‘Tough loss’: Notre Dame drops heartbreaker to Ohio State in final second

The “O-H-I-O” chants during the pre-kickoff hype video on the big board at Notre Dame Stadium could have been intimidating for the home team. So could have been a 10-point second half deficit.

Nope. Not for Sam Hartman and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Well, until the very last second of Saturday’s top-10 clash. Literally — the last second. That’s when the “O-H-I-O” chants came back and Notre Dame’s undefeated season disappeared.

No. 9 Notre Dame overcame its double-digit disadvantage only for it to slip away on an Ohio State touchdown with one tick left on the clock. The No. 6 Buckeyes prevailed, 17-14, at a jam-packed stadium in South Bend in a slugfest bout between two of the most prestigious programs in college football history.

Sloppy and unhinged as it may have been, and heartbreaking as it was for Notre Dame (4-1) and its fans, the game lived up to the hype. One side was always going to leave the night downtrodden and defeated.

“Disappointing,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. “Had a lot of opportunities to win that game. … We got to finish that game. Tough loss.”

It surely wasn’t the prettiest spectacle the sport has to offer. Both teams inexplicably flicked scoring chances from their fingers early on. But it was certainly still a showcase of two teams with plenty of talent desperately doing anything to win the game of the year to date.

And if you like dramatics, you got ’em. Eventually.

Ohio State’s 15-play, 65-yard game-winning drive that took 1:25 of the 1:26 that were left on the clock when the Buckeyes (4-0) got the ball back featured three third-down conversions, including Chip Trayanum’s touchdown, a fourth-and-7 game-saver and a dropped would-be game-sealing interception through the hands of sixth-year graduate student defensive back DJ Brown. The TD came when Notre Dame only had 10 players on the field, too. Trayanum powered forward right where the missing man would have been on the right side of the Notre Dame defensive line.

In the moment, with the game unfolding at warp speed, Freeman decided it wasn’t worth it to run an 11th player out there to purposely take an offside penalty, which would have advantageously moved the ball up half a yard for the offense but would have also put 11 players between the white lines for the defense. Freeman elected to play it out.

“We were trying to get a fourth defensive lineman on the field, and I told him just stay off because we can’t afford a penalty,” Freeman said. “I didn’t have any timeouts. We couldn’t afford a penalty. Yeah, it’s on us. Got to be better.”

Before Notre Dame’s costly blunder and Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord’s late-game heroics in completing three passes for 47 yards on the game-winning march, the matchup was nearly the first ever between two Associated Press top-10 teams to go to halftime tied 0-0. Ohio State connected on a 31-yard field goal with 26 seconds left in the second quarter to prevent that from being the case.

The Notre Dame defense had a chance to get off the field on third down earlier in that drive, McCord, who finished 21 of 37 for 240 yards, connected with OSU wide receiver Emeka Egbuka for 12 yards to give the Buckeyes a few more chances to break the scoreless tie with a touchdown. McCord hit Egbuka on the money in the back of the end zone on the very next play, but the ball hit the ground on an uncharacteristic drop. OSU subsequently settled for its three points.

After Notre Dame turned the ball over on downs for the second time in the game on its first possession of the second half, all Ohio State needed was one snap to open up a two-score lead. Running back TreVeyon Henderson found a ton of running room off an unsealed left edge to turn the corner and take the ball 61 yards into the north end zone of Notre Dame Stadium for a 10-0 Buckeyes advantage.

Then Notre Dame said not so fast. A fitting phrase for the mass quantity of them consumed on campus before the game.

The Fighting Irish went on two touchdown drives in a row spanning 24 plays and 171 yards. Sophomore running back Gi’Bran Payne scored the first one on a one-yard plunge in an eerily similar location to the eventual game winner, and freshman wide receiver Rico Flores Jr. caught the second from Hartman, who finished 17-of-25 for 175 yards, from two yards out.

The Notre Dame defense forced a turnover on downs on fourth and one with just over four minutes left. The Irish rattled off two quick first downs, threatening to end the game if they could muster up a couple more. They couldn’t. They gave the ball back to McCord and company, and the rest is history.

History. It hasn’t been too good to Notre Dame against Ohio State lately. The Irish lost their sixth straight to the Buckeyes and still haven’t beaten them since 1936. “O-H-I-O” it was, and “O-H-I-O” it is.

“That hurts,” Hartman said. “Close game. Big crowd. It’s tough, but season goes on, the bond grows. You win, you learn. That’ll show up in the loss column for us and we know that. But it’s about next week. It’s about bouncing back and that’s all we can do.”