About Andy Roberts

A lifelong subway alum, Andy specializes in instant reactions to Notre Dame games.

The Pros and Cons for Notre Dame in the New 12-Team Playoff

We knew a 12-team playoff was coming to college football, but we found out in early December, officially, that it will begin in the 2024 season. College football will have one more year with potential high-stakes regular season games between great teams before those stakes move down the board to more middling squads post-2023. (It's [...]

By |2023-03-16T13:10:37-04:00March 17th, 2023|18S Reads|19 Comments

A Blizzard: Boston College Instant Reaction

At one point during Saturday's 44-0 obliteration of Boston College, the NBC broadcast crew mentioned that Marcus Freeman grew almost angry when discussing ND's tendency to play down to its worst opponents. It seemed pretty clear with this performance, combined with the first half of Navy before everything went to hell, that the Irish are [...]

By |2022-11-19T18:42:50-05:00November 19th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|7 Comments

Look At Us Now: Clemson Instant Reaction

My first reaction to tonight's win? "We've got ourselves a (blankity blank) head football coach." Notre Dame didn't just beat #4 Clemson Saturday, 35-14. They pushed the Tigers around. They did the only things they could do to win when Clemson knew exactly what those things were, and they did them spectacularly well. That's special. [...]

By |2022-11-06T00:07:03-04:00November 5th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|13 Comments

Colossal Embarrassment: Stanford Instant Reaction

Anyone stupid enough to get sucked in to anything after the Marshall game (I include myself among this group) probably deserved to see what they saw today. Any prayer of this being a remotely successful season went up in smoke Saturday as Notre Dame lost a pathetic 16-14 game to a Stanford team that hadn't [...]

By |2022-10-15T23:55:11-04:00October 15th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|13 Comments

Startin’ to Come Together: BYU Instant Reaction

If the Marshall loss was a bellwether of potential imminent disaster for the Marcus Freeman era, there were a lot of signs in Saturday's 28-20 win over BYU that things are, as the great Lou Brown said, "startin' to come together". It wasn't perfect, but especially in the 22-0 scoring run that briefly gave ND [...]

By |2022-10-09T00:10:39-04:00October 9th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|10 Comments

That’s More Like It: North Carolina Instant Reaction

If the 2022 season starts taking off in a good direction following next week's open date, we might look back at the second quarter of Saturday's 45-32 win over North Carolina as a turning point. The Irish were plodding along through the first quarter, again largely unable to move the ball even against North Carolina's [...]

By |2022-09-24T20:00:10-04:00September 24th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|19 Comments

The Honeymoon Is Over: Marshall Instant Reaction

You have to give it to Marcus Freeman. I can't remember the last time a college football coach flushed so much goodwill down the toilet so quickly. Notre Dame lost to Marshall 26-21. In his first game against an unranked team as coach, Freeman ended an Irish winning streak of 42 games against such teams, [...]

By |2022-09-10T18:32:52-04:00September 10th, 2022|18S Reads, Football|103 Comments

Incomplete: Ohio State Instant Reaction

These things are a lot easier to write after wins, but here goes. Notre Dame lost to Ohio State 21-10 tonight, sending Marcus Freeman to 0-2 and creating the easiest wisecrack in the history of Twitter about the much-discussed and hyped new Notre Dame coach. It's funny how pregame narratives can be so wrong. What [...]

By |2022-09-03T23:49:27-04:00September 3rd, 2022|18S Reads, Football|77 Comments

Baseball Bandwagon: Notre Dame Gearing Up for CWS Trip

Diving full-bore into football and basketball season is certainly fun, but one of college sports' simplest pleasures is diving headlong onto the bandwagon of a team you don't generally follow. We Notre Dame fans certainly did that over the weekend as the Irish stunned Tennessee, unanimous #1 team and newly minted villains of college baseball, [...]

By |2022-06-14T16:16:34-04:00June 14th, 2022|18S Reads|7 Comments

What Did This Week’s NCAA Run Mean for Mike Brey and Notre Dame?

We haven't done a ton of basketball coverage here at 18 Stripes this season. For most of the year, the Irish just weren't really worth writing about; they were a decent-to-good team in what appeared to be a terrible conference, and as those teams do they ended up on the bubble for this year's NCAA [...]

By |2022-03-21T12:39:47-04:00March 21st, 2022|18S Reads, Basketball|27 Comments
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