Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman explains Irish having just 10 men on the field on final two plays in last-second loss to Ohio State

Notre Dame, by and large, had done everything it possibly could and needed to do to score what would have been a momentous, signature victory the type of which the Fighting Irish program has found so very fleeting in recent years.

Down 10-0 at home Saturday night to sixth-ranked Ohio State, Notre Dame clawed ahead to take a 14-10 lead and then subsequently stymied the Buckeyes on fourth-and-1 at the Irish’s 11-yard line.

But Notre Dame couldn’t run out the clock, and it also couldn’t keep Ohio State from getting DeaMonte Trayanum’s 1-yard scoring plunge with a single tick left on the clock in the Buckeyes’ 17-14 win.

What further compounded the Irish misery? They had just 10 men on the field — not once but twice in the game’s closing moments.

Coming out of its final timeout, as Ohio State had the ball second-and-goal from the 1, Notre Dame played the game’s final two snaps with just 10 defenders on the field.

“Yeah, we were trying to get a fourth D-lineman on the field,” Freeman said, “and I told him just stay off because we can’t afford a penalty. I didn’t have any timeouts, right? So we couldn’t afford a penalty there.

“You know — yeah, it’s on us. We got to be better.”

Freeman said he had implored the defense simply to do its job in that last timeout before the Buckeyes’ final two snaps.

“‘Fricking win the interval.’ That’s all I said,” Freeman said. “That’s what I said. It was, really, two plays. We called a timeout on (second) down, right? And so, there’s two plays, really, to be prepared for in that situation.

“And so, you know, went and threw an incomplete pass, had three seconds left. And we couldn’t get a timeout. We were out of timeouts. You can’t relay — the crowd’s loud, you can’t relay a message. And so, you know, I told them we’re probably going to run the same call twice and that’s what we ended up doing.”