Pivotal Plays Cost Notre Dame In Loss To Ohio State

In a game where :03 seconds and one yard separated victory from defeat, Notre Dame came up short on Saturday night in a 17-14 loss to Ohio State. The Buckeyes forged a 65-yard, 15-play game-winning drive in the game’s final 1:26. Running back DeaMonte Trayanum scored the deciding touchdown from one yard out with no time left on the clock to give the Buckeyes their sixth straight win over the Fighting Irish.

The loss is a bitter pill to swallow for Irish head coach Marcus Freeman and his team. What makes it even harder to take is the Ohio State play came against an Irish defense that had only 10 men on the field.

“We were trying to get a fourth D-line man on the field and I told him just stay off because we can't afford a penalty,” Freeman explained after the loss. “I didn't have any time-outs, right? So we couldn't afford a penalty there. You know -- yeah, it's on us. We got to be better.”

Ohio State had the ball at the Notre Dame one-yard line, so had Notre Dame tried to run a lineman on the clock a flag would have been thrown, stopping the play and the penalty would have been half the distance to the goal line. The net cost would have just been inches for the Buckeyes and the Irish could have been at full strength with all 11 on the field for the game’s final play.

With all that in mind, would there have been a benefit in simply taking the penalty?

“Yeah, you could have,” Freeman responded to the question. “You could have. But to me it was, like, Hey, don't give them another opportunity to get settled and to try to make a different call, right? Hey, guys, like, stay off the field. Let's not give them a freebie from the half-yard line and let's try to stop them and I thought maybe they would do the same thing they did the snap before and then they ended up running the ball. So, I got to watch the play and see where the ball hit. But, yeah, that's why I made that decision.”

The play that set up the final touchdown was a back breaker as well. Ohio State faced 3rd and 19 at the Irish 22-yard line when Kyle McCord fired a strike to Emeka Egbuka at the one. He was tackled immediately.

“We wanted to play coverage,” Freeman said of the crucial play. “You know, and we thought we were going to be able to kind of give them a different look and play some quarters and he threw a good ball, man. He threw a really good ball. That last series we were trying to kind of mix it up a little bit with a young quarterback and not just play man every play. And he ended up putting it in a tight window and he made a play.”

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