If you bet Notre Dame to cover, then you were sweating maybe North Carolina State's last possession.

But no matter what, you were not sweating as much as Penn State is now sweating with another loss to Northwestern.

He is Drew Mentock. I am John Bryce. This is Irish Illustrated's overtime liveime Live, where we are going to break down and assess

Notre Dame's fourth consecutive victory, a 36 to 7 triumph against NC State.

Drew, welcome into the show, your initial reaction to Notre Dame's fourth consecutive win

as they extend some really strong defensive play.

Yeah, I think that's exactly it, is that three weeks ago,

after they gave up 30 points against Purdue,

everyone wanted Chris Ash fired,

and now we're hitting a point where even as the offense is sputtering a little bit,

they still had a productive day, almost 500 yards of offense,

but there were several times

where they failed to put up points after getting deep inside North Carolina State territory.

But you never really felt like the Wolfpack could really get much going because the defense

was just shutting down a pretty talented offense as well.

North Carolina State came into this game averaging about 6.7 yards

per play, which ranked about 25th nationally. They have C.J. Bailey, who's super talented,

still made a lot of nice throws today. Hollywood Smothers led the nation in yards from scrimmage,

and neither of them really did much today. Bailey completed like 57,

58% of his passes. I'd have to double check that, but had three interceptions. And some others,

I think, had 67 total yards. So just really contained two of the pretty, pretty explosive weapons for North Carolina State and really made it so even as they kind of struggled, there was really no chance at an upset victory here.

No, you're exactly right, Drew.

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