After devastating early loss, Notre Dame is in CFP title game thanks to its 'men in the arena'

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Riley Leonard expected the worst.

As he entered coach Marcus Freeman’s second-floor office for their standing Sunday sitdown, roughly 24 hours after a stunning home loss against Northern Illinois in September, Leonard braced himself for bad news. After all, he’d thrown two costly interceptions in a game that seemed to dash all hopes for Notre Dame making the College Football Playoff.

Is he going to tell me that I’ll never touch the field again?

Was that my last game at Notre Dame?

What happened next was a bit weird, wholly unexpected and, for Leonard, one of the most resonating things he’d ever witnessed. A smiling Freeman embraced his quarterback with a dap, asked about his family and talked pleasantries like the day before never even happened.

During their conversation, coach made something clear to quarterback.

“In those lowest moments, Riley Leonard had to learn that I believe he is our quarterback,” Freeman recalls to Yahoo Sports from his office. “People might say you are awful and boo you. I as the head coach believe in you. And I need him to believe in me when we’re at the lowest moments. The lowest moments are when you find out who you really are.”

Riley left the meeting with no better feeling, he now says — a turning point in the coach-quarterback relationship and, perhaps, the catapult he needed to recover from the first two-pick game of his college career.

Four months later, the Irish haven’t lost again. They have won 13 straight, including three College Football Playoff games, and nine of the wins during the streak were by at least two touchdowns. Despite a run-heavy offense, Leonard has thrown for more than 2,600 yards and 19 TDs. He's second to Jeremiyah Love in rushing yards with 866 and Love has just one more rushing touchdown than the quarterback (17 to 16).

And he’s playing more freely than ever. Why? That 16-14 loss to the Huskies.

“I already hit rock-bottom,” Riley told Yahoo Sports in November. “Who cares from this point? I have that mindset of no regrets. Let it fly. Have fun. You only get one shot at this thing. It’s my last year.”

Notre Dame’s winning streak has vaulted the Irish (14-1) from playoff impossible to playoff improbable to to playoff team to playoff title game participant.

Fortune favored the Irish: On the year they lost to Northern Illinois, there was an expanded, 12-team playoff that provided them with enough room to easily get into the field. Not only that, but, unlike other teams, Notre Dame entered the playoff without having played a physically and emotionally grinding game against a top-flight opponent in a conference championship.

After finishing the regular season winning 10 straight games, the selection committee slotted them in at No. 7, which gave them a home playoff game. Since the Irish couldn't win a conference championship as an independent, they weren't eligible for a top-four seed and the bye that comes with that. But a home playoff game in South Bend — the first home playoff game in College Football Playoff history — was just fine by them.

The Irish throttled the No. 10 seed Indiana Hoosiers in front of a delirious crowd at Notre Dame Stadium, showing just how special a campus atmosphere could be in a postseason game. Love got things started with a 98-yard sprint to the end zone to set a College Football Playoff record early in the first quarter and the Irish never looked back. Leonard added 201 passing yards and a TD through the air to go with 30 rushing yards and a TD on the ground. They held a 27-3 lead with just two minutes left before two garbage-time TDs made the final 27-17.

They followed that with a gritty show of force in the second round against Georgia, using a 17-point surge at the end of the first half and the start of the second to put the Bulldogs away, 23-10. Leonard threw for 90 yards and added 80 more rushing yards — not a stat line that'll impress many, but he made plays and moved the sticks in key moments. The win showed the Irish still belong in the upper crust of college football after a 31-year drought of futility in major bowls.

Then, against Penn State in the semifinal at the Orange Bowl, it took a total team effort to rally past the Nittany Lions for a 27-24 win. Leonard made plays with his legs and his arm, Freeman called a near-perfect game, and the Irish executed to perfection — winning it in the final seconds on a 41-yard field goal by maligned kicker Mitch Jeter.

“Everybody in this program knows we control our own destiny,” Freeman said back in November.

Now there's just one game left — against Ohio State at the national championship in Atlanta. A title win in SEC country would be extra special for Leonard, a kid that grew up along the Alabama coast without having offers from those more regional schools. He eventually signed with Duke, won 16 games as a two-year starter and then transferred to South Bend over the offseason.

He’s a long way from home and far from the Gulf Coast fishing holes he frequented as a kid. He’s a Southern boy in the Midwest and in one of the most pressure packed positions in the sport: the starting quarterback of Notre Dame.

Things were going just fine in that role until the Irish lost as 28-point favorites.

Being the Notre Dame starting quarterback wasn’t so fun any longer.

“You don’t understand the magnitude of (the position) until something goes bad,” he said.

Thankfully, his girlfriend and marketing team operate his social media platforms. He saw none of the hate and vitriol. Instead, his friends and family members saw it all and texted him about it.

Don’t look at your comments!

They’re all crazy!

They’re saying wild stuff — don’t listen!

Don’t worry, Leonard would respond, he’s not listening or watching.

After all, the critics are just “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” That’s a line from former president Teddy Roosevelt’s speech on courage that he delivered in Paris in 1910 dubbed “The Man in the Arena.”

It’s one of Riley’s favorites. In fact, he has the speech text as lock screen wallpaper on his smartphone.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

Leonard views himself as that man, in the arena, the bright lights shining on his golden helmet.

Freeman isn’t so different. He’s in the arena too, the face of Notre Dame football, one of the richest and most historic programs in the country, devoid of a national championship for 36 years now.

Their positions — head coach at Notre Dame, starting quarterback at Notre Dame — are two of the most enviable and inevitable in the sport. Win and you are showered in adulation; lose and you are the reason why.

“That’s the position we are in,” Freeman said.

“The lowest moments is when you find out who you really are and what you are made of,” he later said. “If you have too many low moments, guess what? You’re gone. Don’t care if you are the starting quarterback or head coach. You’ve got to be replaced.”

If they win the final game, if they win it all, maybe they’ll point to that low moment as a reason.

It’s the pain that drives the Irish.

“We use it as motivation every day,” said linebacker Jack Kiser. “Can’t lose that pain. Can’t lose what that feeling is like.”

Keep the pain. It’s a slogan that Freeman began using after the loss to the Huskies.

The gist: Don’t forget how you felt when you lost. Fear losing. Fear a loss.

“People are usually motivated by two things: fear or greed,” Freeman said. “I keep reminding them: You have to keep the pain. There should be fear.”

This isn’t Freeman’s first time reviving a team that endured a deflating early season loss. In his first season in 2022, Marshall beat Notre Dame in South Bend. His team followed that by winning eight of the next nine.

In fact, that game came up during that Sunday conversation in September between quarterback and coach. Freeman looked at Leonard, “I’ve been in your shoes,” he told him. “I’ve been here before.”

Freeman grew so much from that loss to Marshall, he told Leonard. He learned how to be a better coach and a better leader.

After the Northern Illinois defeat, the coach spent time examining how this could happen again.

Marshall and now Northern Illinois? How? Why?

It’s all mental, he says. A week before the Northern Illinois game, the Irish opened the season with an emotional victory at Texas A&M, delivering a win in a hostile and humid environment in Texas. “We weren’t ready to handle success,” he said.

Now, more than four months and 13 wins later, the Irish are one win from a title — with a quarterback and coach who are more connected than ever as the men in the arena.

“He had to go through the ups and downs of being the quarterback at Notre Dame to understand what it entails,” Freeman said. “Just like me as a head coach. Someone can tell you what it’s going to be like to be the head coach at Notre Dame, but until you experience it, you don’t know.”

(Editor's note: This story was originally published on Nov. 14 and has been updated to reflect Notre Dame making it to the College Football Playoff title game.)