It's not bad luck when you get shut out for an entire half. Coaches back then just did not have the same offensive knowledge as they do now.
I would say that DEPENDS.
When your best offensive weapon fumbles away two punts in the same game, that's BAD LUCK. It's not expected to happen.
But I presume you're referring to the PSU game. What happened there was that by the end of that season, Rocket had become ND's CLOSER.
Mirer was just a sophomore and as good as he was, he wasn't Tony Rice. And despite having, Watters, Culver, Tony Brooks and Dorsey Levens, ND had decided by the end of that season to use Rocket to PUT GAMES AWAY as he had earlier against Pitt and, more spectacularly, Tennessee on a simple sweep play where he went EXTREMELY WIDE and just OUTRAN Tennessee's FAST AND TALENTED secondary.
And, yes, I would agree that Holtz wasn't being too creative in doing that even though it worked, but that's not where the bad luck came in against PSU. It came in with Rocket's getting hurt. By that point, he'd become the guy who made the offense work DOWN THE STRETCH. He probably shouldn't have been in that role as the sole GO-TO guy, but he was. And without him, the offense STALLED.
And it's easy to understand why that role was thrust upon him as he almost won the Heisman. Plus, to Holtz, he WALKED ON WATER.
Rocket was the key guy in all three losses that year. The fumbles against Stanford were fatal. His getting hurt against PSU led to a momemtum shift and the clipping penalty in the CU game kept ND from winning that Orange Bowl. If none of those things had happened, each of those games would most likely have ended differently.
That they all, in fact, occurred, and so decisively affected the outcome of each of those games, I'd call BAD LUCK with absolutely no hesitation. Given what a great player he was, it was all very painful to watch.