In the second quarter of the Texas Longhorns’ marquee matchup with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, quarterback Tyrone Swoopes dished out some punishment following a touchdown run. “It’s important for us, too”. He finished with five touchdown passes.
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Notre Dame 7, Texas 7 (9:30) – After being punched in the mouth to start the game, Texas answers back in a big way.
Kelly can start that process today by installing Kizer has his No. 1 and only.
Kelly should change that by Wednesday.
Kizer, a veteran who led the Irish to a last-minute victory at Virginia previous year, completed a 17-yard touchdown pass to Josh Adams with 10:57 left in the fourth for a 35-31 lead. Why take a quarterback out while he’s in a groove?
The Longhorns avenged their humiliation South Bend previous year by upsetting the #10 ranked Irish, and for the first time in the Charlie Strong era, actually feel good about their quarterback situation, and what they can accomplish this season.
The Longhorns 25-yard field goal attempt is good and they lead 31-14 with 9:14 left in the 3rd quarter. Not counting a first-half kneel-down, Buechele had led four consecutive scoring drives.
That made the score 37-37 instead of 38-35, so it was a huge break for the Fighting Irish. That silence the crowd. The shock is Notre Dame’s talent level on defense might be worse than expected if Kelly is to be believed the 3-3-5 approach was created to get the program’s best personnel on the field.
More concerning than Kelly’s overthink of the quarterback situation was the fact it even got to this.
Both teams combined for 443 yards on the ground, and Notre Dame even won the turnover battle. Things started to go sideways when Kyle Porter, another freshman, took a kick out of the end zone and then swatted at a Notre Dame player, drawing a personal foul. Everybody has the benefit of hindsight there, and Zaire is going to continue to get snaps in the season. The Longhorns, who have struggled in recent seasons, have come to play tonight. It should also scare the living bleep out of every other coach and every other program in the great state a Texas from Waco to Fort Worth to Lubbock to College Station.
Sunday night was a coming out party for Texas Longhorns freshman quarterback Shane Buechele. Oklahoma did the same thing with Blake Bell.
For long stretches of the first half, it was Notre Dame’s Brian Kellywho looked like he was moving quarterbacks up and down his depth chart on the fly.
“They would like to be the guy, but they want to win, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to win and find a way to win the game”, he said.
That means there’s lots of bad when you lose, but it means there’s a higher level of good when you win. Three straight touchdowns and the Irish were up 35-31. Seems like kind of a missed opportunity.
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Some – mainly Texas fans based on their reaction in the stands – will scoff at the notion that the play should have been called targeting, but based on reviewing the play, it looks like a clear cut case of targeting if their ever was one. It was a player the coaching staff failed to prepare for this moment.
