Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Hogan threw for 269 yards and led the winning drive in the final 30 seconds for the Cardinal (10-2), which kept its slim playoff hopes alive.

As for the victor, that will be a much more complicated question.

With both teams throwing punches on either side of the ball, it was the Cardinal that was able to withstand the body blows and leave Foster Field with a thrilling 38-36 win. “We’ve got to play USC next week'”.

“We exchanged pleasantries there that only the coach and quarterback can”, said Stanford coach David Shaw.

“I had zero doubt in my mind that Coach was going to make that call”, Cajuste said. We may be deserving. “We know we took it out of our hands a couple weeks back [when Stanford lost to Oregon], but no one in the country wants to play us right now”.

As the Cardinal sit at 10-2, on the outside of the College Football Playoff picture, a 16-6 loss Week 1 at Northwestern has a similar feel to those near-misses in years past. The best bet would be to include all of them, for post hoc ergo propter hoc can’t really be used for the linear motion of a football game. The Irish slipped out of the top four in the eyes of the selection committee following a narrow victory against Boston College last week. “Chris Brown and Amir Carlisle had big games for us”, Kelly said postgame. “All I care about is Stanford”. But it didn’t matter to Notre Dame in a strong effort that ultimately went for naught. Perhaps one or two – or five – fewer injuries and Notre Dame’s fortunes might have been different.

Stanford sophomore Christian McCaffrey is making sure he’s in the running for the Heisman Trophy.

Watson passed for 279 yards and ran for 114 to keep the Tigers on track for a spot in the College Football Playoff – and moved their record to 12-0 for the first time since their 1981 national championship winning season. A possibility that could ship Notre Dame to the Fiesta Bowl would be Temple beating Houston in the AAC Championship, and since Atlanta makes more sense for the Owls, it could lock the Irish into a trip to Arizona to avoid a re-match. Running back C.J. Prosise is in a walking boot and day to day. Cornerback KeiVarae Russell suffered a stress fracture in his foot on a play where his big hit jarred loose a fumble. Watch Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs Stanford Cardinal live stream online NCAA College Football FOX TV broadcast coverage, live scores, Game Kickoff time & schedule and Radio Commentary info here.

Instead, the fairy dust settled on Stanford and its quarterback, Kevin Hogan.

They were, you could easily argue, the better team on the field in all 12 games and cost themselves 2 games through, hopefully, correctable mistakes.

“I challenge anybody to find a better two-minute quarterback in the nation than what Kevin has done this year”, said Shaw, later noting: “We weren’t trying to score a touchdown, we were just trying to get in field goal range”. However, the scoring in the first half was not yet done.

“Today was one of those days that will be a great benefit to him”, Kelly said. A year ago, he played one of the worst games of his career as a four-year starter against Notre Dame. Chris Harrell will take over as the lead blocker for McCaffrey, although the Cardinal could also use one of their many tight ends in that role. He also caught the 27-yard pass that set up the game-winning field goal.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.