Andy & Ari On3 - Notre Dame BLASTS Indiana in the First On-Campus CFP Game | Marcus Freeman's Irish DOMINATE Hoosiers

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

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Ari, we have experienced a whole playoff game. You hear the roar of the crowd. Notre Dame is running off the field victorious. So they're singing the alma mater right now. They just beat Indiana. They're going to play Georgia in the sugar bowl. What'd you think? I can't feel my fingers, Lloyd. They're numb. You've had this extra pair of gloves this whole time. Okay, I've got a lot to unpack. I didn't bring gloves. I didn't bring gloves. It didn't even occur to me. This is the coldest I've been in five years because it's the first time I've been in the Midwest in December in five years. Andy, where do you want to start? Do you want to start on Notre Dame? Do you want to start on on discourse? Georgia? Let's start with Indiana. Let's start with Notre Dame in Indiana. I mean, Notre Dame mushed Indiana. The last few minutes where Indiana tried to sneak in the back door, I guess, I guess you caught a live line in the middle of the game. You're feeling pretty good at the end there. But Notre Dame was in control the entire game. It never felt in doubt that 98 yard touchdown run by Jeremiah Love broke it open. And it it never seemed like Indiana had a chance. So you know what it reminded me of the Ohio State game right it was the Indiana Ohio State game yeah for Indiana but

there's a clear line of demarcation between an elite team that's going to advance to the playoff and a team that is pretty good but probably not elite. Right. And to me that's the entire point of this. Yes. Settling on the field, going to a place, playing a game, not making a decision in the boardroom and allowing one team and the other to face off and the better team advances and the better team did today. So I think the question really is like. Well no there are going to be people who say, Oh, Indiana didn't deserve to be there. And this shows that, okay, this shows Notre Dame is better than Indiana. You know what this shows? It shows what the playoff is supposed to

show. One team was better than the other. One team season's over and the other team is advancing. So I don't know. Like I wrote a column about this on on three. You guys can check it out. I'm sure it's up by now about relitigating whether or not Indiana deserves to be here I just don't think that's the right play on this and a lot of people are gonna do it because there are SEC fans out there who are passionate and believe that Alabama should have gotten in even though the debate wasn't even with Indiana to begin I was to say wouldn't it would have been in this game Alabama would have played Penn State even in the auto bid Scenario like they finished for second place in the big ten second place teams and third place teams in the big 10 get into the playoff. That's the system. I think Indiana had a good year, but the reality is that Kurt Signehti, tomorrow Lincoln Riley's quote, isn't a magician. He did the best that he can. Yeah. And he did a hell of a job turning around a roster. But the reality is there's only so much you can improve in one off season. Notre Dame has been recruiting in an elite level for a long time.

Yeah. And my buddy Bill Landis is over here. He said this to me. He goes, you know, that's still a really good G five team. They've got a lot of James Madison players on their team. I'm not saying that they're a G five team, but when it comes to upgrading your talent, there's only so much that you can do in one off season to be equipped to play a team that has invested this much, a team that is recruited well,

a team that has taken transfers at the quarterback positions. You know, this is a massive Jimmy's and Joe's difference in this game. Notre Dame has spent years investing in playing in this game. Indiana invested for one year. So there was a clear line. Now would Alabama have played Notre Dame closer? I think we both would probably agree that they would have. But that's not the point of this. Yeah. You

know what the real Indiana went 11 and one and like Indiana had a great year and they deserve to be here. And you know what the real point to me is, this game shouldn't be about about Indiana's candidacy. It should be about like Notre Dame and their ceiling. Well, and I think that's a really good point. And like, here's the thing. You know, we had a debate in the press box about whether or not this counts as ending the streak of bowl losses dating back to 1993, right? Right. That doesn't matter.

This is the first time Notre Dame has captured a big time. This is the most significant post. Right. The most significant postseason win for Notre Dame since the 1992 Sugar Bowl, which Jerome Bettis was the MVP of. Right. If that tells you how long. Jerome Bettis was the MVP of. Right. If that tells you how long Jerome Bettis the boss. Yes. So it's huge for Notre Dame. Does it mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Yes it does. Because they needed to win a game like this. Do they still need to beat Georgia to prove they are where they want to be? It's probably to shut

people off. I think that if the if the season were to end next week, right? I think Notre Dame probably be satisfied with how it went. Yeah. After what happened with an idea. Where do we have Notre Dame in the? We had Notre Dame kind of between six and 10, right? Yeah. And so if they end as one of the top eight teams, and that's that's fine. But you pointed this out to me and I ended up writing a column about this on three because I went down on a kind of advanced stats rabbit hole. There's a very good chance when the lines come out in the morning that Notre Dame is going to be favored against Georgia by a little bit. Well that's the thing that was so funny because when we released our brackets and I don't remember what you had, you had Georgia beating Notre Dame. I have Georgia winning the national title. Okay. And I had Notre Dame beating Georgia and that for obvious reasons because SEC fans are

passionate loud and have been used to winning everything for the past 20 years. So I understand it. There's a loud passionate thud when you see that because there's a certain level of disbelief that Notre Dame could actually do it. And I think that a lot of that is predicated on that 30 year drought. I think a lot of that is predicated on Notre Dame's previous trips to the 14 field where they weren't able to match up with Alabama and such. And it's a dismissal of what Notre Dame has been this year. And it's been very easy to say, well, that team lost to NIU, they could lose to anybody. And while I agree with that sentiment to a certain extent, I also know enough about the sport, Andy, to know that taking a single result. You mean like, like Ole Miss 28, Georgia 10? I'm not sure if I know enough about the sport, Andy, to know

that taking a single result. You mean like like Ole Miss 28 Georgia 10? That was a result too. It's not adequate information to accurately project the future in a sport that is already hard to project. So like I'm going to

let you speak. I'm talking a lot but like in your column in our idea like it's not crazy to predict that Notre Dame can beat Georgia. The spread will favor Notre Dame, like that is the team down there that we're dealing with. Well, and the thing is they're very similar. That's what's so interesting to me is watching Notre Dame up close, and we've seen Georgia a couple times this year. Like, Notre Dame and Georgia, very good offensive lines. They are going to try to dominate on the ground. They're going to try to control the game on the clock with the clock. They're going to try to make you make mistakes offensively. One of the biggest plays of this game was remember Indiana's driving early, right? And then they throw I was was a Watts who picked it off there near the end zone. And it changed the course of the game. Yeah.

The love play was great, but that interception, I think, was actually more important in the grand scheme of the game. And if you look at Georgia's best win, like when they went to Texas in Austin, it was forcing turnovers, using short fields to take advantage of a Texas defense that was really hard to move the ball on. But Georgia's defense gave George's offense

an advantage there. Both these teams occasionally will get gashed on the ground, it's crazy. They are just decimal points apart in how many yards per carry they give up on the ground. Like George is number 30 in the country, Notre Dame is number 34. They both have question marks injury wise.

Carson Beck doesn't look like he's gonna play. I mean, that's the bigger one, obviously, with Georgia with the quarterback situation. But like we saw Riley Mills, the defensive tackle for Notre Dame go down, sacking Curtis Rourke, grabbing his right knee. Like we don't know what his situation is gonna be. You know that game kind of reminded me of a little bit?

What Georgia has done to opponents so many times. that's exactly what I wrote. I said, Kirby Smart was probably watching the single and why I know a team that likes to beat teams like that. We're just kind of like, no need to light up the scoreboard. No, there's nothing that Indiana was going to be able to do. It's a classic smushing. Yeah. A smushy. Yeah. That's what Georgia does to you. And that's really how Notre Dame has built this team. And it's interesting because I think we talked with Mike Gullick Jr. about this the other day. Notre Dame has been an offensive line factory for a while now.

Like they have been great up front. Their defensive line has had moments where it's been pretty good and then moments where it was okay. It's pretty good right now. They got Howard Cross back in this game. Hopefully Mills will be able to play against Georgia, but. And we're going to break this game down a lot,

but that's the one area that I would be afraid if I were Notre Dame. Because they're a little bit smaller on the D line. They rank in the fifties in rushing defense. As you pointed out, they've played a few triple option teams this year, which could skew stats, but even in the fifties when it came to yards per carry too.

Another 34. 34, well that's better than 55 or 51 or whatevers when it came to yards per carry to another 3434. Well, that's better than 55 or 51 or whatever it is. But like Georgia is going to run the ball. Yeah. So so cross is 288 pounds. Riley Mills is 295 like the Georgia counterparts on Georgia's defense are much bigger. Yeah.

And but now their offensive line is huge too. Right. Yeah, but Notre Dame's offensive line is huge. So that that part I'm not as worried about. It's really like Riley Litter. I thought has looked more comfortable as the season

gone on. What will Gunnar Stockton look like because we don't know this will be his first start but I will say I know that the Georgia fans are are looking at Notre Dame Stadium behind us as the snow is falling. Actually, it's kind of floating upward now.

But I bet the Notre Dame fans remember when they took this stadium over and Jake Fromm made his first career start and beat the Irish. So I imagine there's some Georgia fans going, Gunnar Stockton may be able to beat the Irish in his first start. Here's the thing too.

Notre Dame will not get national respect unless they beat them. they have to beat them. This isn't going to change anyone's mind. If you think that Notre Dame's a fraud and hasn't played anybody, then all you'll say is play anybody because Indiana stinks. And like the whole thing with discourse as it pertains to Notre Dame's intimacy has always been, well, they've been on the stage before and every time they play on a team to get their doors blown off. So they have to have a good showing in the sugar bowl.

I anticipate that they will. I think it's interesting because I was, you know, the, the, we always go back to, and we talked about it with Golic the other day, 2012 season, national championship game after that season, I'm standing on the field before that game. I was standing next to urban Meyer and I had covered Florida when, when Meyer was the coach there And so we were making small talk and he's looking at the Alabama defensive line warming up. Yeah, he's saying There's there's nothing like this

Nobody has anything like this and it was true at the time There was nobody else like this if you look at what you and I have been we've seen Georgia up close this year We've seen Notre Dame up close this year, they don't actually look that different. It's not a jarring contrast like it was back then. Yeah, yeah. And you know, back then there were nine of them on those teams.

Yeah. And like now if you have three, that's a pretty good place to be. So like, I think from an athletic standpoint, from a talent standpoint, like the thought was always Notre Dame did not recruit well enough back in the early playoff appearances that they made

to maintain the skill. And I go back to when they made the 14 playoff of at least 2018. Yeah. And you know that Clemson wound up beating Notre Dame and then beat Alabama for the national title. When Julian Love went down in the Clemson game for Notre Dame, they just picked on his replacement over and over and over again. And it was just,

that was it. Yeah. So, but I don't know that I view next, the next game, the Georgia game, as a talent dwarfing. No. You know, I think that like they can match up well with them and they actually play very similarly and Georgia's not an explosive player and explosive team in the sense that they're gonna go score 50 on you. Now, if Georgia had Brock Bowers and Ladin McConkie, I think we're having a different conversation. But they don't. But they don't mean one.

And that's the reality. So, you know, I don't know if it's gonna be two BOA constrictors trying to squeeze each other out and we might have a 14 to 10 type of game or what it's gonna look like, but I absolutely believe. And you know, those brackets, everyone's like, oh, this is engagement farming. Like, no, I mean that I meant that. Like, and I'm and I and you know, we're going to go into that game.

It's not that I mean, it's not that far off. Vegas is going to say that if you look at the predictive power rankings, but everybody shut the TV off with this team, they saw you watching. What soon as soon as they lost in Illinois, they quit watching. And I think tonight was probably the first time a lot of people have seen Notre Dame in a while. They didn't have to sweat in a playoff game. And say what you want about Indiana.

Even if Indiana is just an okay 11-win team and they're not elite, Indiana did not have a chance in the game. Like when good teams play great teams, great teams don't look like they can lose. Is there a single point in that game that you thought Notre Dame was gonna lose? Absolutely not.

It didn't even occur to me. So like that's like, even if it wasn't the sexiest game, it wasn't the most exciting game, you know, outside of a loves 98 yard touchdown run, there really wasn't very many. No, Notre Dame put together a couple of nice drives. And then Indiana scored a few at the end when everybody stopped paying attention

because the game was over, but there was never any sweating. And like getting through a postseason game at home, you're not supposed to sweat if you're the superior team. You know what? I got news for you, Andy. I know this video is going to be going up tonight, but all four first round games were two more multi-score spreads. Like there's going to be blowouts tomorrow, I assume too. So we'll see what happens. But like if you're a Notre Dame fan, I think that you got exactly what you wanted to see out of this team. It wasn't a 55 to 10, but like it was a seven point spread.

You didn't sweat, you overpowered your opponent. And you get to move on in 10 days and play Georgia. And that's what you want. Well, let's talk about the fact that this was at home, that we are standing in the snow in South Bend, the Golden Dome. Hold on, hold on. Let's look at the Golden Dome. See the Golden Dome over there? on let's look at the Golden Dome see

the Golden Dome over there it's a beautiful thing that's tripod work you want to go move over there ah put the dome between I feel like there's yes I feel like there's something between us sorry look at that nothing will ever come between us Andy there's the dome right there it is beautiful see it right there on your screen yeah electric but let's talk about that we're here in Notre Dame in the snow in a playoff game. It was awesome. The atmosphere was incredible. We're watching the fans file out into the into the parking lots right now

from where we're standing. And it's just it was so much fun before the game. Everybody was having a blast, even though it is bone chilling cold here. I did. I was watching that they handed out these, you you know the yellow towels that the Notre Dame fans were waving around like It's gonna be so stupid when this goes to bulls wait a week and a half I did think that there was like this this Talking point coming into the week that it was gonna be overly controlled by the CFP and now this is home game like a home game Yeah, home game

You know there were some in-game entertainment There's gonna be drones at Ohio State on Saturday night Like there's certain aspects to it, but like there's no question about it that Notre Dame had an advantage. It had its home crowd I'm very curious to see what the what the crowd disbursement looks like in the games on Saturday, but Notre Dame Really showed out tonight. You know what? This is a fan base that's remained loyal, bought in. They love their program and they got a playoff win. And this was a very heavy, I don't think a lot of Indiana fans got tickets. It's hard to tell because everybody's wearing heavy coats.

So not a lot of team colors. This is the most expensive one. Yes, pretty expensive. So I don't know if like the Tennessee Vol takeover is the ball. Navy gonna float down the old and Tangi. The fall Navy Twitter has had me rolling with all the memes of them traveling up the highway to go up to Columbus. I can't wait to see what it turns out. But like I thought this was incredible. The game wasn't incredible. So that kind of takes away from a little bit, but we're gonna get a close game in one of these, and it's gonna be spectacular. And the thing is, this was so much better

than if this had been in a sterile NFL stadium. And you're gonna see it when you go to the sterile NFL stadiums in a week and a half. Now, you're gonna go to the Rose Bowl, that doesn't count. That's not sterile. Rose Bowl's awesome. Yeah, there's mountains and it turns purple. Rose Bowl accepted.

Everything else is gonna be kind of basic looking, and it's gonna be on the same old Astro turf and I like that Astro turf guys. Well, I mean it's fake turf down there too, but This is unbelievable. This is gorgeous. This is exactly what college football should be Put all the games up until the championship game on campus. I'm telling you right now I mean that's gonna happen put him there like eventually it's gonna happen. I hope I mean, I don't know I you're the you're the business guy here But I I thought this was an incredible experience and the best thing about being here tonight Andy is that in 24 hours gonna be in

Another home stadium watching another playoff game. So that's right. But yeah, I think like Notre Dame fans were Joyce, Indiana fans were Joyce I thought it wasn't a hell of a season and if you actually believe that that is the Coach that you extended long term you invested in that your program can be back here what a hell of a first step that season was that's exactly right Ari we're gonna go find you some gloves we got to drive east your hands are being columbus tomorrow