A lesser loss

 For a few perilous minutes down in Atlanta last night -- OK, so maybe for more than a few -- Notre Dame was what we've grown accustomed to Notre Dame being in these 37 seasons since they were, well, Notre Dame. They were, again, Just Notre Dame.

As in, "Just not good enough." As in, "Just Monopoly money in a big-dollar world." As in, "Just another team with gaudy numbers that's overmatched against the real gaudy programs -- your Alabamas, your Georgias, your Ohio States."

The latter of whom was leading the Fighting Irish 31-7 midway through the third quarter of last night's CFP title game, and looked well on the way to a 45-10, 45-13 blowout.

The latter of whom scored 31 points on five straight possessions after Notre Dame scored first on a novel-length 18-play drive that ate up 9:45 of the first quarter.

The latter of whom ran 44 plays to just 11 for the Notre Dames during that stretch.

Those weren't national championship game numbers. Those were Ohio State vs.  Directional Hyphen Teachers College numbers.

And then ...

And then, the most astounding thing happened: Just Notre Dame became Legit Notre Dame, at least for awhile. It became the Notre Dame that was 14-1 coming in and had peeled off 13 straight wins, almost all by comfortable margins.

First the Irish went 76 yards in 10 plays and scored on Jaden Greathouse's 34-yard catch-and-run. A Riley Leonard-to-Jeremiyah Love added the two-point conversion, and it was 31-15.

Then they recovered an Ohio State fumble, went 70 yards in 12 plays and missed a field goal.

Then, instead of sagging, they shrugged. Forced a four-and-out and went right back to work, going 80 yards in  eight plays to another Leonard-to-Greathouse six, this one from 30 yards. 

A Jordan Faison-to-Beaux Collins bit of trickeration on the two-point, and it was a one-score game, 31-23. With plenty of time left -- 4:15 -- to get that one score.

Alas, it didn't happen. The Buckeyes, clearly the better team, ate up all but 26 seconds of that 4:15 on a 61-yard drive that ended in a field goal. And that was your ballgame, 34-23.

In the final reckoning, the better team gashed the Notre Dame defense for 214 rushing yards -- Quinshon Judkins had 100 of them, plus two scores, on just 11 carries -- and 445 total yards. Jeremiah Smith caught five passes for 88 yards and a touchdown and Emeka Egbuka six for 57 yards against an Irish secondary that had held Penn State's wideouts catch-less in the Orange Bowl.

On the other side of the ball, meanwhile, the Buckeyes' D thoroughly shut down Notre Dame's greatest strength, its running game. The Irish managed just 53 yards on the ground and averaged 2.0 yards per attempt.

And yet ...

And yet, somehow, Marcus Freeman's crew found a way to climb back into it. And yet, they found a way to gash the Buckeyes themselves, with Riley Leonard throwing for 256 yards and two scores and legging it 17 times for 40 yards and another six, and Greathouse catching six of Leonard's throws for 128 yards and those two second-half touchdowns.

They found a way, in other words, not to be Just Notre Dame. Not to be, frankly, some Tall-Hat-No-Cattle imposter crashing the big boys' soiree.

Yeah, the Irish lost. But it was a lesser loss than it could have been, poor compensation though that is. It was a loss that revealed, momentarily, that Freeman's Irish were not Brian Kelly's Irish of 2012 -- when Notre Dame breezed into the BCS title game unbeaten and ranked No. 1,and then got rinsed by second-ranked Alabama, 42-14.

It sounds absurd to say what happened last night for a space of minutes is something Notre Dame can build on, and maybe it is absurd.  But it's more to build than the Irish have sometimes had, and it gives the lie to the assumption, crafted over the almost four decades since Notre Dame stood astride college football, that it simply doesn't have the athletes anymore.

Because if that were true, 31-7 really would have become 45-10 or 45-13.

But 34-23?

Different, it says here. Different.