Notre Dame vs. Stanford enters weather delay ahead of 4th quarter

Notre Dame and Stanford will have to wait to start the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game. Lightning was detected in the area, leading to a weather delay.

At the time of the delay, Notre Dame held a commanding 42-7 lead over Stanford. The Fighting Irish took a 21-7 lead into halftime, but scored three touchdowns in the third quarter break things open.

Riley Leonard led the charge for the Notre Dame offense, getting the job done with both his arm and his legs. He completed 16 of 22 passes for 229 yards and three touchdowns through three quarters while adding six carries for 31 yards and a touchdown on the ground.

Beaux Collins once again served as Leonard’s top target in Saturday’s game, hauling in a team-high four receptions for 85 yards. Kris Mitchell also had four catches for 23 yards and had a touchdown grab.

Notre Dame is coming off a bye last week following a home victory over Louisville. But it was Stanford that struck first to make it a 7-0 ballgame in the first quarter. From there, the Fighting Irish rattled off 42 unanswered points as the offense started to find its stride.

When it came to getting his team motivated after the bye, Marcus Freeman said his technique was similar to the Louisville game. Notre Dame fell to the Cardinals a year ago, and the staff used that game as a way to get ready for the rematch.

“I hope that the motivation from the Louisville loop wasn’t to mentally get them motivated as more as it was to see plays from that game of (one) years ago that could help them learn so they could perform better on Saturday,” Freeman said, via Blue and Gold’s Kyle Kelly. “The same thing this week, right? 

“(There are) times that you have to study the past to learn from the mistakes, so you can make sure you can perform better on Saturday. It’s a rivalry game. So that’s a lot of our motivation — is to compete in this rivalry game. But at the end of the day, we got to continue to chase being the best version of ourselves — reaching our full potential, and that’s all the motivation you need. There’s different ways that you can motivate them daily, but at the end of the day, we are trying to chase to reach our full potential, and we want to make sure we win this Legends Trophy.”