Gary Moeller and Lou Holtz Breaking Down ‘The Catch’ (Notre Dame vs Michigan 1991)

[Saturday September 14, 2024 marks 33 years to the day of ‘The Catch’ – you want more? Check this out]

Back in 2012, I sat inside the WTKA 1050AM studios with Coach Gary Moeller.  We methodically stepped through the headset audio from ‘The Catch’ (recall that the athletic department released the audio 2011 inside the ‘Under the Lights’ Notre Dame game program). Here’s the raw audio of the amazing Grbac-to-Howard play in 1991. It’s over 17 minutes, with Ira Weintraub on the audio playback. (Ira even included the Michigan radio audio of the call at the end!):

As a bonus – I’ve included a second clip of the man on the other side of the field.  Writer John Kryk interviewed Lou Holtz for his book Natural Enemies, the definitive tome on the U-M-ND rivalry, and he was kind enough to share this clip from his archives.  It’s Holtz discussing the defensive play call and their strategy.   It’s a little scratchy but I sent it over to Ira Weintraub who cleaned it up a bit. Holtz is just over a minute (that’s Kryk asking the questions).

A crude diagram of what I understand to be the options on this play:

What you can’t see is the Irish safety, who is back and over on the left side of the defense (toward Desmond) but immediately goes to double cover Howard when the ball is snapped.

Listening to the clips basically you learn that Notre Dame called the right defense to stop this, and more importantly, they successfully disguised the formation enough to get Grbac to believe ND would leave just a single defender on Desmond Howard (I love how Coach Lou calls him his full name) and thus call the pass.   If Elvis knew ND intended to swing the safety over to put double coverage on Howard, he would have checked to the 29 toss to Ricky Powers (or possibly the Caesar off tackle) to move the chains.   As Holtz said, they basically conceded the first down if Michigan ran the pigskin and you can see on the clip they would have struggled stopping the toss.

One thing I think Holtz denies or didn’t recall (or he’s just stubborn)—on the replay (see the endzone view later in the clip below) it does look like the Grbac pump does make the safety take a step in before adjusting and heading to the end zone to try to break up the play.  That change may have provided Desmond just enough of a window to make the play.

Either way, the bottom line here is the Irish were in the right coverage but the execution of the pass and catch trumped the Notre Dame defense.

A big thanks to Ira for running the 1s and 2s, to Kryk for the Holtz clip, and of course to Coach Moeller for walking through this with us.  

RELATED: Dr. Sap’s brilliant video overlay of the audio from the big play!