LAS VEGAS — Drew Pyne stood behind the play, savoring the view. Seconds earlier Notre Dame’s quarterback had had no view at all as the BYU pass rush converged, throwing him to the turf. But just before going down, Pyne flipped the ball to Audric Estime, a sleight-of-hand shovel pass that turned Notre Dame’s lead back loose. Estime hurdled a defender en route to a 13-yard gain. Pyne saw it all happen after he picked himself up, then gave a fist pump and a scream that probably stood out even within Allegiant Stadium’s charged atmosphere.
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“I was kind of surprised myself,” Pyne laughed. “It works, I guess.”
Three plays later, Pyne connected with Michael Mayer for what felt like a game-clinching touchdown, a traditional forward pass to the most prolific tight end in school history. And although the game’s closing quarter was hardly that smooth, Notre Dame held on and put down No. 16 BYU for a 28-20 Shamrock Series win, injecting some expectations back into Marcus Freeman’s debut season after its tumultuous start.
Not only does Notre Dame know who it is leaving Las Vegas, it now has some attitude to go with it. That showed after the game as the players charged the student section. It showed up several places in-game, whether it was Pyne celebrating, Mayer flexing or the defensive line dominating with an early safety and late fourth-down stop.
Notre Dame (3-2) can’t re-enter the College Football Playoff conversation after how it started this season, but there will be no more questions about what’s left to play for. The Irish are now stacking positive performances on top of each other, climbing with every week. The wins are important, of course. But so is how the Irish are putting them together, leaning on both lines in exactly the way Freeman intended back in August.
“Yeah, that’s what I told them, when we needed them the most, the O-Line and D-Line stepped up, right?” Freeman said. “This was an example of what I’m talking about. Now, do we need to get better? Absolutely. But this was a great example of an O-Line and D-Line-driven culture.”
For as good as Mayer (11 catches, 118 yards, two touchdowns) and Pyne (22 of 28, 262 yards, three touchdowns) were for Notre Dame, those lines got Notre Dame out of the Shamrock Series victorious. The defensive line helped deliver a safety in the second quarter after Notre Dame was stopped on fourth down just short of the end zone. That line turned in a massive stop late, too, when Jayson Ademilola and NaNa Osafo-Mensah stuffed Lopini Katoa on fourth-and-1 at the Notre Dame 27 at a moment when the Irish were listing.
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The Irish offensive line returned the favor the next series when it opened a hole big enough for Estime to pick up four yards on third-and-4 in the final minutes. Notre Dame ran when BYU knew Notre Dame wanted to run, and the Irish gained enough ground anyway.
The offensive line was good enough that Notre Dame won the time of possession battle by more than a 2-to-1 margin (40:55-19:05), letting offensive coordinator Tommy Rees call the game he wanted. Notre Dame showed a balance BYU couldn’t handle, especially not with Mayer getting open and Jayden Thomas posting three catches for 74 yards and his first career touchdown.
Pyne was not sacked in the game and had so much time to throw it felt like Notre Dame’s receivers could run multiple routes on the same play. Pyne said he had to remind himself to not rush it because the line had blocked so well, essentially having to turn off his internal clock and simply find the open man.
“The offensive line was just unbelievable,” Pyne said. “When you’re back there and you have a lot of time, the most important thing is to not panic. I’ve had a lot of time like that before in my life and I don’t know what to do. I just don’t panic. I keep looking, see the defense, see what’s going on and find an open guy or have to throw it away or whatever.
“My whole thing is staying neutral and not panicking and being able to just have emotional stability through every play.”
Notre Dame needed that late. Freeman admitted that “panic” crept into the sideline during BYU’s fourth-quarter rally that seemed to be built more on the Irish breaking down defensively than the Cougars creating on offense. Notre Dame held BYU quarterback Jaren Hall to 9 of 17 passing for 120 yards, but Kody Epps got loose for a 53-yard touchdown catch-and-run midway through the third quarter on an apparent coverage bust.
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A series later, Notre Dame inexplicably allowed a 20-yard run on third-and-18 from deep in BYU territory, spurring a 10-play, 87-yard touchdown drive that turned more than one Irish linebacker around. With the Cougars cutting the lead to 25-20, the Irish had conjured visions of the Fiesta Bowl, when Notre Dame collapsed against Oklahoma State in Freeman’s head coaching debut.
“You come out in the second half and you get the big play for a touchdown. And then they come back and they drive and it’s just, you can feel a sense of a little bit of panic,” Freeman said. “I kept telling them, ‘Calm down, calm down.’ We’ve got to go back and just do our jobs, relaxed, one play, one life.
“And to get the stop on fourth-and-1, we challenged them. And that was a huge play, and I’m really happy for them. Again, to build off of that, to end on a high note, and then to go back and be able to learn from those plays that, obviously, didn’t go our way, it’s extremely satisfying.”
That should be true for reasons beyond the box score. By beating BYU the way that it did, Notre Dame can point to its second half against Cal, the entire performance at North Carolina and now this as part of a bigger trend. If Notre Dame lost the benefit of the doubt against Ohio State and Marshall, these past three games have felt like a program slowly winning some of it back.
“At this point (the season) is going where we want it to go,” Mayer said. “We’re really just gonna keep trying to stack W’s, keep practicing the way we’ve been practicing, hard as heck. Have the mentality that nobody’s gonna stop us the rest of the season and try to win out.
“That’s what we’re doing. Coach Freeman’s not going to change anything. We’re gonna do the same exact stuff we’ve been doing all season and try to keep winning ball games.”
With three consecutive wins at their back, the Irish feel like they will keep winning ball games. And that’s a view everybody around Notre Dame can savor.
