This is where the rubber meets the road for the 2019 Irish. We're on the outside right now in the CFP conversation. Clemson, SEC team, OU, Ohio State are the teams that right now look to be in the playoffs. For the Irish to break into that group we have to beat Georgia. If we play well and lose a close game, but win out, we might be in the conversation at the end...but lose big and we're done most likely even if we win out. Lose big is what everybody is predicting. 14 point underdogs, I expect that number to grow to maybe 18 points by the end of the week. I can't think of a single position or position group right now that the edge isn't to Georgia. Of course there is this thing called upset that sometimes happens in these games. Hopefully our team believes that they can pull off the upset, that they can go in to Athens and play their best game. That's what it will take. The wins we have had are against mediocre competition, not that Georgia has been playing top competition either. But we've struggled to stop the run and Georgia has a great OL and NFL running backs. We've struggled to run the ball and Georgia has a stout SEC defense, maybe not quite as good as the Clemson D from last year but they are in the same zip code. Cole Kmet will be ready to play vs Georgia, good news only if our OL can give Ian Book the time to set some feet and throw the ball. Jahmir Smith will be ready that's good news, but the truth is we don't really know how good he is, he really hasn't played that much. Other than those guys we are healthy. We've picked up an unexpected resource in Javon McKinley who I for one didn't count on being a factor at all. But he looked great Sat, and Lenzy looked great in his limited time on the field. The knock on him supposedly has been his hands (drops) but that deep ball he caught from Jurkovec was a great catch. I saw where Pete Sampson on the Athletic said if we will have to throw the ball at least 40 times if we hope to stay close/win. Hard to imagine going Air Raid against UGA is a good thing, but what do I know. All said I'm looking forward to the game. Cautiously hopeful.
Putting the cart before the horse, but the winner of this game should be ranked #1 as they would have proven more than anyone in the country at this time. Just throwing that out there.
Has an undefeated team ever lost their #1 ranking without losing a game? Just asking? It's probably happened and if Charlotte and So. Miss give Clemson and Alabama close games while Georgia beats ND by three TD's or so, could happen again.
In all honesty, who cares who is no. 1. If you are in the top ten and you go undefeated you are in. If you lose a close one to another top 10 you still have a great shot. Notre Dame is at a disadvantage because y'all don't have a conference championship game.
Not much to analyze. The Irish have to beat Georgia. I have no idea how good we are. The team has shown almost nothing of the offense and just straight defenses in the first two games, but will have to open up the whole can of whup-arse now. There's nothing to save it for...
As a Gator fan I empathize with the plight of the ND fan this weekend. Hopeful but not really harboring any serious ideas that my team can pull it off vs. these NFL laden Dawgs. We do have Jacksonville as an X factor that many times in the past has helped Florida to mysteriously upend superior Georgia teams. Good luck Irish.
Corey, that wasn't criticism, just a fact. The conference championship games add another ranked (usually) team to the schedule late in the season.
Of course the reason the B12 has that redundant championship game is the perception that if we don't then it will hurt us in getting into the CFP. We tried manipulating the schedule so that the last week of the regular season was the same week as the other Conference Championship games, but that still left us in the position of not playing as many games. The 13th data point. Which of course is the problem that ND faces every year, we have 12 games ...like last year if we go undefeated we are most likely always going to make the CFP. If we have 1 loss the chances go way down. In 2017 we lost close to UGA at home and stayed in the hunt all the way to the disaster at Miami. We'll never know of course what would have happened if we'd gone 11-1 with that one loss being to UGA who won the SEC Championship and also finished with 1 loss. In fact in 2017 there were no undefeated teams (other than UCF). So had we gone 11-1 it could have come down to 11-1 ND v 11-1 Alabama. We peaked at #3 in Week 8, had we won out I think we'd have stayed in the top 4 but you don't know for sure since it's of course all speculation. They talked about that on ESPNU this morning (McElroy and Kaneel) and they were talking about ND scheduling a 13th game with BYU or the best Group of 5 team...but you can't schedule 13 games. There would have to be some exception, like what used to be given to teams who went to Hawaii to play a game with the Rainbows. And we can't even manipulate our schedule to play that week as no team would schedule a game in their conferences championship week. That would leave really only BYU and late Nov game in Provo or South Bend wouldn't be a great venue. So the answer ...win'em all.
Looks like ND fans impressed UGA fans who attended the game at ND a couple of years ago. Here's an article from the Dawg Post asking for a return welcome. UGA Fan: Return the Favor and Treat Notre Dame Fans Well
I can't remember any fan group traveling to South Bend for a game ever having anything bad to say about their game day experience. Texas fans reported the same from both the '95 game and the 2015 game. I had to laugh at this line from the article that Gip linked.
So basically, the talking heads give us zero chance at winning this game. In other words, this could be a "Notre Dame moment" that we all were raised on. Or will it be another Kelly moment? We'll see.
"The fans of ND coming to Athens are not UF fans. Please, please, do not treat them as such" ........ idiot.
Yeah, I didn't think you'd like that line, Dave. Really, basing things off of the spoken and written word on TV, as well as radio, I'm not even sure why ND is bothering to get on the plane for this game.