Isaiah Foskey's Urgent Play Sparks Notre Dame To UNLV Win

NOTRE DAME, Ind. - “Urgency” was the buzz word coming out of Notre Dame’s 44-21 win over UNLV Saturday. More specifically, “sense of urgency”. Head coach Marcus Freeman had a fire to light under his team after last week’s lethargic home loss to Stanford.

“I hope everybody in our program had a little sense of urgency this week,” Freeman said after the UNLV victory. “That comes from the top down. That was a big word for us was urgency.”

No player better displayed the urgency required Saturday than Isaiah Foskey. The junior was a one-man wrecking crew against a team that was ill equipped to defend itself from a 6-5 self-propelled athlete on a mission.

“The whole emphasis this last week was just urgency,” Foskey said afterward. “Like everything is right now. That's what we did. Everything was just right now, be intentional with it, start out fast, and that's what we did.”

Foskey’s day of domination started on special teams. A place not every potential first round NFL draft pick plays. He blocked two punts on successive possessions to give the Fighting Irish offense the ball deep in Rebel territory both times.

“I feel like it was very important,” Foskey remarked of the blocks. “We got a lot of momentum, gave the ball back to the offense in plus got territory, which is great for the whole team.”

The offense took over at the UNLV 20 after Foskey’s first punt of the first quarter. They needed just eight seconds and two plays to turn it into a 20-yard Drew Pyne to Michael Mayer touchdown pass.

Foskey’s next block came moments later after the Rebels’ third 3 and out drive of the first quarter. He shared the block this time with Prince Kollie, who was shaken up on the play, but walked off on his own after attention from the training staff.

The Fighting Irish have blocked three punts in the last two games, and they’ve blocked four this season under first year special teams coordinator Brian Mason. The four blocks are a single season program record.

“Special teams is always something that Notre Dame always hypes on, always works on,” Foskey remarked. “Coach Mase put me in the right position to run a long snapper to make a play. We've seen the opening for the last couple games that UNLV showed, and we just took an opportunity from it.”

Freeman and Mason worked together for three years at the University of Cincinnati. Mason’s special teams were among the nation’s blocked kick leaders for last year’s College Football Playoff Bearcats and Freeman turned to him for the job on his staff after Brian Polian followed Brian Kelly to LSU.

“Coach Mase has done a great job with all of our phases of special teams,” said Freeman. “Every week we've been an aggressive punt block unit, and we've gotten two before this game.

“Every week we feel like we can take advantage of a punt team, and Coach Mason does a great job of executing the game plan,” Freeman continued. “Today we were able to get two, and those are game changers.”

Foskey’s day wasn’t finished with his two punt blocks though. He was a wrecking ball at his day job playing defensive end as well. He had accounted for three of Notre Dame’s 16 sacks on the season entering the day and matched that number Saturday afternoon.

“I feel like everything was just put together this game,” Foskey said. “I was getting to the quarterback, and special teams, I was getting a lot of punt blocks, two punt blocks. I just feel like everything just came together for me and it was something I was looking forward to.”

Foskey added three tackles for loss, a total of five tackles and a quarterback hurry to his UNLV stat sheet. He now leads the Irish with six sacks and seven tackles for loss this season.

“The minute we come out of that locker room, we're going,” Freeman said after the dominating effort. “The urgency that we must have is to execute. The urgency to do our job. The urgency to play really hard but understand what our job is and do our job. Hopefully that was a reflection of it, but that's what you expect out of Isaiah.”

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