2021 ND Football – Page 14 – Syndication Server

Watch: Notre Dame highlights in rout of Stanford

What was your favorite moment of the blowout victory?

No. 6 Notre Dame should be moving up in the College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday night when the new rankings are released. Their 45-14 win over Stanford wasn’t competitive, although Stanford was able to end the Irish’s streak of not allowing a touchdown against previously in all of November.

Notre Dame was in complete control of Saturday night’s game and moved to 11-1. Will it ultimately be a strong enough resume to get the Irish to their third College Football Playoff appearance in four seasons?

Time will tell on that but be sure to enjoy this night and season. In what was seen by many as a potential rebuilding year, Notre Dame went 11-1 while getting a bunch of young players a ton of playing time and development.

Celebrate this game and season and check out the highlights from the victory below:

11-1 ☘️#GoIrish pic.twitter.com/H57OOLBCSe

— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) November 28, 2021

No. 6 Notre Dame cruises past Stanford: 5 instant takeaways

Notre Dame cruised to victory with a 45-14 win at Stanford. What was your biggest takeaway from the easy victory?

No. 6 Notre Dame had already had a solid day before they took the field at Stanford for their 2021 regular season finale and their easy victory over the struggling Cardinal. It got better though as the Irish jumped out to a 24-0 halftime lead and cruised in the second half as the issue was never really in doubt.

What comes next for Notre Dame? Where will they be ranked when the new College Football Playoff rankings come out on Tuesday night and have they done enough to stay ahead of a potential one-loss Big 12 champion?

Here are the five things we take away from Notre Dame’s 45-14 victory at Stanford that closes the 2021 regular season:

Watch: Michael Mayer destroys Stanford defender

(Heart Emoji)

It was nothing short of laughable earlier this week when Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer was left off the list of three finalists for the Mackey Award which goes to the nation’s best tight end each season.

Mayer responded by having a fantastic first half at Stanford in Notre Dame’s regular season finale, pulling in five receptions for 61 yards in the game’s first-30 minutes. His biggest highlight of the first half however was in another part of the game he stars in, the blocking game.

Attn: @NickShepkowski

pic.twitter.com/r14aFVcxQm

— Mitch Stoermer (@mitchstoermer) November 28, 2021

Michael Mayer is the best tight end in college football whether the award goes to him or not.

Notre Dame leads 24-0 at halftime, as we post this. If the second half gets as lopsided as it appears to be headed then I’ll probably find myself going to back to watching this no less than 64 times before midnight.

Does Michigan’s massive win over Ohio State help Notre Dame?

Alabama somehow survives at Auburn but it comes at a cost for Tide

2021 Notre Dame first comes in Stanford finale

It took 12 games but something happened for the first time with the 2021 Notre Dame football team,

No. 6 Notre Dame has experienced quite a bit in 2021 with last-second finishes, thrilling games, and 10 wins in 11 tries.

Something happened for the first time all year though as Notre Dame got started at Stanford:

Notre Dame didn’t receive to start the game.

In all 11 games to date Notre Dame had received the opening kickoff but Stanford won the coin toss and opted to receive.

I have no idea what the history is for the most times a team has received the opening kickoff in a season, but I can tell you that Notre Dame’s bid at doing so came to an end Saturday night at Stanford.

Now enjoy the game.

Does Michigan’s massive win over Ohio State help Notre Dame?

Alabama somehow survives at Auburn but it comes at a cost for Tide

Bama Survives at Auburn…Partially

Bama survives but not without a cost…

Alabama rallied in the fourth quarter to force overtime at Auburn, eventually winning the rivalry game and improving to 11-1 on the year. They survived the scare and now advance to the SEC Championship where a win over No. 1 Georgia would send them to the College Football Playoff.

Here’s the thing, though.

Saturday’s SEC Championship will officially be an elimination game for Alabama if the CFP committee has self-respect. Any previous talk of a two-loss Alabama team being worthy of a CFP appearance can be over now. If you’re going to be the first two-loss team to get in you’ve got to be a lot more dominating in all of your wins than Alabama was too often this season.

I don’t disagree with Nick Saban that winning is hard. It’s really hard. I don’t question that and deny it whatsoever.

But when average teams regularly push you to the brink any talk of being a “different” kind of two-loss team needs to be fired into the sun.

Alabama beat a 6-6 Florida team by two.

Alabama beat a five-loss LSU team by just one score.

Alabama needed triple overtime and an epic collapse by Auburn to get by the 6-6 Tigers.

If Alabama wins next Saturday against Georgia they deserve a CFP appearance.

But after this showing and stacking it on top of the other showings stated above and you can end any talk of a two-loss Alabama team being playoff worthy.

And that is really good news if you’re a Notre Dame or fan of a Big 12 team.

Does Michigan’s huge win over Ohio State impact Notre Dame?

The party is on in Ann Arbor…

Michigan wasn’t given much of a chance by the nation Saturday as they went into their Saturday date with No. 2 Ohio State ranked fifth in the College Football Playoff rankings but hadn’t beaten their rival since 2011.

10-years later that streak has finally ended for the Wolverines as they upset Ohio State to secure their first ever trip to the Big Ten Championship game in Indianapolis. A win there over Iowa or Wisconsin will then mean Michigan will make their first trip to the College Football Playoff (CFP).

Related: Check out the Michigan and Ohio State perspectives at Wolverines Wire and Buckeyes Wire!

Here at Fighting Irish Wire we’re always trying to figure out how things impact Notre Dame. In this case how are Notre Dame’s playoff odds affected by Michigan’s victory?

According to FiveThirtyEight, Notre Dame’s chances of making the CFP take a minimal hit as they drop from 31% to 30% with the Michigan win. I don’t really get how they go down, unless Ohio State gets love from the committee they don’t deserve with two losses.

Michigan will be the obvious favorite in the Big Ten Championship next weekend regardless of who they play (Wisconsin clinches a berth with win over Minnesota, Iowa clinches berth if Wisconsin loses). However, the matchup seems to lend itself better to both Wisconsin and Iowa’s chances with it being a Michigan team that doesn’t light up the scoreboard quite like Ohio State’s can do.

Pretty simply, the spread in next week’s Big Ten championship will be a smaller number than if Ohio State was playing. That’s not to take anything away from Michigan whatsoever, just with an offense that wasn’t viewed as “as sexy” as Ohio State’s, that’s a fact.

That said, I’ll still pick Michigan to come out of that as the victor, but perhaps it’ll be a tougher test than the first meeting between the two was.

Other than that, Ohio State having two losses eliminates them from the CFP, just like a second loss by Alabama SHOULD do to the Tide.

So in short, Michigan’s win helps Notre Dame in the fact that maybe the Big Ten is now ever-so-slightly more winnable for Wisconsin than it would be if they played Ohio State?

It’s not a bad thing, whatever the case.

So congrats to Michigan fans that have sat through a lot of torcher with Ohio State the last couple decades. That’s a win worth celebrating for days.

Heck, celebrate it for the next week straight and come out flat in Indianapolis?

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No. 6 Notre Dame vs. Stanford: Staff predictions for regular season finale

Does Notre Dame allow a touchdown for the first time this November?

Notre Dame checks in sixth in the College Football Playoff rankings and has a path to the Playoff if they can get a little bit of help.

Of course, they have to take care of business first themselves as a trip to Stanford sits between the Irish and an 11-1 season. Stanford has one of the biggest upsets of the year when they knocked off Oregon in early October but the Cardinal haven’t won since, dropping their last five and entering their 2021 finale at 3-8.

Will Stanford pose an actual threat to Notre Dame’s 11-1 season or will they just be the latest bug on the windshield for the Irish, who have outscored opponents 117-9 in November?

Here is what the Fighting Irish Wire staff sees happening:

Keyshawn Johnson really, really doesn’t like Notre Dame

It’s like watching a train wreck you just can’t look away from…

Sometimes I’ll ponder to myself or with other Notre Dame fans about what we’d like USC to be. With a national head coaching search in full-go mode since September, the Trojans have a massive hire they’ll be making in the next few weeks.

Part of me thinks it’d be awesome to have Notre Dame and USC both be great at the same time for years and years, since it’s been decades since that was the case. I also think of Matt Zemek who runs Trojans Wire and who I had a blast going to Notre Dame-USC memory with earlier this year, and think how he deserves to cover a football team that’s actually worth watching.

Then on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving I scroll through Twitter and find Keyshawn Johnson to quickly talk sense back into me as he reminded me why I’d forever like to USC trip over themselves and not make bowl games.

Johnson, the former USC All-American, now works on ESPN Radio’s morning show with Max Kellerman and Jay Williams that you’d have to guarantee me a check in order to tune into.

Anyway, the gang was talking about potential College Football Playoff teams on Wednesday and Johnson shared the following well thought-out point:

“I don’t want to see the damn Irish, period!”@keyshawn does NOT want to see Notre Dame make the College Football Playoff again. #KJM pic.twitter.com/8fFyJKFQsK

— Keyshawn, JWill & Max (@KeyJayandMax) November 24, 2021

I know some parts of Notre Dame Twitter are real upset with Johnson for what he said but I actually appreciate it. Plenty out there will claim to have no bias against Notre Dame but then craft incredibly dumb arguments to try and single the Irish out negatively. At least Johnson just gives it to us straight and doesn’t try hide from his dislike.

I however have no idea what Notre Dame ever did to Johnson to make him feel that way…

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Notre Dame’s updated road map to College Football Playoff

What do you think should need to happen to get Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff?

Notre Dame checked in sixth this week in the College Football Playoff rankings with two teams ahead of them set to play this weekend and another pair set to play next weekend. It seems like the Irish have a great shot at making the CFP for a third time in four seasons upon hearing that, right?

To quote Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!”

Although those are the facts today, seemingly everything you hear appears to be hell-bent on a one-loss Big 12 champion (Oklahoma or Oklahoma State) moving past Notre Dame. The Irish will have to hope for whoever wins the Bedlam matchup this weekend to fall in next weekend’s Big 12 championship.

Here is the updated Notre Dame road map to the College Football Playoff after the week 12 CFP rankings were released with all percentages courtesy of the FiveThirtyEight college football tracker.

2014 shows what Notre Dame is up against for CFP

What does the Big 12 in the 2014 CFP have to do with Notre Dame in 2021? Everything.

In 2014, the first year of the College Football Playoff format, TCU and Baylor went into the final weekend of the year ranked fourth and sixth, respectively. Both won, TCU 55-3 over Iowa State, while Baylor beat a top-10 Kansas State team.

However, both failed to be ranked in the top four of the College Football Playoff rankings a week later when the actual playoff seedings were announced.

How could that be?

At that time the Big 12 didn’t play a conference championship game while each of the other Power Five conferences did.

Ohio State, who was ranked fifth in the previous poll, jumped into the top four after dismantling Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten championship and went onto eventually win it all from that four-seed.

Oklahoma State checked in one spot behind Notre Dame last night in the new College Football Playoff rankings. Oklahoma checked in tenth despite being 10-1. The two play each other this week and if Oklahoma wins, would meet again next week in the Big 12 championship. If Oklahoma State wins then they’d likely face Baylor in the championship game.

What does it have to do with Notre Dame?

The issue of not having a conference championship game. I don’t look at it as having a 13th piece of data to look at because when you examine either Oklahoma or Oklahoma State, non-conference wins Tulane and Missouri State didn’t exactly come against world-beaters.

But then again Notre Dame has a win over Navy who is having one of their worst seasons in recent memory. As impressive as it may have been on the scoreboard, it hardly was so in the bigger picture.

The Big 12 was picked over seven years ago because they didn’t have a conference title game. Seven years later it very well could be that conference championship game that earns them a playoff spot over a one-loss Notre Dame team.

Or it could be what hands Oklahoma or Oklahoma State that second loss that Notre Dame fans will be rooting for next weekend.