For what seems to be a Saturday tradition, Notre Dame came out flat to start the 1st Q, giving up a FG on a well executed drive by the Seminoles during the opening possession and after a short delay, QB Riley Leonard looked rusty on another Irish first drive, ending it with 1 terribly overthrown ball, followed by an INT that led to a FSU touchdown, putting the Seminoles up 10-0 in the 1st.
For what seems like the 4th game in a row, the Irish defense immediately responded, only allowing 3 more points in the 2nd, while Leonard and HB Jeremiyah Love locked in, racking up 4 quick touchdowns before half, thanks to 2 big defensive INTs, to give the Irish a 28-13 halftime lead.
Notre Dame opened the scoring on the first possession of the 3rd quarter, as Riley Leonard found Jaden Greathouse for a 64 yard touchdown, increasing the Notre Dame lead to 35-13. FSU's typically high-powered running game was held to next to nothing on the day, but DJ Uiagalelei was firing all game, including a hot run of passes in the 3rd that added 2 touchdowns for FSU. Unfortunately for the Seminoles fans, DJ threw picks on each of the 2pt conversion opportunites, keeping ND ahead at the end of the 3rd quarter, 35-25.
The ND defense remained stout in the 4th, continuing to mix pressure and quick reactions in the secondary, while HB Jeremiyah Love hammered in his 4th TD on the day, to give ND a 42-25 lead and put the game to rest.
Coach Reign: "First thing is first, I've been watching Coach SGC a lot this season and the way he's improved his team's play has been quite impressive. Make no mistake, that's a top 25 team that put us behind early here in South Bend today. We were fortunate to have stars like S Xavier Watts, CB Ben Morrison and LB Jack Kiser to lean on for some big plays. Coach SGC is going to have a great career. He's just getting started! As for the offense, I'm pretty tired of us struggling to get out of the gate. We've only got 2 games left this season and we can't let up. If we come out flat against Tulane or USC, we're going to spend the holidays at practice and skip Christmas. We need to get right!"
Offense? Defense? You could say both struggled overall in this road game against Notre Dame, FSU answered early in the 1st going up 10-0, but this was no problem for veteran coach Reign, who has actually been somewhat of a Mentor to Rookie Coach Cracker in his first season as a Head coach in the NDL. Coach Reigns IQ is his strong suit, he has distinct custom playbooks that are elite on both ends of the ball, making it almost impossible to come up with offensive and defensive schemes that work a majority of the time, Once the fighting Irish settled in. fSU was unable to make stops on defense and could get the ball moving on offense, turning the ball over on costly drives and ultimately coming away with the loss.
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