Notre Dame win over Navy sends Marcus Freeman and the Irish to the land of mixed emotions

As far as oxymoron-inducing Notre Dame games go, this one will be hard to top. Disappointing win? Seems applicable. Mad despite a victory? Understandable. Can you collapse and still succeed? Apparently.

Welcome to Notre Dame 35, Navy 32, where confusion, angst and the euphoria of victory got together for an awkward group hug Saturday afternoon at M&T Bank Stadium. The Irish escaped Baltimore with a win played to a second-half soundtrack of nervous laughter.

“I’m in there saying it’s hard to get these wins, we have to celebrate, we have to feel good,” head coach Marcus Freeman said, “They don’t feel great.”

Notre Dame is 7-3, winners of four straight and in the top 20 of the College Football Playoff rankings. It dominated a top-10 team and posted 17-point road victory in its prior two outings. It hung 35 points and 234 passing yards on Navy in the first half alone. Junior quarterback Drew Pyne, he of just 18 completions in the last two games, threw 4 touchdowns and completed 14 passes in 30 minutes.

Yet the result left open for debate if this game was a step forward or another sign of playing down to the competition. Navy, as hard as it plays and as feisty as it is, dropped to 3-7 this season. On paper, the Midshipmen are not a team Notre Dame should need to beat by clinging to an early advantage like wide receiver Braden Lenzy hanging on to his acrobatic first-half touchdown catch.

“We have to learn how to put opponents, away, shut the door completely and not give them any hope,” sophomore linebacker Prince Kollie said. “We’re still working on that.”

The Irish needed every bit of their 35-13 halftime lead because their 20 second-half offensive plays netted 12 yards. Pyne had as many pass attempts (5) as he took sacks. Notre Dame running backs had 8 carries for 13 yards in the second half and 23 for 81 overall.

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The offense, from its line to its quarterback to its coordinator, had no response or counter to Navy’s Cover 0 blitzes. Those pressure packages didn’t just lead to 5 sacks. A tipped ball interception that set Navy up inside the Irish’s 25-yard line also was the product of all-out pressure.

All told, Navy outscored Notre Dame 19-0 in the second half. It began the third quarter with a 16-play drive that bled 10:01 off the clock. Even though that possession ended in a field goal, it changed the tenor of the game. A laugher with Notre Dame in cruise control at halftime wasn’t over until the Irish recovered an onside kick with 81 seconds left. The final 20 minutes had the rhythm of a marching band dragging its percussion instruments across the field.

Still, Notre Dame won, which top-25 teams North Carolina State and Kentucky can’t say about their Saturday home games against the last place teams in their respective divisions.

“A win is a win,” Pyne said. “Like Coach Freeman said, there were games earlier in the year where if we were in the same position, we didn’t pull through and win.”

This was, remarkably, the first game decided by five or fewer points Notre Dame has won this year. The Irish lost the prior two such contests – home defeats to Marshall and Stanford teams that have losing records against FBS competition. There’s something to be said for having just enough. The Irish did on defense and special teams.

Notre Dame forced Navy to go three-and-out on three of its next four possessions following the 10-minute drive. The punt team pinned the Midshipmen inside their 15-yard line on their final three possessions. Those two phases picked up a sputtering offense. When spotted with a 22-point halftime lead, it was enough to win.

But not enough to get rid of a sour aftertaste closer to the feeling in those Marshall and Stanford games than the Clemson or Syracuse wins.

That’s fine by Freeman, who won’t have to work too hard to create a sense of urgency during the week of preparation for Boston College, even though Notre Dame won and the Eagles are 3-7. One of Notre Dame’s worst halves in the last few seasons should supply plenty of it. If not – and that’d be a real problem – Boston College toppled North Carolina State on the road to provide more reason not to overlook it.

“If we’re not better because of what happened through the entirety of this game,” Freeman said, “then we’ve failed at an opportunity.

“This is going to be a hungry group.”

Notre Dame can make its response clear by handling Boston College next weekend like a top-20 team would be expected to beat a 3-7 opponent at home. Go cover the big point spread. Play 60 full minutes. Put an inferior opponent away after building an early lead. A win that serves as a learning experience is a coach’s ideal, even if it makes fans want to scream into a pillow. Now, Freeman’s job is to make sure the learning takes place from the top down.

“Some how, some way,” Freeman said. “We have to be better because of what happened in the second half.”

That was his same refrain four weekends earlier after Stanford stunned him and his team. Yes, the messaging after a fourth straight win was the same as it was after one of the program’s more egregious losses in recent memory.

Oxymoronic, indeed.