The title says it all, doesn’t it? Ten years ago this week, Notre Dame suffered a catastrophic loss at home to Navy. It marked the true beginning of the end for the Weis era.
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It Can’t Happen Twice, Can it?
On November 3, 2007, the worst Notre Dame football team ever added another historical footnote to its fetid season by losing to Navy for the first time in 43 years. A year later, the Irish nearly blew a 27-7 lead against the Middies in the fourth quarter before escaping from harm. We didn’t know it yet, but the days of automatically penciling this game into the win column were long over.
In 2009, Navy had already put the fear of God into Ohio State in Columbus before losing 31-27. Ricky Dobbs was in the process of scoring an NCAA-record 27 rushing touchdowns under Ken Niumatalolo’s continued mastery of the triple option. This was a very good Navy squad that would win 10 games, but had lost the week before against Temple. That would contribute to the 13-point spread in favor of ND.
Furthermore, the Irish were getting back maybe it’s best offensive weapon at just the right time. Michael Floyd would play for the first time since September, returning the All-American trio of Tate-Floyd-Rudolph to the field. However, Armando Allen’s ankle injury would once again keep him out for this game. Nonetheless, ND was expected to roll in front of a cheery home crowd on a perfect November day…
Game Highlights
*If you would like to watch the game in its entirety, click here. If you want DownInTheBend’s condensed games from the 2009 season, you can find those here.
Some Thoughts
- As we all now know, the Irish could not have picked a worse team to fall behind against. Notre Dame sleepwalked through the first half and paid dearly for it.
- Michael Floyd, bless his heart, did everything possible to try and get ND over the hump in this game. Much like Cole Kmet against UGA this year, Floyd showed no signs of a broken collarbone while catching 10 passes for 141 yards. Golden Tate was his usual self with 9 catches for 132 yards despite sharing the field with another future pro.
- Jimmy Clausen played valiantly, throwing for a career high in attempts (51), completions (37), and yards (452). However, he was not immune to the cosmic forces of this game. He fumbled at the Navy 1-yard line while stretching for a touchdown. On the following drive, his third interception of the season deflected off of an unaware Floyd and right into the arms of Irish nemesis Ram Vela inside the red zone.
- After setting the ND record with 14 consecutive field goals, Nick Tausch missed both of his attempts against Navy. No awful game is complete without special teams shenanigans.
- The Irish defense was #optioned into oblivion in this game, giving up 348 yards rushing at 6.1 yards a carry. Tenuta picked the wrong poison, as Navy halfback Vince Murray caused the most damage with 158 yards rushing.
- True to form, the Middies threw just three times but still hurt the Irish. Dobbs hit a bomb for a touchdown in the third quarter just after Robert Hughes had brought ND within seven.
- In one of the rarest occurrences in college football, the Irish were sacked for a safety down 23-14 with under a minute left. They then executed a safety onside kick and scored a touchdown to bring the score to 23-21. Of course, they almost
- This was the infamous Blanton-cut block game.
- With the Irish down right out of the gates, Weis abandoned the run and ND’s running backs only got 12 carries on the afternoon. Which is a shame because this was the first extended look at Theo Riddick, who flashed some of his trademark dual-threat ability.
Disaster and Cruelty
This was a spiritual predecessor to the USF game from 2011 or even the Virginia Tech escape last week. The Irish self-destructed with three turnovers and lost despite gaining 7.2 yards a play and 32 first downs. Notre Dame’s offense manufactured a whopping eight scoring opportunities and got just 21 points out of them. I mean, look at this advanced box score and tell me you don’t see shades of Skip Holtz getting a Gatorade bath. 58% success rate in a loss!
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This was an unforgiving, cruel game. Aside from the loss, Kyle Rudolph injured his shoulder in the first quarter and would never again see the field in 2009. The Tate-Floyd-Rudolph trio would end up playing just four games together that season due to injury.
All the chickens came home to roost this afternoon. The inexplicable struggles of the Irish offense in the red zone finally doomed the team, especially when the previously-reliable Tausch whiffed on two chip shots. The defense, which had been hanging on by a thread against any offense with a pulse, put Notre Dame in a hole it could not dig out from.
The Middies had laid bare all of the failings of the 2009 team and by extension, Weis’ program. Like he had so many times before, the Irish coach jettisoned the run game almost immediately and placed the game on Clausen’s shoulders. There was no Plan B, or C. When things went wrong, he turned to his five-star talent. Sometimes they could do enough to scrape by, but most of the time they could only get the team so far before things fell apart.
There would be no reprieve. Pitt was up next and was having a charmed season. They would be ranked in the top-10 for the defining game of Weis’ tenure. Perhaps thankfully, it would be on the road because as the Middies had shown, Notre Dame Stadium was far from a house of horrors. Navy had now won two in a row in South Bend, joining so many other programs that got their shining moment at the expense of doomed Irish coaches since 1993.
“I love playing in South Bend,” Navy safety Wyatt Middleton said. “I love playing here.”
Yeah, I bet you did.
Other Things that Happened that Week
- Led once again by a backup quarterback, Cincinnati put up 711 yards on UConn and won a wild game 47-45. The Bearcats were now 9-0.
- #3 Alabama won a controversial game against #9 LSU 24-15 in which Patrick Peterson was robbed of an interception in the fourth quarter. Nick Saban’s eventual national championship team was living week-to-week at this point.
- Three top-20 teams lost to unranked opponents. #7 Oregon lost to Stanford 51-42 a week after dump-trucking USC. Toby Gerhart had 38 carries for 223 yards. Meanwhile, #20 Oklahoma was Suh’d into a 10-3 loss in Lincoln.
- But the biggest upset of the week, #4 Iowa lost at home against unranked Northwestern in a game eerily similar to ND’s performance that week. The Hawkeyes lost an early 10-0 lead and then self-destructed with four turnovers. Another Kirk Ferentz Special finally ran out of luck.
- In a disastrous week for traditional Midwestern powers, Michigan flopped against Purdue at home and lost 38-36. Purdue had a strange season, beating both Ohio State and Michigan but still finishing 5-7.
32 first downs!!
That cheap shot on Blanton was when I first began to really hate the Middies. When you combine that with all the ankle blocking, it started to convince me that there’s no point to playing this series any more (bring on the traditionalists, and those who want to carry on about how Navy saved ND during WWII). I know people will say that I was just being opportunistic, given that Navy had now beaten ND 2 out of the last 3 years, but I’ve never wanted to drop USC from the schedule, even during the awful Pete Carroll era.