The Notre Dame Fighting Irish return to Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon for the New Era Pinstripe Bowl and the game is against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and the matchup is on ESPN starting up at 12 pm noon and will be streaming online from WatchESPN and it a big step down from the national championship for ND, but still a very solid matchup for the postseason.
Notre Dame comes into the game after losing against Stanford and they are passing for nearly 250 yards per game and Rutgers comes into the game after a win against South Florida to get into the postseason and now the two teams face off in the Pinstripe Bowl. Rutgers comes in at 6-6 with Notre Dame 8-4 and Tommy Rees has been playing solid for the Irish, passing for 199 yards against Stanford and he also had two touchdowns, but he threw two crucial interceptions as the team tried to come back and now they will get the chance to end things on a high note and the team comes in 1-3 against the AP top 25 this season and they had a big win over Michigan State earlier in the season that looks great now, while the team also had nice wins over Arizona State and USC this season.
Rees came into the season as the starter after Everett Golson ended up getting in some academic trouble and he had a solid year with 27 touchdowns and nearly 3,000 yards and Brian Kelly has said that he was very impressed with the way Rees played this season. Notre Dame opened up the year with three wins in four weeks and they stumbled against Oklahoma as well as Pitt and now they have a nice recruiting class from Kelly for next season. The Scarlet Knights defense played well in the final game of the season against South Florida and the D will be looking hard at TJ Jones, who was tops for the Irish in receiving with 1,000 yards and nine touchdowns on the year.
Check here for the Notre Dame and Rutgers live coverage.
Notre Dame was a big draw the last time they played at Yankee Stadium and now they will do it against a tri state area team in Rutgers and head coach Kyle Flood feels his team is ready for the challenge. Paul Jones has been very solid this season and he rushed for 113 yards in the final game and comes into the Pinstripe with 833 yards and nine touchdowns, while Chas Dodd will be under center once again after taking over for Gary Nova three games ago and the last time the two teams played was a huge blowout for the Irish and Notre Dame has won all four of the head to head games between the teams. Notre Dame had a down season by their standards after making to the national championship game last season against Alabama and now Brian Kelly has the chance to finish things off on a positive note heading into 2014.
