Fourth-and-11. One minute to go. No. 9 Notre Dame needed a touchdown to beat a top-15 rival and remain undefeated.
When Irish quarterback Everett Golson took the snap at the 23-yard line, No. 14 Stanford quickly provided pressure. With five receivers, Golson had no extra protection. To simply get the pass off, he was going to have to improvise. Fortunately, for all his flaws, that was one of the dual-threat passer’s strengths.
“It felt like the whole thing happened in slow motion,” Golson said after Notre Dame’s 17-14 victory back in 2014. “I distinctly remember just looking at my first read and kind of rolling out and it was like real slow and I’m like, ‘Okay, he’s open, why are you not throwing it to him?