CFP takeaways: Notre Dame sends strong message with dominant win over Indiana

The 2024 College Football Playoff opened on Friday night with No. 7 seed Notre Dame earning a convincing 27-17 win over No. 10 seed Indiana.

Here are four takeaways from Notre Dame’s win. 

1. Notre Dame did what it needed to do

Do not let the relatively close score fool you into thinking this game was more competitive than it was. At no point in the night did this game ever feel like the outcome was in jeopardy, while Indiana’s only two touchdowns came in the final two minutes when a comeback was almost impossible. It was window dressing. Nothing more. 

As soon as Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love broke free for a 98-yard touchdown in the first quarter to open the scoring, the game seemed to be over.

Notre Dame came in as a sizable favorite, had the home-field advantage, the better roster and was expected to win.

It did.

Easily.

Outside of that early-season slip-up against Northern Illinois, Notre Dame has been one of the best and most consistent teams in the country. It showed that again on Friday. 

Now it moves on to the quarterfinals where it will play No. 2 Georgia. 

2. Indiana did not do itself any favors

If Indiana was trying to deliver a message that it was one of the best teams in the country and silence the critics of its placement in the playoff field, it failed in a big way. 

The biggest knock on the Hoosiers all season was its poor strength of schedule and the fact that its best win was over a Michigan team that had a down year while trying to replace its starting quarterback and head coach from a year ago (among others).

The only truly elite team they played all season was Ohio State, which turned into a 38-15 defeat. 

Despite that poor strength of schedule, the 11-1 regular-season record — and offense that averaged over 43 points per game — was enough to earn them a No. 10 seed in the 12-team playoff field.

In some ways, this game went even worse than the game at Ohio State a few weeks ago.

It would be unfair to say that Indiana did not deserve its spot. It had a great year and did enough to be one of the 12 teams. But it simply did not have enough to match up with Notre Dame, and based on its games against the Fighting Irish and Ohio State, it is not quite on the level of a national title contender. 

Sometimes you have that in playoffs. In any sport, in any league and at any level. 

3. Curt Cignetti did not grasp the moment

Having said all of that about Indiana, head coach Curt Cignetti did not seem to appreciate the moment or understand what was needed from his team with some shockingly conservative coaching decisions.

The first of those came in the first quarter when, facing a 4th-and-7 from the Notre Dame 37-yard line and already trailing 7-0, he elected to punt the football back to the Irish.

He ended up getting a 20-yard punt that netted Indiana only 20 yards of field position and was followed by an 83-yard Notre Dame touchdown drive.

At that point, the game was pretty much over.

Late in the second quarter, with Indiana now down 14-0 and facing a 4th-and-4 at the Notre Dame 16-yard line (on what might have been his team’s best drive of the game), he elected to simply take the points and kick a field goal instead of going for a touchdown.

Field goals were never going to get Indiana back into this game. 

In the fourth quarter, he had one more ultra conservative move when he again punted from the Notre Dame side of the field (on a 4th-and-8) while trailing by 17 points.

Even ESPN’s announcers were stunned.