It was just three months ago that Notre Dame stepped onto the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for a regular-season matchup with Georgia Tech. At the time, the Fighting Irish were simply looking to win the day and keep hope alive for a College Football Playoff berth at season’s end.
The long-term vision for Notre Dame, of course, was to eventually return to Mercedes-Benz Stadium for Monday’s national championship game.
“At the end of the day, this was our goal. We were trying to stride to reach our full potential,” ND wide receiver Jayden Thomas said. “I think we kind of all had in the back of our mind that we were gonna be playing back here again. That was the goal, it’s always been the goal. We stuck our heads down, grinded. After that (Northern Illinois) loss (Sept. 7) we kind of kept the pain and we’ve been striving every week, every day, every second, every practice from that pain just to get here.”
Thomas, a Pace Academy graduate, is part of a Notre Dame team riding a 13-game winning streak ahead of Monday’s showdown (7:30 p.m., ESPN) against Ohio State for college football’s ultimate prize. The Irish haven’t lost since the NIU setback Thomas cited and have knocked off Indiana, Georgia and Penn State, respectively, on their College Football Playoff path back to Atlanta.
And since that first trip to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, when Notre Dame was ranked No. 12 at the time, coach Marcus Freeman’s squad reeled off regular-season wins over Navy, Florida State, Virginia, Army and Southern California, respectively, after beating Tech 31-13. The Irish credited their success to a total buy-in of team over individuality.
“That mentality has got us to this point. It’s every person in this program putting this football program in front of itself,” Freeman said this week. “That’s what we continue to do and what we demand of each other is that everybody outside of this football program will find ways to give individual glory or individual praise or whatever it is, but we know inside this building that every person has a vital role for us achieving the results that we have. That’s what’s going to be as we prepare for this game.
“Your roles will be determined as we get finished with prep here soon, and we need you to execute your role, whatever that role is, to the best you can to make sure that we can achieve the results that we want. That’s what we’ll continue to preach.”
On that day against Tech (Oct. 19), Notre Dame flexed its muscles offensively by rushing for 168 yards and throwing for 217. Quarterback Riley Leonard, who lost to Tech in Bobby Dodd Stadium in 2022 when he was the starting quarterback at Duke, scored two touchdowns on the ground and completed 20 of his 29 passes for 209 yards.
The Irish also held the Yellow Jackets (playing without starting quarterback Haynes King that day) to 64 yards rushing on the ground. Tech had a 7-0 lead after the final play of the first quarter, then wouldn’t score again until less than a minute to go in the game.
That result for Notre Dame marked its fifth win in a row at that point as it tried to build itself up after the disastrous, 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois at home in September. But that setback now appears just a blip on the radar for Notre Dame and also appears to have been necessary for the Irish to lean on in the following months as a reminder they couldn’t afford any more slip-ups.
“We weren’t even thinking about the playoffs at that point,” Leonard said earlier in the week. “So, yeah, kind of a double paradox there. But after that game it was like, ‘Shoot, forget being the best team in the country. You’ve got to be on the best team on the field every single week.’ ”
Notre Dame will be playing in the same venue (outside of its home turf in South Bend, Indiana,) for the second game in a same season for the first time since the 1989 campaign when it ended the regular season with a 27-10 loss to Miami in the Orange Bowl and then beat Colorado in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day of 1990.
Had Notre Dame beaten Miami to end the 1989 season, it very well may have been crowned national champions for the second straight year in the era before a postseason playoff. Instead it had to return to the location of their ‘89 demise for its one and only postseason game.
On Monday, the Irish can finally claim their first national title since 1988, but only by winning a second game where they’ve already once been victorious.
“I think coach Freeman does a great job of making the emphasis of elevating every week,” said offensive lineman Anthonie Knapp, a Roswell High School graduate. “Even if we have success that week, it’s, ‘Hey, how can we make this week better?’ We just kind of took that to heart and focused on week at a time. It has brought us a lot of success and hopefully we can follow through Monday.”
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