SOUTH BEND — After watching Notre Dame football dismantle Georgia’s budding dynasty in the Sugar Bowl, Northern Illinois coach Thomas Hammock found himself offering the enthusiastic praise the Irish weren’t ready to accept four months ago.
“What a well-coached football team Notre Dame is,” Hammock said in a phone interview. “Just the situational awareness, how they handled different points of that game, how they were able to take advantage of miscues by Georgia. They looked well-prepared, and obviously, they’re playing their best football at the right time.”
Since face-planting against Hammock’s Huskies on Sept. 7, Notre Dame (13-1) has won 12 straight games to earn a spot in Thursday’s Orange Bowl against sixth-seeded Penn State (13-2). Seeded seventh, coach Marcus Freeman’s Irish take the longest active winning streak at the FBS level into this College Football Playoff semifinal.
And it has all happened despite a torrent of injuries and defections that cost Notre Dame a slew of key contributors who weren’t able to stop NIU, a Mid-American Conference program that went on to finish 8-5 with a win over Fresno State in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
From captains Benjamin Morrison and Rylie Mills to starters Jordan Botelho, Ashton Craig, and Boubacar Traore on through Jaden Mickey and Jason Onye, the Irish have had to reinvent their depth chart along the way.
“That’s a credit to Coach Freeman and his staff,” Hammock said. “He’s built a well-rounded football team with depth and talent throughout the roster. Then you have to say they’re doing a phenomenal job of coaching and developing their whole team.
“They lost their starting defensive tackle (Mills) before this last game, and the next guy out there (Gabriel Rubio) looked like he was just as good. Talk about a well-built team all the way throughout with the right culture, the right coaching.”
Hammock, who just finished his sixth season at the helm of his alma mater, isn’t jealous in the least.
“I’m happy to see them continue to have the success they’re having,” he said. “After we played them, I said I hope they go on to win the national championship. Obviously, Coach Freeman is at a place where he can win the national championship, and I hope he gets that done.”
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‘When adversity strikes, he’s going to galvanize’
Two wins away from the program’s first national title since 1988, Notre Dame easily could have crumbled after that 16-14 heartbreaker in its home opener.
Instead, Freeman and Co., got back to work, evaluating every aspect of what led to the stunning upset against a 28-point underdog being paid a $1.4 million appearance fee. Hammock, who gave an emotional postgame interview on NBC, already had an inkling the Irish would set things right.
That sense came from the way Freeman handled the embarrassment, starting with the postgame handshake at midfield.
“Having a chance to meet Coach Freeman was surreal,” Hammock said. “How humble he is, how down to earth he was, how he embraced me before the game, and then how he embraced me after the game. That spoke volumes to me of the man that he is.
“I’m not surprised he’s having the success he’s having. He has the leadership qualities that are what you want. When adversity strikes, he’s going to galvanize and get guys back on the right page to move forward.”
Hammock, 43, is a Fort Wayne native who worked his way up through the coaching ranks after starring at running back for Bishop Luers and NIU. He has Big Ten coaching experience at Wisconsin (two tours) and Minnesota, and for five seasons (2014-18), he coached running backs for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens.
After returning to NIU’s DeKalb campus and taking a well-deserved victory lap in the national media, Hammock wanted to thank Freeman for the hospitality. Knowing they shared an agent in Clint Dowdle of William Morris Endeavor, Hammock asked Dowdle for Freeman’s contact information.
“I wanted to wish him best of luck the rest of the season,” Hammock said. “He was great with me before the game and after the game. Me reaching out to him, that happens all the time in the coaching profession.”
Maybe not within the first 48 hours or so after potentially wrecking a top-five team’s season or a third-year coach’s career, but Hammock’s instinct remained.
“A lot of guys have friends in the profession, and they try to pick each other’s brains on ideas,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Hey, we’re not going to play Notre Dame ever again.’ We’re not a common opponent, so if there’s any way that I can help assist, I will because I want to see him have great success and do a great job at Notre Dame.”
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‘We had some different tells’
Hammock texted Freeman and got back to his bye-week schedule. What happened next shocked him in the high-pressure world of big-time college football.
“I shot him a text not expecting anything in return,” Hammock said, “and then he called me back literally within a couple of minutes. To me, I just think that’s who he is as a man.”
Hammock remembers the two coaches having a couple of conversations and the tone being “cordial.” Hammock and Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Rudolph had worked together at Wisconsin in 2011, helping the Badgers reach the Rose Bowl, and that added to the trust between Freeman and the sport’s latest conquering hero.
With Notre Dame’s passing offense sputtering through two games, averaging just 5.2 yards per attempt and still looking for its first score through the air, Freeman was likely more open than ever to hearing feedback from Hammock.
“We played them so early, and they were still trying to figure out what they wanted to be offensively,” Hammock said. “Defensively, they are phenomenal. That was truly a challenge for us to go against. Some of the things they were doing on offense at that time, they were still trying to (hone).”
Duke transfer Riley Leonard and former LSU offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock had yet to institute their early-morning breakfast chats. Held to a season-low 16 rushing yards on 11 carries against NIU, Leonard also was sacked twice and threw a pair of costly interceptions.
“New coordinator, new quarterback,” Hammock said. “Obviously, they got a lot of those things hashed out over the past four months.”
Pressed for details on whether Leonard or anyone else on the Irish offense was tipping, say, run-pass intentions in those pre-snap moments, Hammock pulled back.
“Obviously we had some different tells, right?” he said. “But I would prefer to keep some of those things (private). At this point in time, every advantage for them to win, keep that to them. Give them a chance to have the success they want to have.”
It’s also noteworthy that both teams went without NFL-style helmet communication when that newly instituted system broke down early in the game.
The important thing, Hammock said, is not that Notre Dame gleaned any vital information from the post-loss call, but that Freeman was so willing to speak with someone whose team had just inflicted such pain on Irish fandom as a whole.
“I really want to say a conversation between coaches that really has gotten blown out of proportion,” Hammock said. “Those things happen all the time. It’s just a lot of times it’s with a friend. But this happened where he wasn’t a friend of mine.
“I just respect him and the position that he has, and the way that he treated me really made feel even more to the point of, ‘I want to see Coach Freeman have great success and raise Notre Dame to the highest of heights.’ “
‘Keep the pain’ was a ‘fantastic idea’
Sometime between Sept. 7 and Notre Dame’s 51-14 blowout of a ranked Navy team on the final Saturday in October, the Irish found their stride, and Freeman discovered a potent mantra: “Keep the pain.”
It was in the cramped postgame press conference at MetLife Stadium where Freeman went public with his approach to processing the NIU disappointment. He had been reminding his players for some time, he revealed in the world’s largest media market, that what happened against Hammock’s Huskies should not be forgotten but rather converted into weekly fuel.
“I just heard about it the other night when they were playing,” Hammock said. “To me, what a fantastic idea and rallying cry for this team, and it has worked. He’s obviously a great motivator, a great visionary leader, and he knew what his team needed to keep the focus on one week at a time.
“That’s the message: ‘Keep the pain,’ which means every week is a reminder of how to narrow your focus of getting ready for the team you need to play that particular week.”
Multiple Irish players have mentioned during this turnaround how hard it was to pivot from the breakthrough road win over Texas A&M in the season opener to the grind of prepping for a MAC program that had gone 10-15 the previous two seasons.
“That week we were messing around a little bit,” said Clemson grad transfer Beaux Collins, Notre Dame’s leading receiver. “It definitely punched us in the face. Like, dang, we have to lock in. We’re good, but we have to actually put in the work.”
Hammock can’t recall any specific indications the Irish were taking his team lightly or going through the motions against NIU. He just knows his experienced team was ready to pounce.
“I can’t speak to their preparation going into the game,” Hammock said of Notre Dame. “I don’t know what their mindset was. I could speak to the physicalness of the game. We were mature and physical on the offensive line and defensive line, and to me, that’s what gave us a chance against them.”
The Irish coaching staff had warned the players all week about the Huskies’ experience and skill, but the ding from Kyle Field was still ringing in their ears.
“If they thought we weren’t going to match up well in those two areas,” Hammock said, “then they definitely underestimated us.”
Dueling waves of emotion
Notre Dame opened with a 75-yard scoring drive, only to see the Huskies tie the game three minutes later on Antario Brown’s 83-yard catch and run on a short pass over the middle. That remains the longest play from scrimmage against the Irish all year; the 67-yard reception for Georgia’s Arian Smith ranks second.
“That was kind of a broken play,” Hammock said of Brown’s touchdown. “That allowed us to at least settle into the game and gain a little bit of confidence. Before that, we let a kickoff hit the ground, and we started at the 2-yard-line. I thought, ‘OK, this is not the way you want to start at Notre Dame.’ “
The Irish reclaimed the lead on Jeremiyah Love’s hurdling touchdown run to open the second half, but those would be the only points they could generate on their final 10 possessions.
Senior kicker Kanon Woodill’s third field goal of the game, a 35-yarder with 31 seconds left, lifted the Huskies to the top of every sportscast in the country that night. Two weeks later, coming off a bye week, they lost at home in overtime, 23-20 to unranked Buffalo.
Four more losses would follow in the next eight games. The Huskies fell at home to Toledo in a 13-6 snoozer and lost on the road to N.C. State (24-17), Ball State (25-23) and MAC regular-season champion Miami (Ohio) by a 20-9 margin.
Like Notre Dame after the A&M conquest, the Huskies struggled to handle success.
“You go from (Notre Dame) having to deal with the adversity of losing a game and us having to deal with the success and everybody telling you how good you are (after) that game,” Hammock said. “Two waves of emotions for both teams. For us, that’s one of the biggest wins in the history of our program, something that we can always look to.
“But we have to make sure we handle things better in the future. You win a game like that, OK, you have to get yourself back down and understand, ‘Hey, it’s a ‘next week’ mentality.’ We can learn from that experience that we had and expect to be in those types of situations moving forward, but we have to handle it better throughout the rest of the season.”
The two coaches have exchanged text messages a few times since their paths crossed in early September.
Hammock reached out with congratulations after Notre Dame’s first-round win over Indiana in the College Football Playoff. A few days later, Freeman texted his regards on NIU’s second bowl win in as many years after dropping seven straight, six of those before Hammock’s hiring.
Hammock didn’t text Freeman after the Sugar Bowl, figuring his phone was blowing up already after such a dominant showing against the SEC champions. The quick turnaround, after having the original kickoff postponed by a day due to the Bourbon Street tragedy, also kept Hammock from hitting “send.”
“I’m thinking about the travel schedule,” he said. “And I can’t imagine how many texts (Freeman) gets after a game. But I’m hoping he wins it all. Then I’ll shoot him a text at the end of the season.”
By then, the Irish could be feeling no pain at all.
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: NIU coach Thomas Hammock reflects on Notre Dame football turnaround
