Notre Dame vs. USC: 2014 Jeweled Shillelagh Winner, Score and Twitter Reaction
In the annual showdown between Notre Dame and USC for the Jeweled Shillelagh, the Trojans were all over the Fighting Irish with a 49-14 victory. It's the most lopsided victory by either side since a 38-3 win by USC in 2008.
As is often the case in a blowout, there's a lot of credit that belongs to USC and a lot of blame to put on Notre Dame. The first victim of this loss for Notre Dame was quarterback Everett Golson, who continued his late-season struggles and was benched after USC went up 35-0 in the second quarter, via Gil Brandt of NFL.com:
Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly had grown increasingly frustrated with Golson's erratic performance each week. Kelly's cup seemed to run over after a loss to Arizona State, as these comments to reporters indicate, via Graham Watson of Yahoo Sports:
"There were absolutely no changes in what (Arizona State did defensively), which makes it even more maddening and frustrating. I guess that's what I'm most upset about because we could've moved the ball [Saturday] effectively. It's one of those deals where you take one step forward and two steps back and he comes back in the second half and does some really good things. He's got to strive for consistency. If (Golson) plays clean in the first half, who knows where we'd be right now.
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It took a few weeks to make a move, but Kelly finally saw enough after Golson went 7-of-18 with 75 yards and one interception against USC. That interception extended Golson's streak of consecutive games with a pick to nine, per ESPN's College Gameday:
While blaming Golson is the easy thing to do, let's not exonerate Notre Dame's defense. The Fighting Irish have allowed in each of their last seven games. They also allowed USC quarterback Cody Kessler to set a record against them, as noted by ESPN Stats & Info:
To rub a little more salt in the wound for Notre Dame, Kessler's sixth touchdown pass came less than four minutes into the third quarter.
Notre Dame will just be happy to have this season end, especially the Pac-12 part of the schedule. According to Pac-12 Networks on Twitter, the Fighting Irish were basically doomed before halftime in their games against Stanford, Arizona State and USC:
On the bright side, Notre Dame did come back to win that game against Stanford on October 4.
Moving back to the winning side, how good was Kessler today? Former USC quarterback and current Fox Sports 1 analyst Matt Leinart noted on Twitter the junior had more touchdowns (five) than incompletions (four) in the first half:
This final score is more indicative of how far Notre Dame has fallen as the season has gone on. USC was coming off a loss against UCLA in which the Bruins dominated, so this wasn't like the mismatched games in the mid-2000s that USC controlled before the opening kickoff.
All told, the Trojans racked up 577 yards of offense and controlled the ball for 37 minutes, 19 seconds. They finished the regular season 8-4 (6-3 in Pac-12). Notre Dame ends the year with four straight losses but will be in a bowl game with a 7-5 record.
