The Irish had a guardian Angeli

One drive by a backup QB who stayed home set in motion the Orange Bowl comeback.

Steve Angeli

In this graceless age, Drew Allar will be identified with the final pass he threw in the College Football Playoff semifinal Thursday night. For sure, it wasn’t pretty.

Penn State was headed for overtime with Notre Dame. Allar, the Nittany Lions’ quarterback, had a first down on his own 28 with 0:29 left. A field goal was a possibility, but it wasn’t really worth risking sudden defeat. Allar looked downfield anyway, and he threw over the middle after the Irish had denied his preferred targets. Christian Gray dove to intercept it just before it brushed the Hard Rock Stadium turf. That allowed Mitch Jeter to kick the field goal to put Notre Dame into the CFP final, on Jan. 20. The 27-24 Orange Bowl loss consigned Allar to a season of scarlet-letterdom, in a program where the names aren’t on the jerseys.

No use trying to explain how unusual this was, since Allar had 53 touchdowns and nine interceptions in his career when he pulled the trigger. No use trying to explain all the other consequential plays in this game, or that Notre Dame had already intercepted Allar twice and lost those opportunities via penalty, or that the Nittany defense had been lanced repeatedly by Riley Leonard and Jeremyiah Love and Jaden Greathouse.

ESPN’s Greg McElroy, a former national championship quarterback at Alabama, blasted Allar’s decision-making process, and he was absolutely right. Allar said later he was trying to throw it away, which you don’t often do in the middle of the field. Again, this pick will be in the first or second paragraph of every story written about Allar, from now until he gets to the same spot in the same game and wins it.

Unfair? Yes. As you might have noticed in the past week or so, life is only coincidentally fair, even when the skies aren’t cloudy. Fortunately for Allar, the 12-team playoff will be in operation next year, too, so he and the Nittany Lions will likely get another shot.

The thing is, Notre Dame’s players approached this game as if they were late for a sister’s wedding, and that’s pretty much what’s required.

Love scored a go-ahead touchdown as three Nittany Lions were tackling him, including future NFL fixture Abdul Carter. He just spun and struggled and finally reached out and put the ball over the line. Gray will never get as much credit for the interception as Allar will get the blame, but if he’d been a receiver we’d be discussing the greatness of the catch.

Greathouse got absurdly open down the right side and took Riley Leonard’s pass, then did a Jamal Crawford-calber crossover to leave Jaylen Reed in the dust. Greathouse caught seven passes for 105 yards in this game, befitting his status as the first-ever player at Austin’s Westlake High to start as a freshman. That includes Nick Foles, Drew Brees and Cade Klubnik, the Clemson QB who threw touchdowns to Greathouse back then. This one, from Leonard, covered 54 yards and tied it, 24-24, with 4:38 left.

Yet, with all the bouquets, nobody at Notre Dame forgot to leave a rosebud for Steve Angeli. He was the one who shook down the first few pebbles of what became an Irish avalanche.

Notre Dame did not manage a first down in the first quarter, and Penn State looked unblockable defensively, irresistible with the ball. Alarms should have sounded when the Lions could only squeeze a field goal out of a 14-play drive, and led 10-0. But then Leonard, the Duke transfer and Alabama native who had been Notre Dame’s answer man all season, was knocked woozy.

In came Angeli. He brought three years of program experience and an immediate rhythm. He was 6-for-7 on that final drive of the second quarter, and even though he took a sack and forced coach Marcus Freeman to order up a field goal, that seemed to bring Notre Dame chins off the floor. Down 10-3 at half when it could have been 20-3 at least, the Irish took the third-quarter kickoff and drove a smooth 75 yards to the tying touchdown, with Leonard back at the helm.

Later, Freeman shuddered to think what might have happened if Angeli had done what every other capable backup quarterback does these days, i.e., pack up and head toward greener grass.

After all, the Irish welcomed both Sam Hartman (Wake Forest) in 2003 and Leonard in 2004 as transfers, as Angeli waited. When he got his chance he delivered, in a 40-8 whipping of Oregon State in last year’s Sun Bowl, as he went 12 for 15 for 232 yards and three touchdowns.

And what might have happened if Notre Dame hadn’t been slightly late to the recruiting party on Allar? Penn State had already lured him by the time the Irish called in earnest.

But not everybody in today’s football is ruled by personal expediency. Notre Dame pulled him closer because history was on its side.

Angeli’s great uncle, Pete Berezney, was a lineman on Frank Leahy’s national championship team in 1948. There were five Berezney boys, sons of an Eastern European immigrant, growing up in the Great Depression. Paul became one of Fordham’s Seven Blocks of Granite. Pete played for the Rams and Colts in the old AAFC. John helped build destroyers during World War II. Mike was a professional boxer and ran bootleg gin.

Steve was an advertising executive who wrote a book about the family and especially the patriarch, called “Sugarhouse Pete.”

Notre Dame has won 11 national championships, but none since 1988. That also was the last year that Notre Dame beat two top five teams in one season, the way it has in the past two weeks.

Suddenly the ingredients are there. A raft of running backs, a tight end in Mitchell Evans who’s a port in the storm, and a three-level problem on defense. You’re not supposed to stockpile defensive backs the way Notre Dame has, but in this game they dealt a complete shutout to Penn State’s wide receivers. Keep an eye on Mike Mickens, the DB coach who also did that job at Cincinnati, when Freeman was the defensive coordinator there.

It also helps to get a break or two, like a backup quarterback at Georgia, like a Penn State quarterback who presumably has shut down his social media accounts and will someday shed the badge he earned Thursday. Winning and losing are on opposite sides of a filament, not a line, and maybe someday Drew Allar can see over it.