Defense takes a holiday as Notre Dame andNavy light up the scoreboard in a 52-31 Irish triumph

By Ken Tysiac
1990 Scholastic Football Review

When· Notre Dame travelled to Giants Stadium to face Navy on Nov. 5, there was little doubt what the outcome would be. The Irish had defeated the Midshipmen 27 consecutive times in the nation’s longest running intersectional rivalry and were ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press Poll coming into the, game.

Navy, meanwhile, had struggled to win just three of its first seven contests. Not surprisingly, Notre Dame won by three touchdowns. But the difficulties of the Irish defense in the 52-31 triumph had Irish coach Lou Holtz singing the blues just one week before his team was to visit powerful Tennessee.

“This is probably one of the lower spots in my career,” Holtz said. “I think that you cannot beat a great football team if you don’t play good defense. The reason I say this is I know what’s ahead of us and this is not a high.”

Navy had scored just 16.1 points per game through seven contests against a schedule which included such lightweights as Villanova, Richmond, Akron and James Madison. The Middies nearly doubled that total against the Irish, who were playing without All-American nose tackle Chris Zorich. Zorich had injured his knee in Pittsburgh a week earlier. Nevertheless, Holtz refused to blame Notre Dame’s ineptness on Zorich’s absence.

“You can’t lose an individual like Zorich and not feel the effect of it,” Holtz said, “but it shouldn’t have had that big of an impact. Navy just did an excellent job.”

Navy did such an excellent job in the first half that the score was tied at halftime in a game in which the Irish were favored by 35 points. The Middies took the opening kickoff and drove to the Notre Dame 19 only to have Frank Schenk’s 33-yard field goal attempt sail wide right.

The Irish then took possession of the ball and methodically marched 80 yards in 15 plays. Freshman fullback Jerome Bettis capped the drive with a one-yard run for his first collegiate touchdown, and Notre Dame led 7-0 with 1:14 remaining in the first quarter.

The Middies tied the score early in the second quarter when tailback Jason Pace found the end zone from one yard out. The big play on that drive was a 44-yard pass from quarterback Alton Grizzard to tight end Dave Berghult which brought Navy to the Irish 12.

Notre Dame stopped the Midshipmen on four straight plays after Navy had driven for a first down at the one-yard line, but a fourth down pass interference penalty on linebacker Devon McDonald gave the Middies a first down at the one again. Two plays later Pace struck pay dirt.

The rest of the second quarter was consumed quickly as Notre Dame’s Craig Hentrich kicked a 31-yard field goal after a long drive and Schenk tied the score by booting a 27-yarder 14 seconds before the gun after the Midshipmen went 68 yards in 15 plays.

Holtz had expected Navy to come out throwing the ball, and at halftime it was obvious that his defense wasn’t prepared to stop the wishbone which Navy coach George Chaump had surprisingly employed. Chaump had been expected to utilize a more conventional pro set and rely on a lot of trick plays and a passing attack to move the ball against the Irish.

“George Chaump had been throwing the ball most of his career,” Holtz said. “He had a good game plan. He came out in a wishbone, ran basic power, they threw the ball when they wanted to and they ran it.”

The Irish defense wasn’t getting the job done. The offense was performing well, but Notre Dame only had three possessions in the first half because Navy was doing such a good job controlling the ball and the clock with the wishbone. Holtz told his team that it had to make the most of its possessions in the second half.

“What we said at halftime is that we will get the ball to start with and we would just have to be productive with it each time,” Holtz said. In short, the game was in the hands of the Notre Dame offense in the second half. If the Irish couldn’t stop the Middies, they would have to outscore them, and with quarterback Rick Mirer and flanker Raghib Ismail leading the way, they did.

The Irish offense scored three touchdowns in the first 10 minutes of the third quarter en route to a 42-point second-half performance. Fullback Rodney Culver gave the Irish the lead for good with a seven-yard touchdown run on the opening drive of the second half. Tailback Ricky Watters went over next from two yards out with 8:05 remaining in the third quarter, and just 3:01 later Mirer scrambled into the end zone from 30 yards out to give Notre Dame a 31-10 lead.

The Notre Dame defense woke up briefly in the third quarter as well. After Culver’s touchdown the Irish stopped Navy on four plays, the last being a fake punt on which freshman cornerback Greg Lane stuffed Navy’s Dominic Flis for a two-yard loss to set the stage for Watters’s touchdown. After that score, the Irish defense forced Navy to punt after three plays, putting the ball back in Mirer’s hands for a drive which would eventually end in a long scramble down the left sideline to pay dirt for the sophomore quarterback.

But Grizzard and the Midshipmen refused to roll over and die. The Navy quarterback, who would finish the day with 93 yards on 18 carries and nine completions in 14 attempts for 161 yards, scored on a six-yard run with 2:02 remaining in the third quarter to bring the Middies within two touchdowns at 31-17.

Notre Dame answered with yet another touchdown drive of its own early in the fourth quarter when senior tailback Tony Brooks went in from the three. Bettis set up that score with a 19-yard run to the Navy six.

Navy’s top gun struck again with 3:46 left in the game. Grizzard cut the margin to 14 points again when he hit Berghult for a 19-yard scoring strike. Notre Dame struck back just 1:32 later, though, when Ismail got open deep and Mirer threw a perfect strike for a 54-yard touchdown pass.

Navy still would not give up the ship, though, and Grizzard threw yet another touchdown pass, this one a seven-yarder to split end BJ. Mason with just 16 seconds left. But the Irish did not let Navy have the last word. The final blow was Todd Lyght’s 53-yard return of the ensuing onside kick attempt for a score with just nine seconds remaining.

Lyght was very surprised to see open field ahead of him when he fielded the kick. Although he was recruited as a receiver and expected to score many touchdowns in his Notre Dame career, Lyght switched to cornerback his freshman year, and had never scored a collegiate touchdown. Still, when the end zone beckoned, he knew how to get there. ”The thing about the onside kick return team is the main thing we want to do is get possession of the ball,” Lyght said. ”The kicker kicked it and I got a good bounce and I caught the ball and the two guys who were supposed to field it ran past me. I saw open field so I just took off running. I got down the sidelines about 10 or 15 yards and I looked to see who had the angle and it was the kicker and, I think, a linebacker, so I figured I could take it all the way in.” Lyght’s score provided the final margin of 52-31.

When the dust cleared it was apparent that two Notre Dame players could take much of the credit for the tremendous second-half surge. Mirer recovered from a disappointing game at Pittsburgh to complete 12 of 20 passes for 256 yards. His biggest aerial strike was the 54-yard bomb to Ismail which gave the Irish their sixth touchdown. Ismail once again proved himself a worthy Heisman Trophy candidate. He caught six passes for 173 yards and rushed eight times for 41 yards, finishing with 219 total yards in the victory. It was the fourth consecutive game in which he gained over 200 total yards. Typically, he credited his success to the game plan devised by his coaches.

“Basically it’s just reading whatever the defense gives you,” Ismail explained. “Especially for us, the coaches seem to call all the right plays at all the right times, so it seems to work out.”

Things didn’t work out nearly as well for Notre Dame when Navy had the ball. Although the Irish recorded their highest point total of the season, they also surrendered 31 points, the most they had given up against Navy since a 35-14 loss at Notre Dame Stadium in 1963. Although the injury to Zorich certainly hurt the Irish, sophomore Eric Jones did a decent job filling in, recording six solo tackles. The rest of the Notre Dame defense didn’t do as well, giving up 382 total yards for the game against the Grizzard-led wishbone attack.

The good news for the Irish was that they moved up to the top spot in the polls after Virginia lost to Georgia Tech 41-38 later that day. But the Notre Dame players were still not satisfied. A trip to Knoxville to face Tennessee was staring them in the face, and the Irish knew they had their work cut out for them.

“Tennessee gives up fewer touchdowns in a game than we give up in a quarter, on the average,” Holtz quipped.

“We’ve got talent,” senior tailback Tony Brooks said. “We work too hard to feel like we do after the week is over. You have to cash the check at the end of the week, and I don’t feel we did that today.”

But whether they cashed their checks or not, the Irish had moved back to the top of the collegiate football world, at least for the moment.