Last night's win pretty much followed my pregame formula for victory, nearly down to the letter. Literally exactly as I saw it in my mind's eye, only I was hoping to slog out a hard-fought win, and wasn't anticipating rolling quite so thoroughly. And to be fair I'm sure there were scores of serious ND fans thinking along similar lines, including our coaches.
Continue to deliver on defense, and we flat-out dominated, or close enough. Hopefully hit on some big plays/special teams/turnovers type action, and we get a solid 'A' on that. And then on offense we don't have to dominate, but we have to contribute enough, keep Clemson off the field, and manufacture sufficient offense to get us over the top.
We didn't even end up needing the passing game to do as much, however modest, as I was thinking we would have to, on account of how much we crushed it on the ground, and it just seemed like the play-calling was off the hook, much to TR's credit. As that 2nd quarter drive to go up 14-0 was like the classic back-breaking drive, even though it was still just the first half.
So it was a damn near perfect game for ND under the circumstances. I was just hoping we would get the shutout.
