The Good, the Bad & the Ugly from Notre Dame’s Fiesta Bowl Loss

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly from Notre Dame’s Fiesta Bowl Loss

The Good: Jack Coan – QB & Lorenzo Styles – WR – From a QB playing his last college football game to a true freshman playing in his first bowl game, both Coan and Styles had career games. Coan threw the ball 68 (!) times for 509 yards and 5 touchdowns. Styles caught 8 passes for 136 yards and 1 touchdown, but could have and should have had more. Yes the game ended in disappointment, but these two guys left it all on the field.

The Bad: The running game – There was a lot of talk leading up to the game on the running game and how it would fare with Kyren Williams opting out of play. At the end of the day, Notre Dame played a team that was ranked at one of the best in run defense and it showed. As a team, Notre Dame rushed for a total of 42 yards. Blame is not going on Chris Tyree, Logan Diggs or the offensive line. You see 42 yards and think Coan must’ve been sacked 10 times; but it was the opposite, as up against one of the best sacking teams in the country, Notre Dame only gave up 2 sacks. Notre Dame just could not get the run game going and went full one dimensional – and Oklahoma State figured it out.

The Ugly: The second half – As we all know, football has two halves, and the two on Saturday could not have been more different. Watching the first half you thought Notre Dame would run away with the game, but a late touchdown to end the first from Oklahoma State started the downward trend for the Irish in the Fiesta Bowl. Notre Dame was up 28-7 at one point, but OK State would go on to score 30 unanswered points, almost all in the second half, and end up losing 37-35. Notre Dame never had an answer in the second half until it was too little, too late. The Notre Dame defense did everything it could by forcing two turnovers deep in their own territory, but the Irish offense could do zero with them. Oklahoma State made the halftime adjustments and blew the doors off the Irish in the second half. The Notre Dame offense that was unstoppable in the first half just couldn’t figure out how to start the ignition in the second half.

This blog would have sounded much different if I wrote it right after the game, but by giving myself a few days to digest the awful loss it’s easy to find a lot of good in this football game and season overall. As a whole, the season was a success. Going into the season, everyone had Notre Dame as a team that was going to regress from last year and have a rebuild year. That was far from the case. Yes, the schedule ended up not being as daunting as it looked at the start of the year, but Notre Dame got better as the season continued. Notre Dame played a ton of young guys that will be stars next season (Styles). Notre Dame fans have a right to be upset after losing yet another New Years Six/BCS game to make it 10 in a row (yikes), but the future is very bright. There will be some growing pains under Freeman, but I have no doubt that we’ll be back on this stage, as well as a Playoff game, under the new head coach. 2021 was a wild ride for Notre Dame fans, and I enjoyed all of it.

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