack of execution," said Notre Dame sophomore linebacker Jaylon Smith, who finished with 10 tackles to tie freshman linebacker Nyles Mor- gan for the team lead. "It starts up