Notre Dame's Death by Onside Kick

Alright so the Irish didn't lose today, but they tried their darnedest to do so after leading Navy 27-7 late in the fourth quarter. How did they get from there, to here (27-21 victory with Navy stopped near the Irish end zone)? Lets take a walk on the wild side.

First of all, Notre Dame's "decided schematic advantage" didn't materialize until the second half when they realized Jimmy Clausen would remain an interception machine and it might be better to run the ball against an opponent line on average 40 pounds lighter than the Irish line. Clausen contributed to this decision with a pair of first-half picks and a boneheaded head-first scramble that knocked him out for one play near the end of the first half.

Once Notre Dame acknowledged force = mass x acceleration and accelerated its mass into the Navy defense, they pushed their 10-7 halftime lead to 27-7. Look no further than the 51-19 final rush/pass ratio. Easy breezy, right? Not so much.


With just 2:30 left in the game, Navy went on a swift 57-yard scoring drive to make it a respectable 27-14, but they weren't done. From there the Middies attempted an onside kick ... and succeeded. Notre Dame's players looked to be simply standing around, and one of them was bulldozed by a Navy player, the same one who would otherwise have recovered that kick.

With 1:39 left Navy took the ball near midfield and did the obvious, a play-action bomb that landed at the Irish one yard line. Notre Dame should have been prepared for it, but it was one mistake, right? No big deal, its just one more score, right? So its 27-21 at this point with 1:21 left.

Lightning almost never strikes twice is what I'm sure the Notre Dame coaches and players were saying.

So there Navy found itself with another onside kick opportunity. This one failed, sort of. A Notre Dame player then batted the kick out of bounds, which solicited a flag and a penalty I've never heard of before: "illegal batting". Navy took the yards and a second shot at survival.

Fittingly, this second effort made good, a near mirror-image of the first onside recovery with yet another Notre Dame player plowed under by a much smaller Navy opponent. Once again it was the specific Irish player who otherwise would have recovered the kick.

Clearly Charlie Weis' arrogance seemed to have carried itself onto the football field. Seriously, a pair of onside kicks, back-to-back? Who lets that happen?

Navy's unlikely salvage-job fell just a bit short though, turning the ball over on downs after a bizarre series of plays where they might have gone Chris Webber on us and called a timeout they didn't have. Whatever, ballgame, Notre Dame 27 Navy 21. The Irish won, but probably deserved to lose the way they ended the game.

Given the circumstances that's probably the last time we'll see Notre Dame in Baltimore, these gimmes against Navy are becoming more than a little hairy.