Divine Intervention?

For the second week in a row, the Irish pull off a miracle

By Jon Paul Potts

1990 Scholastic Football Review

”It looks like we’ll be a football team that has to find a way to win every week.” –Lou Holtz after the MSU victory

The Luck 0′ the Irish.

It’s a cliched expression that has been used countless times by sports writers in connection with Notre Dame football. But hey, if the shoe fits, wear it -to what else can the key play of this game be attributed?

Certainly not superior play-calling and execution. The play which shows that Mary maybe does watch over Notre Dame football from her perch atop the Dome occurred during the fourth quarter with the Irish trailing the Michigan State Spartans 19-14. On second down and five, sophomore quarterback Rick Mirer dropped back looking to pass and fired a bullet down the right sideline intended for sophomore wide receiver Adrian Jarrell. But Mirer had not spotted Michigan State cornerback Troy Murray who was lost in a sea of green jerseys huddled together on the Spartan sideline.

“I missed the defender, he was so close to the sideline,” said Mirer. “[Adrian] told me [Murray] was practically off the field. For a second, I thought I was gonna have to play defense, but Adrian was there.”

Jarrell concurred with Mirer. “Rick couldn’t have seen the defender,” said Jarrell. “I got ready to make the tackle but it bounced off the defender and I managed to grab it. Things seem to work themselves out and I was luckily there to make the play on the ball.”

The pass had hit Murray squarely between the numbers on his chest, ricocheted backwards over his head and into Jarrell’s waiting hands. The unlikely hero fell out of bounds at the MSU two-yard line for an improbable Irish first and goal. Two plays later, junior fullback Rodney Culver rumbled in off right tackle for a Notre Dame touchdown and a 20-14 lead which stood up for the Irish victory.

What made this win all the more remarkable is that it followed close on the heels of the previous week’s 28-24 comeback triumph over the Wolverines of Michigan which featured another lucky pass deflection/completion at a crucial point in the game.

Under the bright lights of Notre Dame Stadium, the Irish had kept a fourth quarter scoring drive alive when a pass on third-and-15 bounced off the hands of a leaping Raghib Ismail into the arms of freshman Lake Dawson for a 41-yard gain. This recurring good fortune was not lost on Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz.

“What a football game,” said Holtz; “I’ve been involved in two of them and I haven’t figured it out yet. You can say we had the ‘Luck ‘0 the Irish,’ but this isn’t something that happens every single day. There is a mystique about Notre Dame, make no mistake about it.”

Some of Holtz’s players, however, would like to· think that luck had nothing to do with it. “I don’t like to think about luck, I like to win going out,” said senior captain Ricky Watters. “It’s more like we’re putting ourselves in a position to win. When everyone is running their patterns right and we have great concentration out of our receivers, we get a great play like that (Jarrell’s reception).”

Besides luck, another similarity between the two Notre Dame victories over their northern rivals was the improving play and confidence of quarterback Rick Mirer. Following the victory over Michigan and his great fourth quarter performance, Mirer was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated under the moniker “Golden Boy” in obvious reference to such past Irish quarterback stars as Joe Montana and the original Golden Boy, Paul Hornung.

The young quarterback and the offense he led continued the trend established against the Wolverines of starting strong, falling into an offensive funk for the middle two stanzas, then waking in time to pull the victory from the fire. In this game Mirer led the Irish to a touchdown with a sharp drive on their second possession, then struggled until the last quarter. When questioned about this aspect of his play, Mirer seemed unable to come up with any explanation.

“We’re not getting complacent, we just seem to struggle,” he said. ”These are two great teams we played against and it’s not going to get any easier either. We just have to get better and more consistent in those second and third quarters.”

In that fourth quarter, Mirer came alive, connecting on six of eight passes for 84 yards – 80 of those yards coming on the last drive which pushed the Irish over the top. The second and third quarter blues were something the offense would have to work on with scheduled dates with Miami, Tennessee, Penn State and Southern Cal looming in the near future.

The second quarter was disastrous for Notre Dame. The Spartans racked up 12 points on a field goal, a safety and a touchdown. The safety came on a blocked punt with 8:13 to go in the half. On fourth-and-22 from the Irish 20-yard line, Craig Hentrich dropped back to punt. The snap from center was clean, but MSU’s Murray busted through the line and knocked the punt back out of the Irish end zone for a safety. The Spartans took Hentrich’s ensuing free kick at their own 44-yard line and marched the 56 yards in seven plays for a 12-7 lead.

If not for the fourth quarter heroics of Mirer and Jarrell, the coaches would have had that second quarter to blame for the loss when they examined the films the following week. “On the punt before, we had one guy miss the block,” said Holtz. “We corrected him, and on the next lay, the other guy thought ‘Well gee, I must have been wrong.’ And we ended up with blocked kick, and those things are disastrous.”

While the ricochet pass was very important to the Irish victory, perhaps the single most important play occurred in the third quarter. With Notre Dame marching for what would be their second touchdown, Culver kept the drive alive on sheer determination.

Showing great confidence in his young quarterback, Irish coach Holtz elected to go for it on fourth-and-eight from the Spartan 27 yard line. Mirer dropped back to pass and hit Culver at about the 20 -short of the first down. Culver appeared to be stopped by MSU linebacker Chuck Bullough, but he spun and bulldozed his way to the 18-yard line for the fIrst down that set up the touchdown that brought the Irish to within five.

Defensively, the Irish struggled for the second week in a row. The previous week, the Wolverines had rolled up 443 total yards and 24 points. Against the Spartans, the Irish defense bent again but didn’t break, allowing 117 yards on the ground, but nearly 200 yards through the air.

“We want to totally dominate an offense and a game,” said senior linebacker Scott Kowalkowski. “We’re not to that point yet, but we will be.”

With senior All-American cornerback Todd Lyght out with a hamstring pull suffered against Michigan, freshman Greg Lane started in his stead. The young secondary featured two freshmen and a converted tailback in sophomore Reggie Brooks. Pass defense would prove to be an Achilles heel for the defense all season long.

After the game, an exasperated Michigan State coach George Perles, who lost to Notre Dame for the fourth straight year and sixth time in his last seven tries, offered this analysis of the well-played, but wacky game.

“This was a hard one to lose and a nice one to win,” said Perles. “I told [MSU] we’re not snake bit. You play with the cards you’re dealt and the ball bounces funny ways. We played our hearts our and Notre Dame played their hearts out. They were good enough to win by a point today.”

With the win, the Irish successfully defended for the second time the number-one ranking they had achieved by virtue of the Miami Hurricanes’ early loss to BYU.

“I never said we were number one,” said Holtz after this game. “You have to be lucky to do some of the things we’ve done. But I hope we don’t take it for granted and think we can just go out and make something happen when we have to have it.”

At 2-0, and a fortunate 2-0 at that, the Irish had a breather the next week when the forever-rebuilding Purdue Boilermakers arrived at Notre Dame Stadium for their annual beating.