Home Sports After devastating early loss, Notre Dame is in CFP title game thanks to its ‘men in the arena’

After devastating early loss, Notre Dame is in CFP title game thanks to its ‘men in the arena’

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Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and QB Riley Leonard have the Irish in the title game against Ohio State. (Photo by CFP/Getty Images)

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Riley Leonard expected the worst.

When he walked into coach Marcus Freeman’s second-floor office for his stand-up session Sunday, about 24 hours after a surprising home loss to Northern Illinois, Leonard braced himself for bad news. After all, he had thrown two costly interceptions in a game that seemed to ruin all hopes of Notre Dame making the College Football Playoff.

Are you going to tell me that I will never touch the court again?

Was that my last game at Notre Dame?

What happened next was a little strange, totally unexpected, and, for Leonard, one of the most resonant things he had ever witnessed. A smiling Freeman hugged his quarterback with a bump, asked him about his family and talked jokes as if the day before had never happened.

During the conversation, the coach made something clear to the quarterback.

“In those lowest moments, Riley Leonard had to learn that I think he’s our quarterback,” Freeman recalls to Yahoo Sports from his office. “People might say you’re horrible and boo you. I, as a head coach, believe in you. And I need you to believe in me when we are at our lowest moments. The lowest moments are when you discover who you really are.”

Riley left the meeting feeling no better, he says now: a turning point in the relationship between coach and quarterback and, perhaps, the catapult he needed to bounce back from the first two-pick game of his college career.

Four months later, the Irish have not lost again. They have won 13 games in a row, including three College Football Playoff games, and nine of the wins during the streak were by at least two touchdowns. Despite a run-heavy offense, Leonard has thrown for more than 2,600 yards and 19 touchdowns. He is second to Jeremiyah Love in rushing yards with 866 and Love has just one more rushing touchdown than the quarterback (17 to 16).

And he’s playing more freely than ever. Because? That 16-14 loss to the Huskies.

“I’ve hit rock bottom,” Riley told Yahoo Sports in November. “Who cares from this point? I have that mentality of no regrets. Let it fly. Enjoy. You only have one chance with this. “It’s my last year.”

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and QB Riley Leonard have the Irish in the title game against Ohio State. (Photo by CFP/Getty Images)

Notre Dame’s winning streak has taken the Irish (14-1) from impossible playoffs to improbable playoffs, from playoff team to playoff title game participant.

Luck favored the Irish: the year they lost to Northern Illinois, there was an expanded 12-team playoff that gave them enough room to easily get on the field. Not only that, but unlike other teams, Notre Dame entered the playoffs without having played a physically and emotionally grueling game against a top-tier opponent in a conference championship.

After finishing the regular season winning 10 straight games, the selection committee ranked them No. 7, giving them a home playoff game. Since the Irish failed to win a conference championship as an independent, they were ineligible for a top-four berth and the bye that comes with it. But a home playoff game in South Bend, the first home playoff game in College Football Playoff history, seemed fine to them.

The Irish throttled the No. 10 seed Indiana Hoosiers in front of a delirious crowd at Notre Dame Stadium, showing how special the campus atmosphere can be in a postseason game. Love started things off with a 98-yard sprint to the end zone to set a College Football Playoff record early in the first quarter and the Irish never looked back. Leonard added 201 passing yards and a touchdown through the air, along with 30 rushing yards and a touchdown on the ground. They held a 27-3 lead with just two minutes remaining before two garbage-time touchdowns made the final 27-17.

They followed that up with a valiant show of strength in the second round against Georgia, using a 17-point surge at the end of the first half and start of the second to defeat the Bulldogs, 23-10. Leonard threw for 90 yards and added 80 more rushing yards; It’s not a statistic that impresses many, but he made plays and moved the sticks in key moments. The victory showed that the Irish still belong in the top tier of college football after a 31-year drought of major bowl futility.

Then, against Penn State in the semifinal at the Orange Bowl, it took a total team effort to overcome the Nittany Lions and win 27-24. Leonard made plays with his legs and arm, Freeman scored a near-perfect game, and the Irish executed to perfection: winning it in the final seconds with a 41-yard field goal by maligned kicker Mitch Jeter.

“Everyone in this program knows that we control our own destiny,” Freeman said in November.

Now there is only one game left: against Ohio State in the national championship in Atlanta. Winning an SEC national title would be very special for Leonard, a kid who grew up on the Alabama coast without receiving offers from those more regional schools. He eventually signed with Duke, won 16 games as a starter over two years, and then transferred here during the offseason.

It’s a long way from home and far from the Gulf Coast fishing spots I frequented as a kid. He’s a southern boy in the Midwest and at one of the most pressured positions in sports: Notre Dame’s starting quarterback.

Things were going well in that role until the Irish lost as 28-point favorites.

Being Notre Dame’s starting quarterback wasn’t as fun anymore.

“You don’t understand the magnitude of (the position) until something goes wrong,” he said.

Fortunately, his girlfriend and her marketing team operate his social media platforms. He didn’t see any of the hate and vitriol. Instead, his friends and family saw it all and texted him about it.

Don’t look at your comments!

They are all crazy!

They are saying crazy things: don’t listen!

Don’t worry, Leonard responded, he’s not listening or looking.

After all, critics are simply “cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” That’s a line from former President Teddy Roosevelt’s bravery speech that he gave in Paris in 1910 and called it “The Man in the Arena.”

It’s one of Riley’s favorites. In fact, you have the text of the speech as your lock screen wallpaper on your smartphone.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the author of actions could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

Leonard sees himself as that man, in the arena, with the bright lights shining on his golden helmet.

Freeman is not that different. He is also in the arena, the face of Notre Dame football, one of the richest and most historic programs in the country, without a national championship for 36 years.

Their positions (head coach at Notre Dame, starting quarterback at Notre Dame) are two of the most enviable and inevitable in sports. Win and you will be showered with adulation; You lose and you are the reason.

“That’s the position we’re in,” Freeman said.

“The lowest moments are when you find out who you really are and what you’re made of,” he later said. “If you have too many bad moments, guess what? You’re gone. It doesn’t matter if you’re the starting quarterback or head coach. You have to be replaced.”

If they win the last game, if they win it all, maybe they’ll point to that low moment as a reason.

It is pain that moves the Irish.

“We use it as motivation every day,” linebacker Jack Kiser said. “I can’t lose that pain. “I can’t lose what that feeling is like.”

Hold the pain. It’s a motto Freeman started using after the loss to the Huskies.

The gist: Don’t forget how you felt when you lost. Fear of losing. Fear a loss.

“People are usually motivated by two things: fear or greed,” Freeman said. “I keep reminding them: you have to keep the pain. “There should be fear.”

This isn’t the first time Freeman has revived a team that suffered a disappointing loss earlier in the season. In his first season in 2022, Marshall beat Notre Dame in South Bend. His team followed that up by winning eight of the next nine.

Riley Leonard, Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame have bounced back from their early-season loss to Northern Illinois. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Riley Leonard, Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame have bounced back from their early-season loss to Northern Illinois. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

In fact, that game came up during that September Sunday conversation between the quarterback and the coach. Freeman looked at Leonard: “I’ve been in your shoes,” he told him. “I’ve been here before.”

Freeman grew a lot from that loss to Marshall, he told Leonard. He learned to be a better coach and a better leader.

After the Northern Illinois loss, the coach spent some time examining how this could happen again.

Marshall and now Northern Illinois? As? Because?

It’s all mental, he says. A week before the Northern Illinois game, the Irish opened the season with an emotional victory at Texas A&M, earning a victory in a hostile, humid Texas environment. “We were not prepared to face success,” he said.

Now, more than four months and 13 wins later, the Irish are one win away from the title, with a quarterback and coach who are more connected than ever as men in the arena.

“He had to go through the ups and downs of being a quarterback at Notre Dame to understand what it entails,” Freeman said. “Just like me as a head coach. “Someone can tell you what it will be like to be the head coach of Notre Dame, but until you experience it, you don’t know.”


(Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Nov. 14 and has been updated to reflect Notre Dame reaching the College Football Playoff title game.)

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