Notre Dame is facing a Stanford team that has gotten slightly better as the game has gone on. The Cardinal have shown that while they might not win this game, they will not go away quietly. Even so, the Irish still have a 31-7 lead after three quarters.
The Irish’s first drive of the second half ended prematurely when Jack Coan was picked off on third down by Jonathan McGill, who returned the ball 23 yards to get into the red zone. The Cardinal took advantage of the short field when they needed only two plays for Austin Jones to run 5 yards for the first touchdown the Irish have given up in almost a month.
If that touchdown fazed the Irish, they didn’t show it. On the second play of their next drive, Coan hit Kevin Austin for a 61-yard reception that nearly resulted in the responding touchdown. It took another two plays for that to happen, but Coan pulled it off from 1 yard out on a keeper.
The game then reached a standstill as punts ended the next five drives. It may not have been interesting football, but it burned a lot of time off the clock. While it’s unlikely the Irish needed to resort to clock management to win this game, they can afford to take that approach, intentional or not, when they have a 24-point lead. Having Chris Tyree run for 33 yards on the final play of the quarter works, too.