Notre Dame had a chance on Saturday to keep hope alive for a strong season, perhaps even an outside shot at the playoffs with USC coming to town next weekend, but had those plans blown to smithereens by a much more hungrier and well prepared Louisville team inside Papa John’s Stadium. What a terrible and deflating loss for the Irish as they now stare at the future of a 3-loss season before a much-needed bye week finally comes to provide rest.
Here’s the recap of Notre Dame’s loss at Louisville.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | VILLE |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 20 | 33 |
| Plays | 66 | 64 |
| Total Yards | 298 | 330 |
| Yards Per Play | 4.5 | 5.2 |
| Conversions | 3/15 | 5/13 |
| Completions | 22 | 17 |
| Yards/Attempt | 6.6 | 6.0 |
| Rushes | 28 | 40 |
| Rushing Success | 40.9% | 45.7% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 3 | 5 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 4 | 0 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 25.8% | 23.0% |
Offense
QB: D
RB: D
TE: B+
OL: F
WR: F
These are suddenly dark times for the Notre Dame program and a lot of it comes down to this kind of performance by the Irish offense. Any and all positive vibes from the Sam Hartman transfer are over. It’s one thing to focus exclusively on this individual game performance. However, the absolutely massive wasted opportunity in year 2 with Freeman as a young coach to be having an absolutely stink bomb of a game like this AND so many long-term questions is really tough to swallow right now.
Surely, the program will be looking for a new offensive coordinator in 6 or 7 weeks when this season winds down.
I feel bad for Hartman. I would imagine he came here hoping for outstanding line plays (especially in pass blocking!) and in this game he was embarrassingly let down by many people around him. That said, as much as we thought Hartman was going to make this offense so much better, it’s pretty clear he’s limited in a lot of ways and you’re just not going to get the type of uber-athletic ability that could’ve turned things around when the offense started struggling. Hartman needs a solid core around him and that’s not happening.
I can’t even wrap my head around the offensive line play and how bad this was from that unit. I know most of the arrows will be coming for Gerad Parker but I’d like to know what Joe Rudolph thinks about this performance and what the heck is going on with a sudden and massive regression with his offensive linemen.
Rushing Success
Estime – 4 of 10
Love – 3 of 5
Hartman – 3 of 5
Price – 0 of 1
Payne – 0 of 1
Tight end Mitchell Evans had a strong game, perhaps the lone bright spot! Although, he was targeted 8 times and a 50% catch rate isn’t very good which points to a really struggling offense.
I shouldn’t disparage walk-on Jordan Faison who caught a 36-yard touchdown pass. What a wild start to his young career. Otherwise, this was a tough outing for the Irish receivers. Louisville pressed the guys on the outside and from what we could see not many players were getting open. It wasn’t a great start when a fully covered Rico Flores is unable to fight for the ball on Hartman’s first interception.
Thomas and Merriweather caught passes on the final garbage time touchdown drive to make things a little better in the boxscore. But it was not a good game.
Notre Dame was horrendous running the ball and super terrible on short yardage situations. Only 3 conversions! Against a pretty average defense! Estime had 20 yards on 10 carries with a long run of 6 yards. How does this happen!?
Defense
DL: C-
LB: D
DB: C
I know most won’t be focusing on the defense and I understand.
I wouldn’t say they played bad, nor do they have the problems that are making Irish fans question the future. This was a defense that held things together for a long time in this game and eventually they broke. It would’ve been nice if they had stiffened a little more and maybe gave Notre Dame a chance to come back, but they couldn’t get it done.
Louisville fumbled on their first play from scrimmage after a completion to open the 2nd half and then scored on their final 6 drives of the game before kneeling it out for the win. Like I said, I don’t blame them, but that wasn’t very good either.
This game went from very close to Louisville pivoting to garbage time for most of the 4th quarter so many of the traditional numbers will flatter the Irish defense a little bit. For example, the Cardinals packed in a ton of unsuccessful carries while burning clock and adding field goals. For most of the game, Notre Dame was getting soundly beaten in the rushing success battle.
I really didn’t think Louisville would be able to run the ball as well as they did, which is disappointing.
Stuffs
Bertrand 2.5
Cross 2.5
Mills 2
JJB 1.5
Kiser 1.5
Nana 1
Liufau 1
Watts 1
Burnham 1
Botelho 0.5
Brown 0.5
Sneed 0.5
Keanaaina 0.5
Of course, turnovers and short fields will help explain how Louisville ended up scoring 33 points. Looking back, quarterback Jack Plummer really didn’t do much and the Irish have to be kicking themselves for holding him to just 145 yards through the air, with basically no explosive plays, and not coming close to winning the game by the 4th quarter.
Final Thoughts
I can’t help but look back at the dropped Tyree touchdown coming off Louisville’s lost fumble to open the 2nd half. What happens in this game if Notre Dame takes 14-7 lead and got a little bit of passing momentum?
Have we seen anything on the Liufau facemask penalty? That was early in the 4th quarter but it felt like game over at that point.
Everyone wants to like Marcus Freeman, including many in the national media. I think many of the harshest critics within the Notre Dame fan base will continue to point their finger at the administration for their decisions over the last couple years. However, this is the type of loss and a sharp negative swing in a season where the buzzards are going to be slowly circling above for Freeman.
I don’t feel like I’m out on Freeman but that comes with the caveat that he was so young and inexperienced that once you hired him you might as well stick with him for a while unless the wheels really come off the program. Will the wheels come off? That’s difficult to say. As I type this USC is losing 17-7 at home to freaking Arizona. As bad as we think things are right now, they could improve, and many other programs are dealing with terrible things too.
I had this sneaking suspicion that this Louisville game was going to be a big tell on Freeman’s program and how the rest of the season would shape up. And they failed so miserably.
My overwhelming emotion is sadness that the Irish don’t have much hope for the future. I can’t see this 2023 team doing better than 9-3 and the odds are it could be worse than that. What is there to look forward to then? A huge offensive staff overhaul, the offensive linemen all come back and shake off this weird season, and the skill players continue to get better? But who is at quarterback? You need a difference maker at quarterback and receiver and these are still massive question marks for Notre Dame. Recruiting isn’t even being that much of a differentiator these days, either.
Bottom line, I’m afraid that Freeman is charming and has a lot of traits of a good leader but ultimately was coached up in a Tressel Brain offense, Notre Dame’s traditions make it feel like this slightly-better-Iowa modus operandi is the backbone of the program, and there really aren’t the necessary talented and innovative assistants anywhere on staff that are going to push Freeman and the players to a higher level. To me, it looks like there will be an awful lot of Notre Dame football continuing to spin its wheels and not get better in an appreciable way any time soon.
Man was that a bummer of a game. IMO, season is essentially done and boy does that really stink. Tough questions ahead for Freeman. 14-7 now I believe is his record. Not nearly good enough for a program that claims they want to compete. Question is – do they really? I don’t think you move on yet, but I think there needs to be some serious self reflection.
If you want to compete for championships now, truly compete, you have to go all in. There is no middle ground. Are they all in? Unfortunately, I don’t think so and that’s a bummer. Seems more likely than not I’ll never see a championship.
Hey but what if we just perform enough to get people to show up at the Morris in and head to the game after because that’s what really brings in the money.
I think we all know that Freeman would have to do something borderline illegal to not get at least four, and probably five, seasons. Moving on isn’t really in play any time soon.
The real question is if he realizes he has a very bad offensive coordinator and appears to have done a bad job with most of his other hires that he made on his own too. But, even if he does realize that, what do you do with that information? The information is “I’m bad at hiring assistants”, but he’s the head coach! He has to hire the assistants. Maybe he can use a hiring firm or something?
I mean at this point you’d hope he’d find someone at least with some real experience (maybe even a former head coach) like Golden. One would thought this was especially important before given that Freeman is a defensive guy.
Well thank god that for Freeman’s first two years we went with Tommy Rees and then the TE coach.
This stuff is just insanity. First time HC with zero background, at all, in offense and we’re giving him interns as OCs.
This is Kevin White-era stuff. Malpractice.
As I’ve started saying, Swarbrick is the zero interest rate AD, in that he made a bunch of choices that seemed brilliant 10 years ago but have all started to fall apart.
Good news that that we were paid in Under Armor stock and had succession crisis in football and both men’s and women’s basketball, so it’s all worked out in the end.
Completely agree.
Fortunately, we have an NBC TV executive coming in to run athletics, so that should go great.
Brian Kelly should have been fired after 2016. The fact he didn’t shows ND doesn’t care about performance and may have hamstrung the future program.
Bad process with good outcome. Also Kelly had a record as a very good coach (not great) and was able to string together multiple 10 win seasons and playoff appearances after that, because he made necessary changes. That doesn’t seem “hamstrung”.
Was he great after 2016? No, but he was very good. Like 1st round QBs, there’s not a lot of great coaches to go around.
He blew every chance to build on double digit win seasons. He leaned on playing bad ACC teams. He basically stoped recruiting towards the end, which is why the team is depending on so many transfers and underclassmen.
the double digit wins thing, like 300 yard passing games, 30 ppg, etc. is also a sleight of hand. More games for the former, way more points for the latter, have become the norm across the sport and hide a lot of rot.
44&6 his last four years.
2-5 vs. top 10 teams in that span – includes a beating of then #7 stanford in 2018 but not the michigan embarrassment in 2019. Point is in decades past Kelly would be more like 38-6 in his last four years – also a good record, but the TEN WINS thing is inflated
Lou Somogyi used to quote Ara Parseghian, that it is the number of losses that should be counted. Even more true now for the reasons you adduce.
Ok, 6 losses in four years. Not counting, 44 wins averages 11 wins.
It’s really good! But Big Game Brian’s best win in that time span was the Clemson one that Clemson then avenged in a big way in the ACC title game, as we all know. The five losses I mentioned above were by an average score of 28-11 (28.4-11.4 technically). So cool we got to add an extra win or two versus Wake Forest or Bowling Green that wouldn’t have happened in decades past, but we then got rocked by top programs consistently and in a big way.
Kelly was (and is) the best coach since Lou, no doubt about that. But it’s also a low bar and a lot of his best stuff looks less shiny when you adjust for inflation.
Not sure I agree with that. Hiring a first-time head coach, which has a zero percent success rate at Notre Dame, has hamstrung the program. We keep walking into this same mistake over and over and over.
I love Freeman, but it absolutely was a panic hire by Swarbrick after Kelly bolted and they didn’t want to try and spend the money to get Fickel.
I believe at the time they hired Freeman they could have had Fickel (or Aranda or Campbell). They made a pro-Freeman decision when several other top options were available.
I think calling Freeman a panic hire is a bit of an overstatement. Lots of us thought taking a swing on a likeable guy committed to recruiting who would ensure the current recruiting class stuck together would be worth it, especially with the continuity in the program at S&C and OC and keeping Elston/other coaches.
With the benefit of two years’ time, we now know: (a) the continuity thing was basically a false premise; (b) NIL would negate much of the potential upside benefit of the recruiting part of hiring Freeman and (c) Freeman suffers from Defensive Coordinator Strategy Brain, which in retrospect was foreseeable but nobody was talking about as a risk at the time. Also that recruiting class, or at least the parts that might leave (ie Sneed; not Morrison and Alt) looks kinda eh.
So, in retrospect, it looks pretty clear that they should have waited for Fickel. But I don’t think it was so obvious in real time.
The real lesson of all that, as with many things the last few years, is that Swarbrick is not nearly as smart/savvy as he is made out to be.
Agree with this. Hindsight is 20/20. Hard to really know about B or C here. And B alone would be enough to know not to hire Freeman and wait for Fickel. Unfortunately, that would have been impossible to know and so it’s hard to blame the decision exactly even if it has turned out to be the wrong one.
the scuttlebutt at the time was they didn’t want to wait for Fickell to finish his bowl game(s) because we wouldn’t want to have an embarrassing bowl loss, I guess.
I mean there clearly was some risk of waiting for Fickel with the recruiting class. And the thought was with Freeman we have more continuity and can keep this thing going. But every program in the end it’s probably worth the 1 year potential drop in recruiting because of waiting for a new head coach who is in the playoffs then going with more continuity because it’s hard for there to be much continuity in any program when the head coach moves on (and it turns out then of course that we didn’t even get much of it).
But the one thing we knew and have always known is that first-time HCs do not succeed at ND. There is literally no track record of such success since Rockne. Not one example we could point to and say, “Freeman will be like that guy.”
That is true. Personally I discounted it, thinking that if schools like Ohio State and Georgia and LSU and Oklahoma are hiring coordinators and having it work to some degree, why should it be any different for Notre Dame (which is a worse job than any of those)? But, maybe there really is some additional aspects to dealing with ND’s hoops that only the benefits of HC experience can provide.
Of course, this very well may limit us to 2nd tier coaches at best going forward. Can’t imagine anyone will leave a top-10 program job to come to Notre Dame basically ever.
ND09hls12 (btw, I have wanted to ask about your handle — if you were at ND 09-12, so was my older son),
Yes I do think that to quote you
“…there really is some additional aspects to dealing with ND’s hoops that only the benefits of HC experience can provide”
But to your second point: when our big successful coaches were brought on, they were none of them top 10 program school coaches. Leahy was at Boston College, Ara at Northwestern, Lou at Minnesota. So you pick a super star with potential at the tier just down with proven HC experience… and hope!
(I’ll regret saying this, but from that perspective, BK was a good choice. And in fact if K State had won their last damn game in 2012, he would have had a Natty in his third year like those three, and history might have changed and BK might have maximized his potential. (Sadly, however, the Saban Death Star had been built… but I digress.)
Fickell has lost to Washington St. this year, and hasn’t played anyone else of note. Aranda isn’t exactly DGT at Baylor. Campbell, I don’t think that is a hire that excited anyone, hence still at Iowa St. We definitely have growing pains with Marcus Freeman. He may need to look for an offensive coordinator over the summer, however, Louisville definitely wanted to make Sam Hartman beat them throwing the ball to a depleted receiver room. If everyone is 100% healthy, I think this game looks a lot different. Having Ohio St. and then Duke in back to back weeks is the body blow theory in trump cards. These four game before the bye week have been murder’s row. If we come out of them at 2-2, not exactly what I hoped for, but still very good football from ND.
That last paragraph, damn, ouch. Harsh but fair.
Also 9-3 feels pretty optimistic right now!
To everyone that thought going for it on fourth down in the 4th quarter was a terrible idea.
If/when the offense sputters against the terrible USC defense, I hope Freeman fires Parker then. and hands the reins over to Gino during the bye week. Beside play-calling, he’s also in charge of getting the offense ready to play, and that may be worse right now. IMO the only reason not to is to avoid the awkward situation of Gino doing a good, not great, job as interim and winning the role for next year with player support (classic interim trap).
Felt like Freeman was aggressive and following analytics in his 4th down decisions last year (maybe I’m misremembering) but that seems gone. Maybe a by-product of a bad offense. How tough is it to have a GA with one of the models up saying Go or Kick?
The switching OL in the middle of the 7th game seemed like a panic move.
Starting to think about who returns and who declares. Wonder if Fisher realizes he needs more time or if he doesn’t want to deal with another average season.
Start keeping an eye on potential transfer QBs, though for as good a marketing tool as the first four games by Hartman was, the last couple have been rough. Plus no OL or WR to pitch in the meeting.
Hey remember that weird time around the coaching transition where some people, thought Harry Heistand wasn’t good? “Actually Jeff Quinn is recruiting great/Harry is an asshole” worked shockingly well for beat reporters and substackers.
Unless they bring in a top flight legit OC, there is no way ND can bring in a portal QB that has half of Hartman’s credentials.
Being a fan of ND since I was 12 and saw their first game ever on TV in 1952 and later in life becoming a boxing fan, I liken ND to a light heavyweight trying to compete with the heavyweights and very seldom does a light heavy beat a heavy. The administration could get off their holier than thou attitude of we are ND and you aren’t and help this football program by loosening up some money for NIL, allowing undergrad and junior college transfers from the portal and drop some of these high admissions standards just a little bit, then perhaps we could become a heavyweight and compete at the highest level.
Given your breadth of experience, I’m curious: in terms of vibes, which head coach does this start feel most like?
Bill – we must be contemporaries. I saw my first ND game in 1952, vs Purdue (behind the end zone, they used to have bleacher seats, I still remember that damn big Purdue drum). Grew up in SB, saw every home game from 54 through 68 when I graduated. Obviously back then we were heavyweights! But in 1952 the ND administration was in the throes of tapping the breaks on football overemphasis. Leahy would retire frustrated a year later with a genuine national championship caliber squad. But it’s hard not to sympathize with the young Father Hesburgh who wanted to keep ND on the path to becoming a great university.
Same as now, I understand ND’s reluctance to dive “all in” to this horrible anarchical toxic out of control mix of NIL, recruiting, and portal transfers.
ND09hls12, forgive me for barging in, but I have some thoughts re: your question to Bill:
This current Year 2 reminds me in a non-positive way of Bob Davie — a very good DC, hired from within the program, with plenty of positive vibes. Not a bad guy, and actually a very good coordinator — but couldn’t ascend up to the HC level.
In a more positive way, one can hope MF’s current Year 2 can be similar to Lou Holtz’s. In Year 3 Lou won a Natty with a completely new QB and retooled O and D lines. Towards the end of Year 2, nobody thought we had a chance at anything like that.
Noise….The difference in 87′ was improvement from 86′ was obvious. 5&6 to 8&4 vs. the 2nd ranked toughest schedule, with wins vs. 3 ranked teams. This team looks no better than last years.
I’d love to know what someone down voted this for. Someone else mentioned the 87’team lost their final 3 games. True, they were to 8-4 Penn St.(21-20) #1 Miami and #10 A&M. People complaining that off season were the loonies.
I don’t down vote things as a general rule, but did want to point out that last year we lost to two very good teams, two very bad teams, and had one really good win (and a second pretty good win in the bowl game).
Right now we’ve lost to two very good teams and have one pretty good win. Seems like we’re definitely still moving in a positive direction, just more slowly than we thought was possible with the Hartman transfer.
I think you can look at the process and not feel very good about that even if the results have been slightly better. Also while results in a way are better than last year the bar is much higher because of QB (at least).
Yeah I’m more bummed about process and program administration (and that the recruiting isn’t better) than losing to Louisville. I think that’s where the outsized agita is coming from from this loss – it now feels more likely than not that Freeman is not going to work out, and that stinks.
Basically, CJ Carr (and a new OC) need to save his job.
relying on a new OC and a freshman QB to save your job means you should probably be calling your friends who might want a DC upgrade, unfortunately for us
Yup, everyone seems to be feeling really positive about things right now.
If you’re measuring the scale of the badness of the thing that just happened this is much less-bad than Marshall or Stanford last year. Still bad, just… less.
Also to be clear I didn’t downvote you or any other comments here… maybe most recently a pseudo political comment over the summer when people are bored.
It’s less bad of course but it’s more like if not now, then when? We have a QB who with a better OC (dare I say with even Rees calling the plays) might be a top 5 QB in college like he had been with Wake Forest. We have one of the best secondaries in football and a really good defense. We have great RBs.
But with the QB here right now, and it’s not working out (in part certainly because of the WRs – but far more because of a simpleton/bad OC), it’s hard to see the stars aligning again anytime soon.
And another comp that comes to mind — Gerry Faust of course. Hired as a dynamic, high ND-compatible values guy, charismatic, enthusiastic. Wound up being incredibly… inconsistent. Less we forget, he had some very good wins… and some very bad losses.
Which looks to be MF’s trajectory unless he digs down very deep and evolves in big ways.
Funniest moment of the night…
Hartman scrambling on 2nd & 8 and sliding 3 yards short of the marker while signaling first down. Estime stuffed for -1 yard on 3rd down.
First, perhaps my hugest thanks ever to Eric and Andy for having the courage to write about this horribly disappointing
shitshowcollapse. And for the rest of us posting here for remaining somehow civilized.A few points:
The O-line. Especially after Ohio State, the most burning and IMO most pertinent and perhaps explicative question is, per Eric:
I’d like to know what Joe Rudolph thinks about this performance and what the heck is going on with a sudden and massive regression with his offensive linemen.
In my many decades of NDness I’ve seldom seen such a sharp midseason fluctuation. Maybe the year BVG started off with his famous fist pump against Michigan and then got exposed oh too soon. Which is not a good thought. But MF says he wants to be an O-line driven program. So he needs to address this before anything (good O-line delivers good Sam Hartman and good Dric).
Three years. I’ve been posting on this repeatedly. We all need to give MF Year 3. It’s true for all our great ones. Ara’s Year 2 was an ugly 7-2-1, with a QB who could throw 12 yards max. Lou’s Year 2 ended in three straight very disheartening losses. Of course, the difference was that each of them knew how to be a head coach already. MF is OJT. But let’s give him next year.
Wideouts. At halftime Orlovsky’s only remark was he wanted to see if our wideouts could get separation. Damn, they couldn’t. You have to think we need to hit the portal for two good ones, maybe that would be compatible with our future QB.
A week ago in the write up I defended the coaching staff. Man does that look bad 1 week later. The special teams stinks, chris threes decision making in punt returns costs about 45 yards per game, the punter seems bad. I’ll defend the defense a bit, they’re probably gassed from 7 games in 7 weeks but again the lack of depth is on the coaching staff.
The offense will be discussed at length, but just brutal and unwatchable.
Can Freeman overcome this, will he and is he even capable? No idea. Think BK is showing again that he was never it (if he had his average nd qb rather than jayden daniels, he’d be at .500 right now at LSU). As you said most of Freeman’s hires seem iffy at best. Then the admin becomes a big question, whatever the hell this schedule is seems like at least a factor for this team and the renowned offensive coordinator search really seems like a sh*tshow now. I guess I don’t know what to say other than I got saturdays back in october and november in phoenix so not a total bust
Also I had just blocked out the called timeout after the second down sack during the first half two minute drive. Felt like a coach who had no idea how to fix it and it was negligence.
Freeman’s only chance of success at this point is to basically can everyone on the offensive side of the ball. Some on defense too, though I’m pretty meh on Golden overall. The offense completely left the defense out to dry and felt like they have for three weeks in a row. We could in theory upgrade from Golden but I don’t want to talk about him much. That said, can everyone, go big and/or aggressive in your hires to spark some life into this offense, that’s his only hope for both immediate success next year and continued success going forward. Does Freeman have that in him? I hope so and I kind of think so. Does the administration let him do it and open the pocketbook to do that? Press X to doubt.
It came up in the instant reaction and it is petty, but I really really want to trash Liufau for being the most frustratingly bad player I can ever remember watching on Notre Dame. It used to be Sam Young especially because that brutal freshman year. I’ve never seen a guy out there do so many things wrong over and over. “Well his back ups may be worse” – it’s not possible. I’d rather watch them be nowhere near the play than whiff again and again at this point.
My standard going into the season for the offense was anything worse than 15th in SP+ with Hartman staying healthy would be a fireable offense for Parker. We’re 24th now. Yikes.
The talent on the offensive side of the ball can’t possibly be as bad as it looks. TE and maybe RB are the only groups playing to near their potential. Is Sam Hartman all in ? Those runs coming up just short of first downs, are telling IMO.
Another loss and I see no reason to not play Angeli more and more. Might as well find out what he’s got.
Mrs. Parker learned how to downvote
More likely Sam’s squeeze.
Lotta downvotes in here for comments to the effect of “our offensive coordinator is not good” and “Freeman is a not-good in-game coach”, both of which should not be particularly controversial or even really subject to interesting debate at this point.
Yeah, somebody REALLY does not like criticism of the coaching staff and especially the OC. Doesn’t matter because it’s fake internet points, but still.
Plus, having a bunch of negative points all over the board is a tribute to ND’s offense.
Southern Cal is so flawed that I still am not completely hopeless about hitting the bye week at 6-2 which is about where I thought we’d be (what a weird path tho huh lol)
It all starts and ends with the OL play
Sure maybe Parker needs to be more creative and outside the box but the box is pretty entrenched when you can’t protect your QB or get any semblance of a push on 3rd and short
I’ve given up on trying to be smart about this team
Dig deep and get ready to ruin SoCal’s year
Tigers — Love it. I am faced with flying all the damn way from Paris to SB for this weekend, and you have just lifted my spirits out of the gloomy negative place they were at.
Hoo boy.
-The exhaustion factor cannot be overlooked. This team is totally out of gas. This is a failure of scheduling. The Ireland trip followed by seven straight games was always a terrible idea and should never be repeated. The Ireland part in particular. If ND fans wan to go there they can do it on their own time.
-Freeman’s explanations of his game management decisions are illogical, innumerate, and stupid. Maybe he can learn this stuff but it’s possible his brain doesn’t work the right way to handle it.
-I’m with Steen; the entire offensive coaching staff needs to be flushed. Not just because I’m mad at them, but because this program needs to figure out a path out of offensive purgatory. Why do we destroy QBs like the Cleveland Browns? Why are we never, ever good in short yardage? Why do we keep reverting to the TE safety blanket offense? These are big, programmatic questions that need to be answered.
-I said last week that this team does not look well-coached and I think that more than ever. We have 30-something dudebros trying to do a very difficult and complex job. I am begging ND to stop hiring interns.
Did I read somewhere in the last week or two that there is no analytics guy on staff and that Freeman seems a little uneasy about analytics in general? Has anyone seen that? It would make a lot of sense around some of these decisions.
I haven’t seen that, but that’s the only possible explanation for kicking a 54-yard field goal down a touchdown instead of going for it on 4th and 4. That required willful blindness towards probabilistic thinking.
This of course follows the plan to kick a 45-yard field goal to win the game last week instead of using the last 38 seconds to pick up more yardage, which, same.
But didn’t he say in his presser last week that the run they called for Estime (which wound up being the TD run) was to set the ball up closer and better for the FG?
He said he was trying to center the ball. Any yardage was incidental. I was granting 2 yards for calling it a 45 yard FG. Thankfully Estime took it longer than that.
Yea this was a huge error in his way of thinking when there was plenty of time for them to gain more yards to get a much closer FG at least.
No, there is at least one analytic guy on staff, I have heard. MF has addressed analytics several times — in fact, that was his exact justification for going for it on 4th and short in one of the early games. He also addressed it in the past week. Granted, he did say after this awful game something about analytics just being a guide, but honestly, isn’t that so?
Analytics may say go for it on 4th and 2. Make sure you have a good plan to pick up 2+ yards just in case.
Not sure this means anything, but ND’s last four head coaches have had disappointing second years.
Willingham: Started #20, went 5-7 with grisly blowout losses to Michigan, SC, and FSU.
Weis: Started #2, went 10-2 with grisly blowout losses to Michigan and SC. Needed miracles to escape GT, MSU, and UCLA. Got blown out in the Sugar Bowl.
Kelly: Started #16, went 8-5 with disgusting losses to USF, Michigan and SC. Shat away the bowl game against FSU.
Freeman: Started #13, currently 5-2 with very stupid losses to OSU and Louisville. To be continued, but the trend suggests a blowout loss to SC.
How much of an impact has the loss of Balis made, do you think? I don’t recall an ND team under his supervision be pushed around this much at this point in the season.
I had this question in the off season, and now I’m going to ask it publically: how does a top 20 team not get a top 20 offensive coordinator? I’m not totally blaming Freeman or even ND’s admin, but it seemed like there were no great candidates even willing to consider it. Frankly, looking at Bama, I don’t think their search went much better. Was it timing? Buyouts? Will? Money?
Ultimately I think Freeman needs to hire someone with established offensive chops. We just have a lot of inexperience in the coaching room.
Timing definitely hurt. But if Wisconsin of all schools can get an air raid guy to come over from another consistently ranked P5 team, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to
Hiring Parker made no sense. If Freeman concluded that what was best for the program was hiring a grizzled veteran OC, then that’s who he should have hired regardless of whether it was Andy Ludwig specifically. Going from “we need someone with decades of experience” to “well here’s my buddy, he’s called plays a couple times” was totally illogical.
We can hire good OCs, other programs do it all the time. We simply choose not to and to, instead, hand the job to our unqualified friends. We are not much different from Iowa.
Actually we hired a good OC in 2017. Turned out he was an unpleasant person who might have driven Ian Book out of the program if he stayed any longer, but he was identified as talented and was!
Point being: we can do it!
Chip Long works for Louisville now as a Quality Control Coach, so presumably he’s available for OC calls.
Ideally we could identify somebody who is both (a) talented and (b) does not make 21-year-olds hate him. Chip only checks one of those boxes, it seems.
That does seem like a good start to a checklist, I agree.
Instructions unclear, hired 21-year-old OC.
Didn’t we hire the Packers HC as our OC? That was presumably us hiring a good OC, even if it wasn’t necessarily a good OC hire.
Book hated Long? I thought Long was the one spearheading the decision to get Wimbush out the door by any means necessary so Book could play. Or am I missing a step?
https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/notre-dame/notre-dame-insider/2019/12/12/chip-long-reportedly-out-notre-dame-could-tom-rees-time/4410356002/
Have to read between the lines here but the message board reporting at the time was straightforward. Wasn’t just Book but he was one of them IIRC.
I’m sure it didn’t help that Rees seemed to leave later in the typical cycle. But that should not be an excuse at all on not identifying and getting a guy we wanted (instead of settling for giving Parker a shot).
Offensive Line:
Absolutely bizarre that a unit could go from an absolutely elite performance against Ohio State to such dog poo performance two weeks later that was so foreseen that there was a plan to rotate interior linemen going into the game. I can tell you for sure that there were a lot of footwork and leverage issues last night, but can’t tell you at all why that would have happened to an experienced group that didn’t have those problems two weeks ago.
Wide Receivers:
Chansi Stuckey was able to come in, recruit a great 2023 class, and improve Jayden Thomas and Deion Colzie from early season to end season last year. It seemed clear that we had a coach who could finally teach WRs to get off the line against press coverage. Stuckey personally made a great career out of precision movements, route running, and effort and it seemed like he was passing that along. Now the receivers have regressed in their ability to get separation and while I stopped short of saying it about the offensive line I’ll say it about the receivers: they don’t put out enough effort on a substantial number of snaps.*
Decision Making:
Marcus is having trouble making correct high-leverage decisions. At the Duke 30, down one with 38 seconds and one time out remaining the decision was on Marcus and he leaned into Guidugli’s recommendation to run the clock down at the 30 to try a game winning 47-ish yard field goal rather than try to move closer. That’s a wrong decision 100% of the time.
Before a 3rd and 13 play from our own 17 yard line with 58 seconds left in the first half of a tied game Marcus elected to call a quick timeout to preserve time for if we could convert the 3rd and 13. That’s a wrong decision 100% of the time.
The team has trouble getting calls in for situational football, third and fourth down calls are consistently late in the play clock. Go-or-kick decisions are inconsistent. Game plans seem to assume that Notre Dame needs to increase variance by shortening every game, which is the opposite of what you should do in games where you have the better team.
*WR criticism doesn’t apply to freshmen walk-ons.
Also the fourth and four 54-yard field goal down a touchdown was a no-brainer 100% wrong call. Neat that Shrader made it and all, but that’s not even “bad process/good outcome” because at that point it wasn’t that good of an outcome.
One more thought on the OC situation.
A real-world example of the type of help that Freeman needs is right in front of our faces — it’s Al Golden. I realize not everyone loves him as a DC, but the fact of the matter is that his defenses have been very effective at keeping opponents’ scores down and have been asked to cover for long, long stretches of offensive ineptitude, both this year and last. May not be pretty but it does work.
Golden has been coaching since Freeman was a little kid. He’s coached in college and the NFL, he’s coached multiple positions, he’s been a DC before. His 30 years of experience are incredibly valuable to a young HC and their value shows up on the scoreboard.
This is exactly what we need in an OC. I think Freeman recognizes that, which is why he went after Ludwig. Getting an offensive version of Al Golden has to be the number one priority of this offseason, followed closely by hitting the portal for WRs.
New, good OC is obviously far and away the #1 priority for the program going forward. From rumblings they’re also likely going to have to replace Golden, who is apparently eyeing an NFL gig and probably will have earned one by December. So I guess that’s #2.
But I think getting a good grad transfer QB is a clear #3. One of the big bummers of the last week or so is that, two weeks ago, it looked like it might be the case that ND was setting up to be the kind of place like Oklahoma was under Riley where you could treat it as a destination for grad transfer QBs. Now that is up-in-the-air at best.
A doomy scenario for the rest of the season is the offense does just well enough that Freeman doesn’t want to make two coordinator changes but also it’s obvious to any grad transfer QB that he is going to be working with a bottom-tier OC in Parker so we can’t even get a Coan-level transfer, much less Hartman.
I’d really like to see ND develop their own QBs but, maybe those days are gone. Bring in another GT and I think you’re opening the door for more than one QB to bolt.
There isn’t a QB on the roster who should be ND’s starting QB next year. Angeli looks like a career backup every time we’ve seen him and Minchey can’t beat him out now/no reason to think he’d markedly improve in 10 months. They absolutely should get a grad transfer starter if they can. If Minchey or Angeli leave, so be it. The real question is whether CJ Carr (or Minchey, if he’s the one who sticks around) will be ready in 2025.
I was hopeful we’d be able to basically claim the best one available again this offseason but not so optimistic now. Maybe we’d be able to port one over with the OC hire.
I mean isn’t there usually a reason to think that QBs make big jumps between 1st and 2nd year because of the mental part of learning the offense (at least)? So I wouldn’t think now would be a time to rule out Minchey starting just because he can’t beat out Angeli for the backup – especially because backups are often chosen for their ability to run the offense.
Yeah, I think HLS has a point on Angeli. I think another transfer QB seems likely, which means in all likelihood saying goodbye to Minchey (or maybe Angeli), but that’s how it goes. You’re year-to-year now in CFB, no more so than at QB.
I don’t think Minchey making a leap can be ruled out, to be clear, but I don’t think you count on it.
Agree with this. I’m not saying Minchey can’t be a D1 starting QB next year… but he’ll have gotten way less run by the end of the season this year than Buchner had going into 2022, and it was a year-altering mistake not taking a grad transfer that year. If we can get a Coan-level transfer for 2024, you tell Minchey he should stick around in case of injury and to be in a good position to start in 2025. If he can’t live with that, via con dios (but he very likely isn’t starting at any other major program next year either).
Agreed.
Yes, I didn’t mean to be disagreeing with anything other than that it would be impossible for Minchey to make a leap as ND09 said:
I certainly wouldn’t want to count on it either. And so I don’t think one should rule out taking a GT QB next year – assuming you can find one that you are pretty sure would be a marked improvement.
Who are the possibilities by the way? It’ll probably be typically either a mid-level power 5 “star” like Hartman (or even lower-level like Pratt) or a former power 5 starter who missed all/most of the season due to injury but whose job was taken over by someone who is likely better (or at least that’s what the team thinks – like Coan).
Tulane’s QB, who was our reported 1B preference last year, has another year of eligibility and probably won’t want to enter a historically good QB draft class.
Time to fire up the good ole 18S OC/grad transfer QB big boards!
Let’s hope whoever we get at OC is enticing to him. That would be a huge get as another GT.
My only question in the debate is, When have we ever seen Angeli ? Answer, we haven’t. I was down voted in an earlier comment suggesting we do get to see him in real action, if ND suffers another loss.
In limited duty (mop up) this season, Angeli, 4 games 10-14 71% 2TDs 0INT.
Hardly #s that say he can’t play. Certainly he hasn’t proven anything but, saying he’s looked like a career backup is a “bit extreme” at best.
Golden leaving wouldn’t surprise me at all and I think it’s possible we upgrade. But a downgrade is also quite possible and moving on from him feels way less urgent than the offensive situation unless Golden himself jumps ship.
Oh completely agree – if Golden wants to stay that would be great at this point for stability’s sake even though he basically doesn’t recruit. I’m just assuming he is gone based on the message board buzz from reporters, who are basically treating him as having one foot out the door.
Yeah that’s not surprising. Recruiting upgrades at multiple places would be very nice too but I worry that’s ultimately a NIL issue regardless of who we get.
Based on the buzz, yes. I can see it too. The hours in college MAY be better, but the recruiting has to be beyond annoying. Not so much the begging 17 year olds (although bad enough), the travel has to be awful.
The one interesting thing is our last 3 DCs have been LB coaches. From the failure to develop Kollie, the lack of development of Sneed, the position switch of Junior (who was supposed to be a great Mike) and Burnham to whatever you want to call Liufau (who has been consistently bad) that is probably the consistently weakest position on our defense over the last five or six years. We have had one great LB, and a bunch of mediocre or worse.
I am not sure about the transfer QB. We can’t take a kid like Caleb Williams (undergrad starter or even a former 5* buried on the bench – no Arch Manning for us), so porting one with the OC hire (assuming we make one) is not likely. Thus, we are at a grad transfer situation. We aren’t going to get much better than a Hartman. The problem with Hartman, and with any grad transfer is they have a body of work. They aren’t likely to deviate significantly from that body of work. Hartman did the first 4 games, but now is reverting to the mean.
Also, any grad transfer will likely be trying to improve their draft stock from likely UFA/7th rounder to mid rounder or better. A second or third rounder will go to the NFL. Perhaps NIL money changes that, but probably not. Hartman may go from 6th/7th round to 4th/5th. You can’t win an NC with a string of QBs like that. There is no continuity, no improvement. Yes, the transfer in any year may be above average in most cases, but they won’t be great. Hartman was clearly better than Coan, but they year with Coan was difficult.
People below may be right about Angeli, but that is basically what everyone thought about Ian Book. Nobody can say one way or the other about Minchey and Carr is a complete unknown. Both may have more potential than Angeli, but they have to get a chance. We have to take the chance and develop one so that we can get someone at the top of the draft board. It will mean an uglier start in 2024 than Hartman II or Coan II, but we need the long term upside.
You can win the NC without a great QB, Stetson Bennett proved that. However, Carson Beck is also proving with the right successor and an abundance of talent around, you can win right away.
I think we actually CAN take an Arch Manning. I believe I read that the administration is open to taking guys who have only completed their Freshmen year, as they can still graduate from ND in 4 years even if most of their credits don’t transfer. That being said, taking a guy who was on the bench this year as a true freshman is a pretty big risk that probably doesn’t lead to the program taking a step forward.