Kirby Smart heard the pair of two-word phrases — Notre Dame and middle eight — and winced.

“A nightmare,” Smart said.

In the long view of history, Georgia was soundly beaten by Notre Dame in last season’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal, 23-10. And it’s true that Georgia was not the better team that night in New Orleans. But it’s also true the game was tied at 3 in the final minute of the first half, before the nightmare for Smart and Georgia:

39 seconds left: Notre Dame makes a 49-yard field goal. 6-3.
33 seconds left: Georgia elects to try for something, and it backfires as Gunner Stockton is sacked and fumbles.
27 seconds left: Notre Dame immediately scores a touchdown. 13-3
Second half: Notre Dame returns the kickoff for a touchdown. 20-3

A game essentially decided in 54 seconds. Or put another way, the middle eight strikes again.

“We, historically, have been really good at that, and probably, the worst we’ve ever been at it was the Notre Dame game,” Smart said. “We’ve never been outscored that much in that period.”

The middle eight is the term used for the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half. Smart and many other coaches believe in its importance, letting it guide their game management. Bill Belichick, who arrives in college football this year, seems to get credit for the strategy’s rise from his time with the New England Patriots.

That makes it a good time to take a look: How pivotal is the middle eight in college football?

The what and why

Michael Lombardi, who came to North Carolina with Belichick as the Tar Heels’ general manager, once credited the philosophy with keeping Peyton Manning off the field in some of the Patriots-Colts playoff games.

The idea starts with — if you win the coin toss — deferring to get the ball to start the second half. The next step is to have the ball near the end of the first half, and hold onto it. Then you essentially can keep the opposing offense off the field, counting halftime, for nearly an hour of real time. It takes the offense out of its rhythm, stifling momentum.

“Every other time you score, you give the ball back to the opponent, other than when you score at the end of the half,” Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham told the State Press last year. “They don’t have enough time to score. That’s a natural possession you gained in the game, which, to me, is a turnover.”

Georgia looks at it every Monday after a game: Did it win the middle eight or lose it?

“You’re trying to double possess some people. That’s why a lot of people defer in the first half to get a double possession,” Smart said. “There’s a lot of strategy in it. There’s a lot more people going for it on first down closer to half to keep somebody from getting an extra possession. We look at it. We study it. We try to attack it the right way.”

Arizona State was one of the nation’s best “middle-eight” teams last season. (Butch Dill / Getty Images)The examples

When Georgia lost to Alabama in the 2021 SEC championship, it could blame the middle eight: The game was tied at 17 when Alabama scored on a Bryce Young touchdown run with 26 seconds left in the first half. Then Alabama scored on the opening possession of the second half, while Georgia didn’t answer. Final score: Alabama, 41-24.

But Georgia memorably won the 2018 Rose Bowl over Oklahoma thanks to a change in momentum in the middle eight. The Sooners executed the “Philly Special” to go up 31-14 with six seconds left. But thanks to some luck and skill — Tae Crowder jumping on Oklahoma’s squib kick, and a long Rodrigo Blankenship field goal — Georgia stalled momentum going into the locker room. Then Georgia’s defense got a stop on the second half’s opening possession, and Nick Chubb scored right away from 50 yards out to make it 31-24. The rest of the game was a classic back-and-forth, but that middle section got the Bulldogs back in the game.

Back to Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish weren’t just sterling in the middle eight in New Orleans: They were 124-31 for the season, including one stretch in which they outscored opponents 111-0. In the CFP semifinal, Notre Dame was outscored by Penn State 7-3, but the Irish got a game-tying touchdown 4:14 into the third quarter — so just 14 seconds past the cutoff — after getting the second-half kickoff.

The Irish’s luck ran out in the national championship, where Ohio State pulled away in the middle eight, scoring touchdowns with 27 seconds left in the first half and 2:14 into the third quarter to go up 28-7.

Then there’s Arizona State. Dillingham called the middle eight “the difference maker” last season, when his team was plus-59 in it. The middle eight provided the difference in five of the Sun Devils’ victories, including over BYU.

This season, the four games in Week 0 matching FBS teams saw two games in which the middle eight was a draw (Kansas State-Iowa State and Idaho State-UNLV), and two in which the team that won the middle eight won the game.

Hawaii was trailing Stanford 13-7 after a Cardinal field goal with 3:39 left. Hawaii answered with a 70-yard drive and touchdown to go up 14-13 heading into halftime. Each team punted to open the second half. While Stanford eventually went back ahead, Hawaii got two late field goals to win the game, 23-20. Hawaii won the middle eight, 7-3.
Kansas was already up 21-7, and got a late field goal — while Fresno State missed one at the buzzer — then Fresno fumbled on its first possession, and Kansas got a touchdown. That made it 31-7. Kansas won the middle eight, 10-0.

But whether it’s the ultimate indicator is complicated by some of the data.

The other time periods

There is a strong correlation between outscoring your opponent in the middle eight and winning the game. Over the past five seasons (2020-24), the winning percentage goes up the more you out-score your opponent in the middle eight, per TruMedia:

Point differenceW-LWin %

+11 or better

369-59

0.862

+8 to +10

198-68

0.744

+4 to +7

1,015-465

0.686

+1 to +3

391-274

0.588

Negative

866-1973

0.305

But it also goes that a team is more likely to win the game when it wins any eight-minute period of a game, right? Indeed. According to TruMedia, the middle eight is not the most impactful eight-minute chunk of any game. Taking all the possible eight-minute stretches in a game — 53 of them — it found that the middle eight ranked only 18th in correlation between outscoring your opponent and winning the game. And in CFP games, the middle eight was only 45th.

The most impactful eight-minute stretch ran from the five-minute mark of the first quarter through the 12-minute mark of the second quarter. Teams that won that stretch had a .703 win percentage in those games, including a 16-2 record in CFP games (.889). In fact, the four most impactful stretches were all in the first half, which makes sense. The better team jumps out ahead.

The first eight minutes of the third quarter were the most impactful chunk in the second half. And the least impactful stretch was the final eight minutes of the fourth quarter — teams that won it had a .642 win percentage in those games.

A matter of time?

Middle eight is the term, but more broadly, the strategy coaches value relates to the end of the first half and start of the second half. So TruMedia also looked at the “middle four” possessions: each team’s final drives of the first half and first drives of the second half. (Not counting any kneel-down possessions at the end of the half.) Going by possessions showed a more pronounced difference than game time, per TruMedia:

Point differenceW-LWin %

+11 or better

263-35

0.883

+8 to +10

190-68

0.736

+4 to +7

1040-402

0.721

+1 to +3

454-283

0.616

Negative

788-1947

0.288

The average FBS-vs.-FBS game over the previous five seasons featured about 24 total drives (about 12 each team), so the middle 4 drives accounted for 17 percent of the possessions.

The indicator?

There’s a reason Smart believes in it: Georgia has won 51 straight games vs. FBS teams in which it won the middle eight. In games Smart has lost the middle 8, his team is 16-14.

That’s why Smart tends to be aggressive near the end of the first half, even when it has backfired. In addition to the Notre Dame fiasco, there was the SEC championship, where quarterback Carson Beck got hurt on the final play of the first half as Georgia, trailing 6-3, tried to get some late points.

Georgia still won that game because it came out in the second half and scored a touchdown to go back up. Texas, on the losing end, used the middle eight to its advantage most of the rest of the season: 10 points late in the first half to pull away at Michigan, 14 points late in the first half to pull away against Oklahoma, a late touchdown to enter halftime up 28-10 on Clemson in the CFP.

Good teams did tend to be good middle-eight teams last year. Here were the FBS ranks for the 12 teams that made the CFP last year entering the playoff, per TruMedia:

That’s seven of the 12 CFP teams in the top dozen in the middle eight and eight in the top 20.

So is the middle eight that vital? It may not be the most pivotal advanced stat. But it’s one coaches study closely, and it explains some of their decisions.

“It’s crazy, the statistics,” Smart said. “One year, everybody talks about turnovers. Well, that’s the greatest indicator of who wins. The next year, it’s explosive plays. That’s the greatest indicator of what determines who wins games is who has more explosive plays. Both of those are huge indicators.

“Then, there’s the belief that the middle eight is the greatest indicator of who wins games, and statistically, you could go year to year, and it’s just very thin margins between the difference in who wins games over those three factors. So, middle eight, you could say it’s just as critical as those.”

(Top photo of Notre Dame’s Riley Leonard: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)