Tag: notre dame vs stanford

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard named a Manning Award Star of the Week

Riley Leonard’s performance from Saturday gets recognized.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish quarterback Riley Leonard has been named a Manning Award Star of the Week for his performance against Stanford.

Leonard completed 16 of 22 passes for 229 yards and three touchdowns and ran six times for 31 yards and a touchdown with a long of 18 yards. He had a quarterback rating of 94.6 in the 49-7 win over the Cardinal.

Fans can now vote for the quarterback of the week. Leonard is up against Luke Altmyer from Illinois, Evan Bullock from Louisana Tech, Dillon Gabriel from Oregon, Cade Klubnik from Clemson, Jordan McCloud from Texas State, Garrett Nussmeier from LSU, and E.J. Warner from Rice.

Voting closes at 9 a.m. Central time on Wednesday and you can vote here.

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard (13) jumps into the end zone for a touchdown during a NCAA college football game between Notre Dame and Stanford at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, in South Bend.

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Notre Dame Football: Plays of the Year – Number 6

He might not be the fastest receiver in the 2020 NFL Draft but his ball skills are as good as anybody else’s.  Enjoy your final game with Claypool in a Notre Dame uniform on Saturday because come 2020 he will be missed in blue and gold.

#83Nation.

As we near the end of the 2019 calendar year its a good time to look back at everything that went on in 2019 both personally and for our favorite sports teams.  We’re counting down the 10 best plays of Notre Dame’s 10-2 regular season.

We will unveil the plays  now through Friday – feel free to leave comments in our forum if you agree or disagree or are just looking for some general Notre Dame or college football conversation.

Here’s what we have so far:
No. 10 – Cole Kmet Gives Notre Dame the Lead at Georgia
No. 9 – Kyle Hamilton Announces His Arrival
No. 8 – Finally, A Perfected Executed Screen Pass
No. 7 – Special Teams Shift Momentum

Which brings us to number six:

Chase Claypool didn’t enter Notre Dame with the star hype that some receivers in fairly recent memory did like Will Fuller or Michael Floyd, but he’ll leave with an impressive list of accomplishments and being a downright nasty target for Ian Book over the last two seasons.

Claypool started his senior campaign fine, but far from special.  In 2019 he had four touchdown receptions through the teams first eight games which isn’t bad, but hardly impressive compared to his final month of the regular season.

After multiple clutch catches by him helped lead to a comeback win over Virginia Tech to start November, he soared scoring eight times over his final four regular season games.

I wish I could take one catch and say that it was Chase Claypool’s biggest moment but I simply can’t.  For that reason I award the sixth best play of the season to my favorite two Chase Claypool touchdown receptions this season:

The first for me was actually his fourth on a November afternoon against Navy.  He simply goes up over the Navy defender, gets both hands on the ball and is able to keep his foot in-bounds all while maintaining possession.  It seemed like a lot to type but he makes it all look incredibly easy during his fourth score that day.

The other Claypool catch that especially stood out to me was his 41 yard go-ahead touchdown reception against Stanford the final weekend of November.  Claypool again out-works the defenders, leaps and makes the acrobatic catch all while maintaining possession and giving Notre Dame their first lead of the day, one they would never look back from.

He might not be the fastest receiver in the 2020 NFL Draft but his ball skills are as good as anybody else’s.  Enjoy your final game with Claypool in a Notre Dame uniform on Saturday because come 2020 he will be missed in blue and gold.

#83Nation.

Notre Dame Football: Plays of the Year – Number 8

Three blockers to take on three defenders all while it’s an incredibly easy throw for Ian Book to make to Tony Jones.  It may not have been as important as Book’s touchdown pass to Jones in the regular season finale at USC in 2018 but the execution is perfect on a type of play Notre Dame hasn’t executed well with any regularity for quite some time.

As we near the end of the 2019 calendar year its a good time to look back at everything that went on in 2019 both personally and for our favorite sports teams.  We’re counting down the 10 best plays of Notre Dame’s 10-2 regular season.

We will unveil the plays twice a day from now through Friday and feel free to leave comments in our forum if you agree or disagree or are just looking for some general Notre Dame or college football conversation.

Here’s what we have so far:
No. 10 – Cole Kmet Gives Notre Dame the Lead at Georgia
No. 9 – Kyle Hamilton Announces His Arrival

Which brings us to number eight:

Watching Notre Dame’s offense in recent years has left a lot to be desired in terms of the screen game.  How can you tell?  Just by reading that you already remember the most-successful and best looking screen pass of the 2019 season if you watched each Notre Dame game.

It’s something that has lacked execution for years and did for large chunks of this year.

But it was something that was finally executed perfectly in the final game of the regular season and got Notre Dame on the board for their first score of the day at Stanford.

Tony Jones, Jr. gets the love for capping the drive but the execution of this play is flat-out perfect.

Three blockers to take on three defenders all while it’s an incredibly easy throw for Ian Book to make to Tony Jones.  It may not have been as important as Book’s touchdown pass to Jones in the regular season finale at USC in 2018 but the execution is perfect on a type of play Notre Dame hasn’t executed well with any regularity for quite some time.

Stay tuned as we have seven more plays to count down before kickoff on Saturday.

No. 16 Notre Dame at Stanford: Fighting Irish Wire Predictions

They’re like west-coast Boston College without being a Catholic school.

Playing at Stanford stinks.

From afar it appears nobody in the home-crowd cares, the field is reminiscent of Notre Dame Stadium’s pre-field turf and there have been plenty of nightmares there for the last decade.

With that said, No. 16 Notre Dame has to go there and win if they’re going to finish the regular season with ten wins and have even the smallest of chances of getting to the Cotton Bowl (which I declared them dead for Tuesday night).

So what happens when 9-2 Notre Dame hits the wet and torn up turf at 4-7 Stanford at 4 pm ET today?  Here’s our best guesses:

Jeff F:

It’s fitting that again Notre Dame, needing to put on a show for the playoff committee, ends up in Stanford. This place has been full of nightmares the last decade but after last season’s playoff experience they’ll be better equipped to handle today, regardless of how mediocre Stanford has been.  Time to erase a decade of heartbreak clean and get a victory today.

Notre Dame 34, Stanford 13

Nick S.:

Like some people complain about the Navy game and want to see it gone, I say the same for Stanford.  They’ve been good for ten years, otherwise just been mostly-trash that has only caused trouble once this series began being played annually.  They’re pretty much west-coast Boston College without being a Catholic school.

Show me where this beat up Stanford team is better than Notre Dame because I’m having trouble thinking the Irish don’t walk in and push around this Cardinal defense for 60 minutes with Ian Book going crazy for 150+ in the run game.

All Irish who make the Cardinal quit, yet Brian Kelly keeps it respectable against David Shaw.

Notre Dame 38, Stanford 10

 

Notre Dame/Stanford: Get Ready By Reliving Two Classics

Enough with the negative ends, how about we get ready for game day and a chance at another ten-win regular season with something positive that’s happened against Stanford instead?

No. 16 Notre Dame finishes up their regular season at Stanford today in a game that should feature plenty of rain, wind and a sloppy track.  As we discussed earlier this week, Stanford has been a house of horrors for the last decade with Notre Dame losing each of their last five games there.

Enough with the negative ends, how about we get ready for game day and a chance at another ten-win regular season with something positive that’s happened against Stanford instead?

Or, even better than that  – how about two classic finishes against Stanford?

We all remember the 2012 season.  5-0 and No. 7 Notre Dame was hosting No. 17 Stanford in a match-up the Irish had lost the last three meetings between.

Trailing late the Irish rallied to send things to overtime where an all-time finish awaited:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpK7QUG3cbE&w=560&h=315]

Two years later the Irish were off to another hot start, sitting at 4-0 and No. 9 when No. 14 Stanford returned to South Bend.

Although 2014 didn’t end with a 12-0 regular season like two years previous did so this one gets more forgotten about in Irish lore, but for one afternoon Ben Koyack was a legend.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWEJy5hUZfc&w=560&h=315]

Here’s to hoping today’s game ends that five game losing streak out there, but doesn’t require any last second heroics, either!

Notre Dame/Stanford: David Shaw Throws A Book of Praise

I’ll be the first to say that Book gets criticized a ton for not being as great as some of the Heisman or national championship contending guys and his performance against Michigan was inexcusable.

However, the young man is still one of the better ones you’ll find in all of college football

Stanford head football coach David Shaw was once widely regarded as among the best in the country and potentially destined for the NFL.

You don’t hear that as much the last two years as Stanford fell from the top-ten to a 9-4 squad last season before regressing to a 4-7 team this year as they enter their final game of 2019.

When meeting the media like he does every Tuesday during the season, Shaw was asked about his next opponent, No. 16 Notre Dame.

As most coaches normally do, he gave a lot of praise to this week’s foe, but saved the most compliments for the Fighting Irish quarterback.

A quarterback that just makes plays, with his legs. I told the team yesterday, I don’t know that there’s many quarterbacks in the country that about half the season he’s led them in passing and rushing. It’s not that there are a whole bunch of designed quarterback runs, it’s just the kid’s got a great feel for football. He pushes up in the pocket and can escape, can buy time with his legs, it’s hard to get your arms around and wrap him up and bring him down. – David Shaw on Ian Book

I’ll be the first to say that Book gets criticized a ton for not being as great as some of the Heisman or national championship contending guys and his performance against Michigan was inexcusable.

However, the young man is still one of the better ones you’ll find in all of college football and with what has gone on at Stanford this year, you can bet Shaw would love to have the stability of Book at his quarterback spot.

Book’s first home-start in 2018 came against then-seventh ranked Stanford last September.

Book shined bright under the lights throwing for 278 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for 47 more yards.

Here’s to hoping he does the same to Stanford on what looks like it’ll be a very sloppy track in Palo Alto.