Blue and Gold Illustrated

With the Irish trailing by eight points late in the fourth-quarter, sophomore quarterback DeShone Kizer 's one- yard touchdown pass to junior wide receiver Tori Hunter Jr. capped off a Notre Dame rally that saw the visitors score three fourth-quarter touchdowns. But when the Irish needed another play from Kizer, he couldn't tie the game. He was stopped two yards short of the goal line on a two-point con- version, in a play that summed up the theme of the night for the Irish. Notre Dame couldn't make enough plays on offense, and the defense couldn't overcome a start in which Clemson sophomore quarterback De- shaun Watson built a two-score lead and never looked back. "We can't go on the road and be tentative defensively to start a game," Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly said. "We have to get off to a good start." But the Irish didn't. Watson opened the game with a 38- yard run, and then capped a seven- play, 64-yard drive with a six-yard touchdown pass to junior tight end Jordan Leggett. Three minutes later, he found wide receiver Artavis Scott for a 13-yard touchdown to give the Tigers a 14-0 lead in front of the rowdy purple-and-orange faithful that lined the stands in ponchos. Notre Dame, which entered the night with an offense that was able to score almost at will the first four weeks of the season, finally tallied late in the first quarter when freshman kicker Justin Yoon drilled a 46-yard field goal, but the momentum was short-lived. Freshman return man CJ Sanders, who aided the Yoon field goal with a 50-yard kickoff return, fumbled the opening kickoff of the second half. Three plays later, Watson was in the end zone with a 21-yard touchdown run. While Sanders' fumble appeared to be one of the defining moments of the game, the first-half struggles proved to be fatal for Notre Dame. At one point in the second quarter, the Irish had two delay of game penalties sand- wiched around a false start on third down. The sequence not only killed the drive, it was typical of the mistakes that plagued the offense until Kizer was able to engineer a fierce comeback. With the Irish down 21-3 at the start of the fourth quarter, Kizer hit senior running back C.J. Prosise out of the backfield for a 56-yard touchdown on third down. Clemson answered with a field goal on the ensuing possession, but Kizer wasn't going down without a fight. On the next Notre Dame pos- session, he found senior wide receiver Chris Brown for a 33-yard pass to set up a three-yard touchdown run with 9:03 remaining in the game. The Irish looked poised to tie the con- test midway through the fourth quarter following a pair of stops from the de- fense, but the mistakes returned. Kizer was intercepted on an errant throw over the middle, and on the next se- ries Brown appeared headed to the en zone but fumbled inside the Clemson's 5-yard line with just more than two minutes left on the clock. Despite the two late turnovers, the Irish found themselves with a chance to tie the game, and that's where they failed to execute once again.

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