By John Brice
Special Contributor
Notre Dame won its fifth-straight game, its eighth in its last nine outing and continued its season-long growth in a blustery, snowy Senior Day send-off for 25 Fighting Irish players who turned their final game inside Notre Dame Stadium into a wire-to-wire, 242-3423 evisceration of Boston College.
Improving to 8-3 on the season and continuing to enhance their postseason options, the Fighting Irish scored early, often and both sustained a scoring binge – five consecutive games of 35 or more points – that matched the best in program history as well as put up first-half offensive numbers that had not been generated at any point this season.
As it raced to an 37-0 halftime lead, Notre Dame amassed 336 yards’ offense. Freshman defensive back Ben Morrison continued his torrid second-half play – he notched three picks in the game’s first three quarters, the first time a Notre Dame defender had accomplished the feat in more than a decade.
The Irish running game pummeled the Eagles, with four players who notched multiple carries averaging 7 or more yards per carry in the dominant victory.
Too, Blake Grupe kept Notre Dame’s strong overall special teams playing going with a pair of field goals that had to carve through significant wind gusts.
“What a win,” Irish Head Coach Marcus Freeman said. “What a way to go out.”
In an item delivered each week after every Notre Dame game, here’s the Fighting Irish 4-1-1 in their penultimate regular-season game.
FOUR ELEMENTS THAT DEFINED NOTRE DAME’s 8th WIN OF THE 2022 CAMPAIGN
2001 MAYER ODYSSEY: All-American, record-setting Notre Dame tight end Michael Mayer continued his personal razing of the Irish record books when he became the program’s first tight end with more than 2,000 career receiving yards in the win.
Mayer gathered four Drew Pyne passes for 64 yards, giving him 2,001 receiving yards in just three seasons and 35 games.
Mayer has turned his 172 career receptions into the 2,001 yards and 16 touchdowns, an 11.6 per-catch-average.
25: Senior Isaiah Foskey, one of the 25 players honored pregame, also made 25 a singular number in Notre Dame football history. Foskey chased down Boston College quarterback Emmett Morehead for a quarterback sack – the 25th of Foskey’s Irish career and the program’s new all-time standard.
After appearing in 16 games with zero starts in his first two seasons, Foskey owns 24 starts and 20.5 sacks in his…