USA TODAY Sports
PITTSBURGH – Hands at his sides, palms facing outward and feet splayed at 45 degrees, Antonio Brown pranced through the locker room as if he’d just found the end zone. More
LOS ANGELES — The end is here. And it looked, for the most part, like the rest of it.
Notre Dame’s 45-27 loss shared all too many similarities with their other seven defeats. Special teams blunders. A devastating stretch before halftime that altered the game’s outcome. And a mostly gutty effort that ended with the Irish losing because they gave away much more than they took.
The Irish showed plenty of fight on Saturday. Unfortunately, they showed just as much charity. Two special teams touchdowns for Adoree Jackson. A DeShone Kizer gift-wrapped pick six. Add them together and three scores were just too many to spot the hottest football team in the country.
The Irish end their season with four wins. They leave behind many more unanswered questions. Let’s find out what we learned.
Adoree Jackson against Notre Dame’s special teams was an unfair fight.
Notre Dame knew Adoree Jackson was one of the country’s most dangerous return men. They kicked to him anyway.
Jackson’s 55-yard punt return and 97-yard kickoff return were two more touchdowns given up by Scott Booker’s special teams, a fitting end to a nightmarish season where the five return scores allowed only covered a fraction of the damage done.
On a day where the Irish special teams needed to be clean, they were anything but. And when Jackson picked up a bouncing punt and sprinted to the end zone, he turned a field goal-game into a 10-pointer. And when Jackson answered his coverage blunder with a hurdling, highlight reel return touchdown, he all but ended the game.
“Unfortunately today, special teams was a huge deciding factor in the game and we gave up two touchdowns there to a very talented player,” Kelly said postgame. “But we knew how talented he was going into the game.”
That talent presented omnipresent problems, the Irish unwilling to kick away from Jackson when they knew playmakers like Ronald Jones and JuJu Smith-Schuster awaited. And with Jackson’s lone catch going 52-yards for a touchdown, the All-American candidate left Irish defenders grasping at air as the all-purpose weapon scored three times—with Irish fans hoping they’ve seen Jackson for the last time with a stay-or-go decision coming soon.
(Speaking of those…)
DeShone Kizer may well be a high first-round draft pick. But before he makes his final decision, he’d be wise to look at all the information on hand.
DeShone Kizer hasn’t made any decisions. That was the message from the quarterback after he faced a swarm of tape recorders, all hoping to get something from a football player far too smart to offer anything.
But if this is indeed it for Kizer, he’ll leave a resume far less convincing than the one he had entering the season. As NFL teams looks for a quarterback to change the future of their franchise, Kizer will need to prove that the player showing up on tape is the real deal, not a signal-caller who regressed in his second season as a starter.
Kizer’s final Saturday of the season was another mixed bag. His 17 completions included some throws that’ll make football men nod with approval. But his 15 misses included some head-shakers, none more confounding than Ajene Harris‘s interception, the throw into coverage breaking Notre Dame’s back.
Kizer’s receiving corps was undermanned, with Corey Holmes struggling in a featured role and Chris Finke supplying most of the playmaking. Add in challenging weather conditions, and it was difficult to tell if Kizer struggled or merely fought an uphill fight.
“There were…
A highly anticipated matchup between in-state rivals Washington and Washington State was far less competitive than expected. The Huskies bludgeoned the Cougars on their home turf, racking up 512 total yards and six touchdowns in a 45–17 rout. The win clinches the Pac-12 North Division for Washington, and it will face either USC or Colorado in the conference title game next week. Here are three thoughts on what unfolded at Martin Stadium:
Washington wasted little time in demonstrating why it is considered one of the best teams in the country. The Huskies scored touchdowns on their first four drives, including consecutive passing scores from quarterback Jake Browning to wide receiver Dante Pettis, and limited the Cougars to only three points over their first five sequences. Browning picked apart Washington State’s pass defense, and the Huskies shut down star quarterback Luke Falk and the Cougars’ high-octane attack. Through the first quarter, Washington was averaging 11.4 yards per play compared to 4.9 for Washington State, and the Huskies had recorded nine first downs compared to two for the Cougars.
Washington State finally got into the end zone in the second quarter when it took advantage of good field position after forcing a fumble from Washington receiver John Ross, but the Huskies responded with a seven-play, 85-yard touchdown drive to extend its lead to 25 points. The Cougars’ nightmare half came to a close with them squandering another scoring opportunity, as Falk lofted a pass into heavy coverage in the end zone for an interception. It goes without saying this was not the way Washington State envisioned the first two quarters of this game unfolding, but unlike most situations, when the high-scoring Cougars could feel confident in their ability to make up sizable deficits, the vast disparity in performance between these two teams over the first two quarters left the impression that Washington had already secured the…