No. 5 Notre Dame Pulls Away From Navy 35-13 in Foxborough Behind Nolan James Jr.'s Two Touchdown Runs

For a stretch late in the first half on Halloween afternoon in Foxborough, Navy had Notre Dame exactly where an option team wants a heavy favorite: short on possessions, a little irritated and trailing on the scoreboard. Then Nolan James Jr. took a handoff up the middle and did not stop running for 52 yards.

That run, in the final two minutes of the first half, flipped a 13-7 Navy lead into a 14-13 Irish edge, and No. 5 Notre Dame scored three more touchdowns after the break to beat Navy 35-13 at Gillette Stadium on Saturday. The Irish improved to 7-1. The Midshipmen fell to 2-6.

It was the 99th meeting in one of college football's most-played series and Notre Dame's ninth straight win in the series, which it now leads 85-13-1. For a half, though, it looked nothing like a 30-point spread. It looked like a fight.

Navy plays keep-away

Navy did what Navy does. The Midshipmen ran the ball 48 times, piled up 212 rushing yards and held the ball for more than 32 minutes. Nolan Bartley opened the scoring with a 38-yard field goal midway through the first quarter, and the Irish needed until late in the period to answer, when CJ Carr found Micah Gilbert for an 11-yard touchdown.

Bartley added a 26-yard field goal in the second quarter to make it 7-6, and then Navy produced its best possession of the afternoon: 11 plays, 63 yards and 5:38 off the clock, finished by a 2-yard Jackson Gutierrez touchdown run that put the Mids up 13-7 with under two minutes left in the half.

Gutierrez arrived in New England with 868 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns, and the quarterback was the engine of everything Navy did. Gutierrez carried 28 times for 110 yards and kept Notre Dame's defense, the stingiest in the country by yards allowed, guessing for most of two quarters.

For a Notre Dame team coming off its first loss of the season, a 28-24 defeat at BYU on Oct. 17, trailing a 2-5 Navy team at the half would have been an uncomfortable look. James made sure it never came to that.

The turning point: 72 yards in 50 seconds

The Irish got the ball back with less than two minutes to play in the half and needed only five plays and 50 seconds to cover 72 yards. The last of them was the one everyone will remember. James burst through the middle of the Navy front, cut into open grass and outran the secondary to the end zone. The extra point made it 14-13.

The swing was bigger than the one point on the scoreboard suggested. Navy had spent most of the half grinding out yards the hard way, one 4-yard run at a time. Notre Dame erased the Navy lead in less than a minute and took the momentum into the locker room with it.

James finished with 107 yards and two touchdowns on just nine carries, an average of 11.9 yards per attempt. In a game where Navy squeezed the number of Irish possessions, that kind of efficiency was the difference. It was the second 100-yard rushing game of James's career, according to Notre Dame Athletics, and James has now scored a touchdown in all eight of Notre Dame's games this season.

Twenty-one unanswered

Notre Dame came out of halftime and beat Navy at its own game. The Irish opened the third quarter with an 11-play, 78-yard drive that ate 5:39, and Jonaz Walton finished it with a 3-yard touchdown run to make it 21-13.

Navy went three-and-out on its next series, set back by a holding penalty. The Irish answered with a seven-play, 69-yard march that got a 15-yard boost from a Navy personal foul, and James ripped off a 23-yard touchdown run late in the third quarter. It was 28-13.

The defensive play of the day came on the next possession. Facing fourth-and-2 from its own 43 with seconds left in the quarter, Navy kept its offense on the field, as it so often does. Gutierrez kept the ball, and safety Luke Talich and Adon Shuler met him at the line for no gain.

Two plays later, on the first snap of the fourth quarter, Carr dropped a 31-yard touchdown pass into the arms of Jerome Bettis Jr. along the left side. It was the first touchdown of Bettis's career. The extra point made it 35-13, and the rest of the afternoon was about running clock.

The numbers that tell the story

The rushing totals look close at a glance: Navy 212, Notre Dame 204. The difference is in the attempts. Navy needed 48 carries to get there, an average of 4.4 yards. Notre Dame needed 29, an average of 7.0. That gap is the whole game in two numbers.

Carr was efficient more than spectacular, completing 19 of 29 passes for 210 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. Bettis led the Irish with six catches for 78 yards, Jordan Faison added four for 46 and Jaden Greathouse chipped in three for 26. Walton ran 12 times for 51 yards and a score. Notre Dame finished with 426 total yards to Navy's 245, and neither team turned the ball over.

Navy's passing game barely registered, with five completions for 33 yards. The Midshipmen also hurt themselves with eight penalties for 86 yards, including the personal foul that extended an Irish touchdown drive and another that erased a 28-yard Jadyn Jones run in the fourth quarter. Notre Dame was flagged twice. Every snap is in the official box score (opens in a new tab).

Talich led the Irish with 10 tackles and was in on the biggest one, and Jaiden Ausberry added eight. Notre Dame did it without captain Drayk Bowen for most of the day; the linebacker was hurt in the first half and did not return, and Madden Faraimo stepped into the lineup. After halftime, Navy went 0-for-4 on third down. Safety Giuseppe Sessi led Navy with eight stops, a busy afternoon for a back-end defender and a telling one about where the Irish were getting their yards.

What it means

For Notre Dame, this was exactly the response the Irish needed after the BYU loss and a bye week to stew on it. Marcus Freeman is now 5-0 against Navy as head coach and 4-0 against Brian Newberry. More importantly, the Irish kept their record clean against the teams they are supposed to beat, which matters for a playoff resume that now rests on what happens in November.

That November starts with a big one. Next up is a home game against Miami on Nov. 7 at Notre Dame Stadium, a night kickoff on NBC and the kind of matchup that tends to define a season in South Bend.

For Navy, the slide continues. Newberry, who won 11 and 10 games in his first two seasons, has now watched his team drop three straight after losses to UTSA and a 49-39 shootout at North Texas. The good news is that the option still works. Navy ran for over 200 yards against a defense that came in allowing 67.3 per game on the ground. The bad news is that it takes Navy a very long time to score, and it took Notre Dame almost no time at all.

The Midshipmen return to American Conference play with a home game against Temple on Nov. 7.

The last word

Navy will look back at the final two minutes of the first half and wonder. The Mids had the lead, had the clock and had the Irish exactly where they wanted them. One long run from James, and the whole plan unraveled.

Notre Dame, meanwhile, got a reminder of how quickly it can bury an opponent when the big plays show up. James averaged nearly 12 yards a carry. Carr did not throw a pick. The defense made the stop it had to make on fourth down. It was not a perfect afternoon in Foxborough, but it was a convincing one, and with Miami coming to town, convincing will do just fine.

Sources: ESPN box score and play-by-play, Notre Dame Athletics, The Associated Press, The Boston Globe and the South Bend Tribune. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Notre Dame Athletics.