Notre Dame dealing with further injury trouble after BC win

Saturday’s game was held at Fenway Park in Boston as part of Notre Dame’s “Shamrock Series”, a series of home games the Irish play outside of South Bend, Ind. It’s the first football game played at Fenway since 1968.

The fourth-ranked Fighting Irish defeated a gritty and staunchly defensive Boston College football team, 19-16, at the “lyric little bandbox” Saturday night. But as we’ve seen in this series time and time again, weird things happen. The Irish came out from the Boston dugout, where their iconic “Play Like a Champion Today” sign was hung.

What I do remember, and this thought popped into my head as I entered Fenway Park for last night’s Notre Dame-Boston College showdown, is that the Red Sox never seemed to put out the good china back when the Patriots were renting the joint.

Russell was injured in the fourth quarter.

Notre Dame’s rushing defense struggled at times against Wake Forest, a surprise considering the Demon Deacons relative youth along the offensive line.

“It’s like leaving runners in scoring position, ” Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said in an interview room ringed by Red Sox pennants.

“We’re excited about the win obviously”, said Kelly, perhaps showing off his pre-coaching background in politics. At the time the Eagles tallied their fifth takeaway, they had only five first downs on offense.

Notre Dame plays at Stanford next Saturday, their final regular season game. “That’s how you win football games”. How about the watching the great Boston College defense fly to the ball from your seats along the first base line? The heat will be on guards Quenton Nelson and Steve Elmer and center Nick Martin. The Irish looked very susceptible to the draw, and a quarterback with good scrambling skills could be devastating to a defense that doesn’t always have the most sound fundamentals when it comes to “staying home”. And that’s set up a new set of circumstances that’ll sometimes have players sprinting off the field inside the 5-yard line, and then running around the opposing team’s bench, with each team controlling 40 yards between the 5-yard line and the 45.

Notre Dame attacked the middle of the field early and often, which got BC out of its game plan.

Prosise wasn’t the only prominent Notre Dame to go down with an injury against BC.

That combination became even worse when Zaire broke his ankle against Virginia, giving way to sophomore (but really redshirt freshman, as Kelly is prone to point out) DeShone Kizer, he of less than a quarter of shaky play to his name at that point. Junior linebacker Jaylon Smith was able to rack up a career-high nine solo tackles in the game, largely due to the Eagles line having to spend so much time trying to block the front.

Two plays later, Kizer hit Carlisle for a 10-yard score to make it 10-0.

The Eagles did not sell any merchandise on this historic Saturday, but they made life miserable for the “hosts”.