MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Thursday found themselves in a position they hadn’t been in all season: Trailing by multiple scores.
And in a College Football Playoff semifinal no less.
No matter.
The No. 7 seed Fighting Irish erased a 10-point first-half deficit to rally for a 27-24 win over the No. 6 seed Penn State Nittany Lions in the Orange Bowl to advance to the national championship.
Notre Dame (14-1) won the game on a Mitch Jeter go-ahead 41-yard field goal with seven seconds left, which was set up by a Christian Gray interception at the Penn State 42-yard line with 33 seconds left to play.
The Fighting Irish will play the winner of Friday’s Cotton Bowl between No. 5 seed Texas and No. 8 seed Ohio State in the national championship on Jan. 20 at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
It will be Notre Dame’s first appearance in a national championship game since the 2013 BCS national championship to cap the 2012 season, when they lost 42-14 to Alabama. The Fighting Irish are looking to win their first title since 1988.
But Notre Dame had to fight back time and again to pull this one out.
Penn State (13-3) went up 10-0 late in the first half after a pair of methodical scoring drives — first 14 plays for 55 yards that ended in a 20-yard field goal; then 15 plays for 90 yards capped by the first of three Nick Singleton touchdown runs.
Notre Dame, playing its final drive without starting quarterback Riley Leonard, responded with a 41-yard field goal to end the first half and then scored touchdowns on two of their first three drives of the second half — a 3-yard quarterback keeper by Leonard and a 2-yard run by Jeremiyah Love during which he broke multiple tackles to get into the end zone — to put the Fighting Irish up 17-10 with 14:07 left in the game.
Singleton then scored touchdowns on back-to-back drives, each from 7 yards out, to first tie the game for Penn State and then give the Nittany Lions a 24-17 lead with 7:55 left.
Singleton’s three rushing touchdowns tied for the Orange Bowl record, done five other times, most recently by both Synjyn Days and Justin Thomas for Georgia Tech in 2014 vs. Mississippi State.
A 54-yard touchdown pass from Leonard to a wide-open Jaden Greathouse then tied the game at 24-24 with 4:38 left to go.
The Notre Dame and Penn State defenses, each ranked among the top 10 in the country entering the game, exchanged stops before Gray recorded Notre Dame’s nation-leading 32nd takeaway of the season with 33 seconds left. Six plays later, Jeter hit the game-winning field goal to send the Fighting Irish to the national championship.
