The play of the night from New Orleans may have been an offside call against him Georgia in the fourth quarter. Notre Dame Head coach Marcus Freeman originally had his punt team on the field for a 4th-and-1 before switching the offense back on. Kirby Smart pushed his defense back outside and a few moments later Riley Leonard receive Jalon Walker to jump for a free first down.

After the game, Smart criticized the officials for even allowing Notre Dame to substitute all 11 players. He says SEC referees told him it wasn’t allowed after he tried to pull off a similar stunt early in his career in Athens. A Big 12 squad worked in the Sugar Bowl and may have had a different interpretation of the rule.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Clocks That Tell So Much More Than Just the Time”

“They wanted us to take a timeout there and try to make it,” Smart said after the game. “And we came on. It’s really unfortunate because our head of the SEC told me that it wasn’t possible. You can’t run 11 on, 11 off. We managed to do it in 2017 Tennessee. We wore that. We practiced and repeated it because teams try to do it and we were told by the officials that you couldn’t do that.”

Notre Dame was on its own 18-yard line and most likely never really thought about going for it. The goal was to keep Georgia offside the entire time and try to extend the drive. Given the circumstances, staging a real play would have been considered too great a risk.

Freeman’s team had 7:17 minutes left on matchdays 4 and 1. The penalty proved to be a big time waster for them as Georgia didn’t get the ball back until after the two-minute timeout. Trailing by 13, there was very little time left to attempt a two-point comeback.

“We have our defense out there,” Smart said. “We were fine. I mean, I would have done it if I were her.
I don’t think they planned that. They wanted to count us accurately. We are preparing for that. We do it every week. We went offside, you know? But we were also told that this wasn’t possible in our league.”