Notre Dame Football: How the Irish Bounce Back Against Northwestern

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — One week after the “Debacle in the Desert,” Notre Dame football walks into the start of a playoff-free future Saturday when it hosts Northwestern.

Following their 55-31 loss to Arizona State in Tempe last weekend, the Irish dropped to No. 18 in the College Football Playoff rankings. Effectively eliminated from the four-team playoff, where does Notre Dame turn now?

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“All we do is talk about what we need to do this week to win, so we're all in it to win,” Irish head coach Brian Kelly said Tuesday. “Our focus is about what do we need to do to win the weekend because they want to sing the fight song at the end of the day and whatever happens at the end, we weren't going to be able to control whether or not we went to the playoffs.

“So we focus on things we know we can control and what we know we can control is what we do during the week.”

Naturally, one of the primary points of emphasis for the Irish this week is cleaning up the turnovers. Irish quarterback Everett Golson committed five turnovers against the Sun Devils, who turned Notre Dame’s miscues into 28 points.

Kelly offered a public vote of confidence in his quarterback Tuesday, praising Golson’s leadership and accountability while saying the entire offense needs to pick up its level of play to combat the recent rash of turnovers.

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On Thursday, Kelly went a step further and highlighted Golson’s week of practice, saying the signal-caller has an “immense” amount of pride and was fun to coach developmentally.

“Nobody likes to be that guy that is singled out for their play, but he’s the quarterback at Notre Dame,” Kelly said. “He embraces that. He took control this week in practice, was vocal and was a guy I hadn’t seen before.”

Irish fans certainly hope Golson looks different, too, when he takes the field inside Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday.

As has really been the case the entire season, the Irish appear poised to go just as far as Golson can take them. That was the case early on in the season, when Golson was playing turnover-free football and the Irish were rolling to a 6-0 start.

Things have shifted recently, of course, as turnovers have mounted and the pressure has been ratcheted up accordingly for the Notre Dame defense.

The Irish's first step to bouncing back against the Wildcats centers around Golson. Controlled, crisp play from the quarterback should lighten the load on Notre Dame’s defense, which shouldn’t be particularly stressed anyway against a Northwestern offense that only tallied nine points versus Michigan last weekend.

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The Irish defense didn’t allow more than 17 points in any of the first five games, but North Carolina, Florida State, Navy and Arizona State have found success in each of the last four matchups.

Sure, some of that relates to the turnovers and the short fields granted to Notre Dame’s opponents. But after surrendering an average of 95.8 rushing yards per game through those first five games, Notre Dame has ceded 142.7 per game since—a figure that doesn’t include Navy’s atypical 336-yard performance two weekends ago.

“This past weekend, we had our poorest performance on the defensive line,” Kelly said. “It showed.”

The Irish will look to get back to stopping the run against the Wildcats, who rank 114th in the country in rushing offense, per cfbstats.com.

With a better showing from the defensive line and a more judicious Golson, Notre Dame shouldn’t have much trouble getting back in the win column against Northwestern.

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Mike Monaco is a lead Notre Dame writer for Bleacher Report. Follow @MikeMonaco_ on Twitter.