First look: Top storylines, betting odds for Clemson vs. Notre Dame football game
It won’t be the epic, late-season meeting between championship contenders that it was billed as in the preseason. But Clemson-Notre Dame, regardless of records, is still a big one.
Here’s a first look at the undefeated Tigers’ looming trip to South Bend, Indiana, which represents their last non-conference game of the 2022 season.
Clemson vs. Notre Dame game, TV info
Who: No. 5 Clemson (8-0, 6-0 ACC) at Notre Dame (5-3)
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Notre Dame Stadium, Indiana
TV: NBC
Vegas odds: Clemson Notre Dame point spread
Clemson opened as a consensus 4.5-point favorite against Notre Dame on Sunday afternoon, according to VegasInsider.com. It’s the fifth straight time the Tigers have been favored against the Fighting Irish dating back to the 2015 season, per Odds Shark data.
This season for Clemson
After a down year in 2021, at least by Clemson’s lofty standards, the Tigers are back in the College Football Playoff conversation as they hit the final stretch of their season.
Clemson – which was idle this weekend – has scored conference wins against ranked Wake Forest, N.C. State and Syracuse opponents and can clinch the ACC Atlantic Division title with a home win against Louisville last week.
Quarterback DJ Uiagalelei is much improved (though he was benched for Cade Klubnik against Syracuse) and leads an offense that likes to spread it out among its many playmakers, while the Tigers defense remains fearsome despite some lingering issues in the secondary.
Clemson enters the Notre Dame with a 61% chance to qualify for the CFP, per ESPN’s Football Power Index, third best behind Ohio State and Georgia. Closely trailing the Tigers are Alabama, Tennessee and Michigan.
This season for Notre Dame
Notre Dame improved to 5-3 with a 41-24 road win Saturday over No. 16 Syracuse.
That result added to an uneven season for the Fighting Irish under first-year coach Marcus Freeman, the former Notre Dame defensive coordinator who took over when Brian Kelly left to become the head coach at LSU.
Notre Dame was the preseason No. 5 team in the AP Top 25 and hung tough in a season-opening loss to No. 2 Ohio State. Then the Fighting Irish lost at home to Sun Belt opponent Marshall and barely beat unranked California.
Notre Dame fell out of the Top 25 after the Marshall loss and hasn’t returned since. A bad home loss to Stanford is the main culprit there, canceling out strong wins against UNC (which is now the favorite to win the ACC Coastal Division) and ranked BYU.
Clemson vs. Notre Dame last meeting, trends
The programs’ 2020 meeting was an instant classic, with the No. 4 Fighting Irish knocking off No. 1 Clemson 47-40 in double overtime despite 439 passing yards, three total touchdowns and zero turnovers from then-freshman quarterback DJ Uiagalelei in his second ever start.
Uiagalelei was starting in place of star quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who’d tested positive COVID-19 two weeks earlier and was just a few days removed from a mandatory quarantine.
Clemson avenged that loss, which snapped a 36-game regular-season win streak, by beating Notre Dame in the 2020 ACC Championship game one month later in Charlotte. The Fighting Irish, a long-time independent, competed as an ACC team that year due to the coronavirus.
Clemson leads the all-time series against Notre Dame 6-2, with five of those meetings coming since 2015 (the other two were in 1977 and 1979). Given the Tigers’ rise to national prominence and the Fighting Irish’s storied history, that’s made for some memorable moments.
Outside of the teams’ aforementioned meetings in 2020, Clemson also beat Notre Dame in 2015 amid Hurricane Joaquin (coach Dabo Swinney later dubbed it the “Bring Your Own Guts” game) and in the 2018 CFP semifinals.
