COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF: Orange Bowl Data Review — Notre Dame 27, Penn State 24

Some data snapshots from the Irish’s instant classic, 27-24 win over Penn State.

Oh the agony.

Notre Dame football had me spending most of Thursday night reenacting Fred Sanford’s iconic calls to Elizabeth. And I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything in the world.

The Irish punched their ticket to the 2024 College Football National Championship with a Semifinal (Orange Bowl) victory over the Penn State Nittany Lions. It was a wild game to watch and and provided us with crazy stats to analyze.

So let’s dig in.

Scoring Summary

It all came down to the very last second but the game’s score was 27-24, in favor of Notre Dame. Both teams went scoreless in the first quarter and it was probably the worst the Irish have looked in several weeks. And that’s not a knock, the fates were just being particularly cruel. Things got worse for much of the 2^nd quarter and the Nittany Lions closed out the half up 10-3.

Notre Dame emerged from halftime like a team reborn and shutout Penn State 7-0 in the 3^rd quarter. And the Orange Bowl’s 4^th quarter gave us some of the most legendary college football we’ve seen in the modern age. The two teams duked it out but Notre Dame found the edges when they needed them the most and outscored Penn State 17-14.

Drive Summary – Notre Dame

Notre Dame’s drive summary pretty concisely summarizes why most of our blood pressure readings still haven’t come down. They scored on five out of their eleven substantial drives, averaging around six plays and 37 yards per drive.

But man did all of those scoring drives come in clutch moments. Riley Leonard and Steve Angelis led the team 52 yards over 13 plays to deliver the Irish a field goal and much needed jolt going into the second half. They followed that up when they got the ball back to open the 3^rd quarter and delivered a touchdown on an 8-play, 75-yard drive.

ND strung together another long touchdown drive that spanned ten plays and 71 yards only to give up an interception on the first play of their follow-up opportunity. That mishap didn’t crush them, though, and the offense responded with a 7-play, 81-yard touchdown drive.

And Mitch Jeter gave the team the final push they needed to break the 24-24 tie on Penn with a 41-yard field goal to cap off a 7-play, 19-yard drive.

I’ve been honest about my issues with the Notre Dame offense this season but they’ve sure as hell shown up in the postseason. Two of the big takeaways for me from the drive summary is that they didn’t allow the two interceptions to be fatal and that they also found a way to victory without the defense serving them up turnovers. I didn’t have the Irish offense stringing together three 70+ yard touchdown drives in my pregame notes but they’re grit is what really sealed the deal.

Ball Movement

Converting on third downs has been a trouble area for the Irish all season but they found themselves on the right side of things in the Orange Bowl. The team was presented with more conversion opportunities than Penn State, 17-11, and were successful in 64.7% of their attempts. Penn State finished the game only converting 27.3% of their third down conversion attempts.

Offensive Summary

One of the biggest surprises that the Irish served up in the Semifinals was a pretty successful passing attack. They outproduced Penn State in total offensive production 383 yards to 339 yards. Notre Dame accounted for a truly unprecedented 66.4% of the game’s total yards through the air, 267 yards to 135 yards.

The Nittany Lions’ run game was a hassle to deal with all game, and they were responsible for 63.8% of the game’s 320 total rushing yards. Notre Dame still finished the game with a solid 116 yards on the ground.

Passing

The Irish had 31 pass attempts in the Semifinal game, one of their highest totals of the season. They had highs of 33 attempts in the Northern Illinois and Virginia games, as well as 32 attempts in the Round 1 Indiana matchup. The Leonard-Angeli combo finished with an overall completion rate of 67.7%. Riley Leonard went 15 for 23 and Steve Angeli finished the game having completed six of his seven pass attempts.

Rushing

Notre Dame finished the Orange Bowl with 42 rushing attempts and their season high up to this point was 44 attempts in the 66-7 rout of Purdue. They hit a very real floor of only 2.9 yards per carry against Penn State but that doesn’t matter because the run game delivered exactly when it needed to.

Receiving Details

Sophomore wide receiver Jaden Greathouse had a standout performance against Penn State. He racked up 105 receiving yards on seven catches and was also responsible for the team’s sole receiving touchdown. Freshman running back Aneyas Williams put his receiving chops on full display and recorded five catches for 66 yards. Tight end Mitchell Evans and postseason star receiver Jordan Faison also played pivotal roles in the Irish’s successful passing attack. Evans finished with five catches for 58 yards and Faison had two catches for 35 yards.

Rushing Details

Jeremiyah Love delivered another gutsy performance to help Notre Dame claim their Championship berth. The sophomore running back logged 11 carries for 45 yards and one of the most unbelievable rushing touchdowns I’ve ever seen. All with a knee brace on that looked very stiff and uncomfortable. Riley Leonard also got most of his rushing yards by throwing his body around with reckless abandon. He finished the game with 18 carries, 35 yards and a touchdown for his efforts/sacrifices.

Defensive Summary

For the first time in a long while we saw the Notre Dame defense struggle against an opposing offense.

Penn State found early success with a 14-play, 55-yard field goal drive. They followed that up with a 15-play, 90-yard touchdown drive that had me curled up in a tight fetal position on my couch. And while the Nittany Lion’s offense was never really shut down, the Irish defense significantly slowed them down through the stretch.

Penn State fought their way to a 7-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to begin the 4^th quarter and capitalized on the ND interception cap off a 39-yard drive with a touchdown. But as they embarked on their last chance to clinch victory, sophomore cornerback Christian Gray delivered the turnover that most of us had been yearning for all game. Also the turnover that the pesky refs couldn’t meddle with. Gray’s pic set the Irish up for the go-ahead field goal and Penn State wasn’t able to do anything with their last two plays.

Defensive Details

Penn State’s extremely physical offense pushed the Irish defense to the brink in terms of tackling. And the squad bent in moments but didn’t break. Linebacker Jack Kiser recorded ten total tackles, four of which were solo. Fellow linebackers Drayk Bowen and Jaylen Sneed had eight tackles and six tackles, respectively.

Safety Xavier Watts also had another phenomenal performance and finished the night with eight total tackles and five solo tackles.

The Nittany Lions’s offensive line was like a concrete wall for much of the game and ND closed things out with only two tackles for loss (Rod Heard II, Joshua Burnham) and one sack (Rod Heard II). That sack came at a pretty important moment, though. Heard dropped Penn State’s Drew Allar for an eight yard loss on 3rd & 7. After they punted the ball, Notre Dame turned that opportunity into a 71-yard touchdown drive.

Final Thoughts

It still hasn’t really registered with me that the next time we’ll see this Notre Dame team suited up is down in Atlanta for the National Championship game. This squad has been incredibly fun to watch even though I’ve spent a lot of hours this season pulling my hair out trying to make data sense of it all.

All the anxiety has been worth it and now the guys get to play for the biggest prize of them all. And they locked in their bid with the gutsiest football any of us have seen from any big-time CFB program in a long time. You couldn’t have drawn this journey up any better if you tried.

Cheers and Go Irish!!