Welcome back, everybody, to another edition of Irish Illustrated Insider.

I'm Tim Priester with Tim O'Malley from Irish Illustrated.

We are joined by John Bryce of Football Scoop and Pete Sampson of The Athletic.

This is our first podcast since Notre Dame fell to Ohio State in a national championship game in Atlanta, 34 to 23. Notre Dame made a run

after falling behind by 24 points. I think we were all glad to see that. It's actually the 11

point difference is the closest national championship game in seven years since the overtime

game between Georgia and Alabama in 2017.

And so it was good to see Norden compete.

But let me just say this, and then I'll toss it over to you guys.

Notre Dame could handle Will Howard in a passing game with two great receivers.

They could handle the running backs.

I mean, I'm not saying they stopped them

completely. They could deal with an offensive line that was massively improved. But when Will

Howard rushed for 57 yards, which is twice as much as he did in any other game this year,

and eight of his runs went from first downs for first downs.

That was too much. It was too much offense for Notre Dame.

And, yeah, too much offense for a Notre Dame to handle with Ohio State.

And then too much of a gap with Notre Dame's offense in between successes.

I was impressed with Ohio State's offense all around.

The Will Howard was the cherry on top.

Will Howard outrunning Riley Leonard being as a,

being more effective than Riley Leonard as a runner,

...