How a loss to Northern Illinois set the table for Notre Dame's run to the CFP title game

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The toughest game Notre Dame will play this season is obviously going to happen on Jan. 20, the College Football Playoff national championship game in Atlanta against Ohio State. The toughest game the Irish played to date probably was the Orange Bowl against Penn State. There were plenty of tough games along the way.

But the hardest game, the one that planted the seeds for this run to the title game, was Week 3 against Purdue — a 66-7 win.

''That might sound funny to some people,'' Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden said. ''But it's true."

Here's why: Notre Dame was coming off a stunner of a Week 2 loss, 16-14 to Northern Illinois. All week long, the Irish heard the whispers. Not good enough and not tough enough after a four-touchdown underdog came into Notre Dame Stadium, getting $1.4 million to play the game under the presumption that they would be tackling dummies for three hours, and wound up winning.

The whispers were quickly silenced. The Irish have been unbeatable ever since.

''The time you're tested the most is when you're at your lowest point," Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. ''We lose to Northern Illinois and you've got a decision: ‘Do I want to be selfless? Or am I going to put individual glory ahead of myself?' I hope the nation sees no matter what the situation was, this team continues to put Notre Dame in front of myself.''

If nothing else, Notre Dame has now been in front of 13 consecutive opponents when the game that week ends. A 27-24 win over Penn State in the Orange Bowl has the Irish (14-1) on the brink of the school's first national championship since 1988.

And that means Freeman was having one heck of a good birthday.

He walked into Hard Rock Stadium on Thursday as a 38-year-old with a big chance. He walked out in the wee hours of Friday — his birthday — as a 39-year-old with now a bigger chance, one game away from adding his name to the list of coaches who have won national championships at Notre Dame. But in his household, his birthday evidently plays second fiddle to someone else.

''Thirteen years ago, I had a daughter, Siena, born on the same day as me,'' Freeman said after the clock ticked over into Friday, so it indeed was his birthday as he spoke in a postgame news conference. ''For the past 13 years, she gets all the birthday credit. But this is special. Again, this is a special moment. A lot of hard work has been put into it. It's not about a birthday, man. This is just about a moment and enjoying this moment together.''

If not for that moment against Northern Illinois, who knows what might have happened. Maybe that loss was exactly what Notre Dame needed.

Since that loss, the Irish are 13-0. That's the best record in the nation over that span. They've outscored teams by 333 points in those games, also the best nationally in that span. They've scored 518 points, again, the best in the nation.

That $1.4 million to play Northern Illinois might be money well spent after all. And quarterback Riley Leonard had a simple message about the Irish after the Orange Bowl: ''Culture wins,'' he said.

''You see a bunch of talented guys across our locker room but you can see that anywhere in the country,'' Leonard said. ''I think at the end of the day it's which guys are putting their bodies on the line and doing everything they can for the man next to them. Nobody is thinking about draft stocks or next year or anything like that, any type of individual glory. We're all thinking about the man beside us. I think we kind of proved throughout the season that culture wins, and it's a special place for a reason.''

A special place, a special season and now a chance at the national title. Had the loss to Northern Illinois been handled differently, this might not have happened.

Golden said Freeman set the tone right away after that Week 2 loss. There was no finger-pointing in the Notre Dame locker room. Freeman asked everyone, players and coaches, to challenge themselves — and insisted he would do the same.

The Purdue game was the perfect sort of bounceback effort. And now a title shot against Ohio State — a rematch of a meeting that the Buckeyes won 17-14 last season — awaits.

''The stress of that week was huge, us making sure that we had to find a way to be confident going into that game,'' Golden said of the seven days between Northern Illinois and Purdue. "Coach Free did an unbelievable job doing that. And our kids had an edge to them. They really played well and the rest is history.''

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