Victory: Notre Dame 29, Pittsburgh 26
Notre Dame won a wild, triple overtime thriller over Pittsburgh 29-26 thanks to a determined team fighting to the very end of the game.
It wasn't sexy. It wasn't pretty. Hell, it wasn't even that chubby girl at the bar after many rounds of PBR. It was stupid ugly- but it was a win. Call it whatever you want, but I'm calling it DESTINY.
There were countless times Notre Dame could have just laid down and died, after this feisty and pumped up Pitt team played balls out... but they didn't. The offense continues to be an absolute enigma, but I think far too much will be made of their streaky play on this Saturday.
No, in my opinion, there was more blame to be sent towards every special teams group that we have. It was awful with missed kicks, kick return crapola, crapola of kick coverage, and of course the mythical punt return unit. Paper cuts run deep.
At any rate, Notre Dame gutted another one out and showed its character as a team that will fight the entire game for a victory.
This is getting repetitive. Kind of like this season....
GO IRISH!
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So guys, you see, Kelly isnt just saying this 'one week at a time' and 'you have to prepare EVERY week' just to have something cute to say to the media. You really DO have to prepare every week like it's a top-10 game or you get pressure like this. Get back to the drawing board and PREPARE THE HELL FOR BACKUP COLLEGE!! Do NOT let them tiptoe in here and sneak out with your manhood. Blow these wannabes out of the freaking stadium!
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Gentlemen, allow me to set aside my beard-related humor for the moment and get down to bronze seraphs--er, brass tacks.
We needed to win this game. Yes, I know we needed it in the obvious sense of going to 9-0 and keeping our legitimate hopes of a national title alive. However, like so many historical demons we've encountered this season (think breaking Denard's stranglehold, the Spartan Stadium stigma, Stanford's dominance of us, etc.), the dreaded "8-0 game" was yet another primate on the (non-running) backs of the Irish.
Season after season, there's always "that one game" where an unranked and unheralded foe comes along and upsets the apple cart of Irish Nation before disappearing back into the shadows of mediocrity; think Tulsa 2010, Syracuse 2008, USF 2011, and of course BC in 1993 and 2002. As much as BK must have prepared his troops for that post-OU letdown, Pitt was a hungry team with nothing to lose. For whatever reason--sloppy defense, terrible special-teams, inconsistent offense--as ND continued to let Pitt hang around and hang around and hang around, Pitt turned into that most dangerous type of underdog: the kind that goes from thinking, "We could beat them" to "Hey, we CAN beat them".
In so many years past, when ND has come up against this scrappy underdog, we have more often than not simply packed up our tents and made off into the wilderness. But like it has done so many times already, the 2012 Irish decided that enough was enough.
No more letting an unranked foe waltz out of Rockne's house with an embarassing W. No more dejected expressions as the mighty Irish watch Slippery Rock rush the field blaring their school jingle. No more providing gleeful ND haters with "LOL MORE LIKE NOTRE LAME"-type material. No more walking out into the night telling each other and themselves, "Man, if only X had happened...".
No, this was one more ghost that the Irish NEEDED to face down eventually so they could erase the bad taste of so many razor-thin upsets and dispel the lingering doubts of the "Just wait til their defense takes a week off" talking heads. There's still a lot of football left to be played this year and a lot of heart medication that needs to be purchased, but tonight I am proud of the way our boys came to their senses and told themselves, each other, their fans and the world that those memories are a thing of the past, and anyone who thinks differently can shove it.
Anyways...back to your original programming. Brothers and sisters in Notre Dame, a blessing upon your heads this night!
