Fighting Irish 4-1-1 – Boston College

By John Brice
Special Contributor

Notre Dame won its fifth-straight game, its eighth in its last nine outing and continued its season-long growth in a blustery, snowy Senior Day send-off for 25 Fighting Irish players who turned their final game inside Notre Dame Stadium into a wire-to-wire, 242-3423 evisceration of Boston College.

Improving to 8-3 on the season and continuing to enhance their postseason options, the Fighting Irish scored early, often and both sustained a scoring binge – five consecutive games of 35 or more points – that matched the best in program history as well as put up first-half offensive numbers that had not been generated at any point this season.

As it raced to an 37-0 halftime lead, Notre Dame amassed 336 yards’ offense. Freshman defensive back Ben Morrison continued his torrid second-half play – he notched three picks in the game’s first three quarters, the first time a Notre Dame defender had accomplished the feat in more than a decade.

The Irish running game pummeled the Eagles, with four players who notched multiple carries averaging 7 or more yards per carry in the dominant victory.

Too, Blake Grupe kept Notre Dame’s strong overall special teams playing going with a pair of field goals that had to carve through significant wind gusts.

“What a win,” Irish Head Coach Marcus Freeman said. “What a way to go out.”

In an item delivered each week after every Notre Dame game, here’s the Fighting Irish 4-1-1 in their penultimate regular-season game.

FOUR ELEMENTS THAT DEFINED NOTRE DAME’s 8^th WIN OF THE 2022 CAMPAIGN

2001 MAYER ODYSSEY: All-American, record-setting Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer continued his personal razing of the Irish record books when he became the program’s first tight end with more than 2,000 career receiving yards in the win.

Mayer gathered four Drew Pyne passes for 64 yards, giving him 2,001 receiving yards in just three seasons and 35 games.

Mayer has turned his 172 career receptions into the 2,001 yards and 16 touchdowns, an 11.6 per-catch-average.

25: Senior Isaiah Foskey, one of the 25 players honored pregame, also made 25 a singular number in Notre Dame football history. Foskey chased down Boston College quarterback Emmett Morehead for a quarterback sack – the 25^th of Foskey’s Irish career and the program’s new all-time standard.

After appearing in 16 games with zero starts in his first two seasons, Foskey owns 24 starts and 20.5 sacks in his past two campaigns.

44 POINTS, 36 MINUTES: Boston College had as much momentum as possible for a three-win team – it was coming off a captivating, comeback-win at nationally ranked North Carolina State.

The Irish absolutely eliminated any hope for the Eagles from the game’s opening moments and never relented. Notre Dame constructed a 10-0 lead less than five minutes into the game, after Logan Diggs supplied the first of five touchdowns from the offense, and by 10 minutes into the game, the lead had ballooned to 17-0.

It kept going as the Irish scored at its best pace this season and one of their best in recent history. They had 20 points in less than 16 minutes and 23 points barely 21 minutes into the game.

In fact, Notre Dame had blitzed its guests for 44 points in the game’s first 36 minutes.

3-PICK BEN: After stamping his arrival on the collegiate scene in Notre Dame’s message-sending thrashing of then-undefeated and No. 4 Clemson in early November with a pair of interceptions, Ben Morrison added to his rookie lore in the snow Saturday with a trio of picks against Boston College – part of the Irish defense’s five-turnover day.

Turns out, Morrison’s two best career games for interceptions have come at the collegiate level.

“I played running back in high school, so I only ever had one (interception) in a game,” said the Freshman All-America candidate from Phoenix.

But Morrison, whose picks against Clemson directly contributed 14 points in the Irish win, wasn’t surprised that the Eagles continued to throw passes in his direction.

His preparation would not allow it.

“No, I don’t get surprised. Every single play, we have a mindset in the DB room that ball is coming your way,” Morrison said. “I don’t get too surprised [that teams still test him] because I haven’t done anything yet, and I just have to keep working.”

Morrison’s performance put him into the Notre Dame record books; he now shares the single-game mark of three interceptions with 14 former Irish players.

ONE THING TO NOTE:

Notre Dame’s vaunted offensive line turned in unquestionably its top two performances in the program’s final two home games.

In dominant, blowout wins against Clemson and Boston College, contests the Irish won by a combined 79-14 margin, no unit doled out more punishment the starting quintet of Joe Alt, Jarrett Patterson, Zeke Correll, Josh Lugg and Blake Fisher.

The Irish offense amassed 544 rushing yards in its final eight quarters at home, covering that real estate on 85 tries – a prodigious 6.4 yard-per-carry output.

ONE THING PIVOTING FORWARD:

The Irish can play ultimate spoiler and perhaps find a path back into a New Year’s Six bowl game or other attractive postseason destination with one more win.

The Notre Dame brand stands on its own, but it is further burnished with how Freeman’s troops are playing down the second half of this season.

So while The Cheez-It Bowl, Gator Bowl and myriad other postseason representatives have attended games in recent weeks, there’s still opportunities for the Irish to potentially land in one of the sport’s top destinations, be it perhaps the Cotton Bowl in Dallas or the Holiday Bowl in San Diego.

The Irish can make one more statement – and ensure the PAC-12 essentially has no chance for the College Football Playoff – if they can win next Saturday at USC.