Notre Dame pounds Georgia in Sugar Bowl for long-awaited playoff glory

In Sugar Bowl, Marcus Freeman uplifts Notre Dame to biggest postseason win since Lou Holtz.
Fighting Irish surge before halftime, before kickoff return lands big blow to Georgia.
Marcus Freeman outwits Kirby Smart, whose Georgia dynasty faded this season.

NEW ORLEANS – Marcus Freeman shimmied and high-fived and hugged and smiled, and why shouldn’t he do all that and more?

Notre Dame’s Jayden Harrison had just sprinted into the end zone on a kickoff return touchdown for the Irish’s third score in less than a minute of game time, as Notre Dame drove a dagger through the vestiges of Georgia coach Kirby Smart’s dynasty.

And the Notre Dame coach’s elation couldn’t have matched the euphoria of those wearing green and navy in the Superdome stands.

The Irish waited a long time for this one.

I mean, a long, long time.

How long? The Notre Dame players who starred in this 23-10 breaking of Georgia in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl weren’t alive for the last Irish victory of this magnitude.

Even Freeman, the Irish’s 38-year-old coach, would need a phone call to Lou Holtz to refresh any fuzzy memories of the golden domers enjoying a golden moment of this caliber on a postseason stage.

Does this result mean Notre Dame is bound for national championship glory? I retain doubts. The next two rounds will be brawls worthy of brass knuckles, starting with Penn State in the Orange Bowl in one week. Notre Dame isn’t the most complete team left in the field, but it proved it’s more polished than Georgia, armed with a defense as good as any.

‘I want to celebrate this,’ Freeman said. ‘I’m proud of these guys. I’m proud of this program. … We got to get on that plane and turn our focus to Penn State.’

Regardless of what comes next, that shouldn’t minimize what occurred here for a program that secured its biggest postseason win in more than 30 years.

‘To reach team glory like this, it’s an awesome deal,’ linebacker Jack Kiser said.

Marcus Freeman wins the game Brian Kelly couldn’t at Notre Dame

Irish fans won’t want to admit this, but Freeman’s predecessor, Brian Kelly, did a lot of good in restoring Notre Dame to prominence. His teams generally fared well in the regular season, and Kelly claimed signature victories against Oklahoma and Clemson en route to peak seasons, but his Irish enjoyed no luck in the postseason, where they persistently wilted.

Georgia, quite literally, became an opponent Kelly couldn’t beat.

These Irish could have withered too, after Georgia dominated Thursday for a quarter and a half, but Notre Dame’s defense never gave in.

A nasty unit, the Fighting Irish defenders form a better group even than one-time defensive wizard Smart built this season at Georgia. Notre Dame also made fewer grave mistakes than an opponent that lived up to the reputation it built for being an unrefined team prone to costly turnovers.

I don’t know how many NIL dollars Georgia spent on its offensive line, but, whatever the amount, I know it didn’t get its money’s worth.

Notre Dame roughhoused a foe that just a couple years ago stood as the toughest bully on the block. Irish safety Adon Shuler popped Georgia tailback Trevor Etienne in the backfield to force a red-zone fumble, ending an early Georgia drive that otherwise should have produced points.

When Smart had the option to go into halftime down by three points, he instead forced the issue with 39 seconds remaining, his team 75 yards from the end zone, a backup quarterback on the field and an offensive line that failed to protect him.

Notre Dame’s RJ Oben strip-sacked Gunner Stockton, setting up the Irish with a short field for a momentum-changing touchdown before halftime.

“We tried to be aggressive in two minute and probably regret it, right?” Smart told ESPN.

That loosely translates to: Smart blew that one. Bigtime.

When you get down to it, Georgia should be considered fortunate to even make it this far. Fortunate to escape middling Georgia Tech on Black Friday. Fortunate to rally past Texas in an SEC championship game in which it largely got outplayed. Fortunate the SEC was down so it could win the conference and reach the quarterfinals.

Once the sport’s giant, the Bulldogs’ rule wavered last season, then went caput this season.

Irish made Georgia look ordinary, and that’s only a surprise if you didn’t watch Georgia before the Sugar Bowl, because Mississippi smashed the Bulldogs in November, Alabama bum-rushed ‘em in September, and neither of those teams is as solid as Notre Dame.

The Irish, unremarkable on offense, play stifling defense. They don’t beat themselves on offense, and quarterback Riley Leonard’s steady hand and smooth wheels generally allows the offense to pack just enough of a punch.  

Georgia’s dynasty fades in mess of miscues that includes Kirby Smart

Sure, Georgia missed starting quarterback Carson Beck, but the Bulldogs were fickle and flawed even before his injury, with Beck contributing to the issues. This result felt less about Georgia being wounded and more about Notre Dame seizing an opportunity.

Georgia entered the season on the shortest of shortlists for national championship front-runners, and the Bulldogs lived up to the billing while smacking Clemson in the season opener.

A mirage, that was. Since that August day in Atlanta, the Bulldogs showed themselves to be an undisciplined, unpolished and, yes, poorly coached team.

Smart got in over his head and muddled through an uncharacteristic amateur hour. He lost his way, and his stranglehold on the sport, after he surrendered the immense talent advantage he’d built during back-to-back national championship seasons.

Freeman outwitted Smart, and his team beat Georgia at its own game. Or, its old game anyway, because Georgia rarely looked as steady or as fierce this season as Notre Dame looked in this Sugar Bowl.

Georgia became quite something once, not that long ago. Nothing special about these Bulldogs, but something very special about this Notre Dame triumph that makes us take the Irish seriously.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.