At some point, Marcus Freeman will have to figure out how to handle prosperity. But my goodness, can he handle adversity.

Notre Dame laid the smack down on USC in its most complete performance of the season Saturday night, 48-20, probably putting a one-team end to Caleb Williams’ bid to repeat as Heisman winner and keeping Freeman’s streak of having his team ready to go for its most elite opponents intact.

Now, a few disjointed thoughts while trying not to think about the fact that if any of about 12 things at the end of the Ohio State game had gone differently, ND’s chances at the playoff would look pretty rosy right now even with the loss to Louisville…

Give it up for Al Golden

The Notre Dame defensive coordinator has not always been the most popular person on campus. While almost universally considered a solid DC, Irish fans, including me, tend to nitpick some of his decisions. (Particularly some blitz decisions.)

So let’s applaud a pitch-perfect defensive game plan, executed near-flawlessly. Golden kept Williams off balance throughout Saturday night, leading to three first-half interceptions (!!), the first time the Heisman winner had ever thrown that many in a game. Caleb was able to work a little magic in the second half, aided by freshman dynamo Zachariah Branch, but the Trojans never had the ball while trailing by less than 18 in that span.

The biggest beneficiary of all that defensive success was, of course, Xavier Watts, who had the game of his life with two picks that both set up TDs, a forced fumble and a scoop-and-score. Remember when he was a WR?

Benjamin Morrison also got a pick, and Rylie Mills, NaNa Osafo-Mensah, JD Bertrand and others made a living in the Trojan backfield as ND’s front line pushed around its USC counterpart. Even my favorite whipping boy, Marist Liufau, got in on the fun and took Williams down.

Just for fun, here’s the full stat line ND’s defense produced against one of the best players this sport has ever seen: Williams threw for 199 yards and took 37 attempts to get them. He ran for minus-8 yards. He got sacked six times and threw three picks.

Not bad.

That made life easy for the ND offense

Most people’s case for Notre Dame in this game revolved around the Irish front returning to its Ohio State form and taking advantage of a soft USC defense. And certainly the O-line did well, not allowing a single sack to a Trojan team that was averaging nearly four per game. ND runners averaged close to five yards per carry. And Sam Hartman made a few big throws, none bigger than the deep bomb to Chris Tyree that swung momentum back Notre Dame’s way after a Trojan push. (He made a few good ones that were dropped, too.)

But what Notre Dame did best tonight on offense was simply not allow the gifts its defense handed them to go to waste. ND scored touchdowns all three times Williams’ picks created short fields. The cliche term here is ‘complementary football,’ but hey, some cliches are cliches for a reason.

The TDs also ensured the momentum swings would go all the way the Irish’s way, keeping a raucous Notre Dame crowd in the game.

Special teams!

A brief shout-out to Notre Dame’s special teams unit, which other than a big return by Branch, had a pretty terrific night. The Irish made both field goal attempts, Bryce McFerson pinned USC deep, and oh yeah there was this.

The Freeman talk can quiet down for a week, and a new goal

No question, last week created some conversations around the Notre Dame head coach that hadn’t existed before. For maybe the first time, Freeman’s approval rating in South Bend fell below near-100 percent.

But what the Irish coach did was take a team playing on its midterm week, on its 8th straight week, against a super-talented opponent, and got them ready to go. Again. For whatever his flaws, Freeman has had the Irish playing good football against the best opponents every time – no 2017 Miami no-shows on the resume yet. As Irish fans know full well, that’s not really a quality you can just learn through experience. It’s something a coach has or he doesn’t. Freeman has it.

This win also creates a new goal for the team: End the stupid major-bowl losing streak. As we know, next year the CFP goes to 12 teams and there’s effectively no such thing as a major bowl anymore. It would be a fine time to end the stupid string of losses in those games that dates to 1/1/94. The Irish are almost certainly ticketed for one of those games if they win out, and other than Clemson, there’s no team left on the schedule that has any right to test them if they play well.

So those are the stakes. Identify the goal, pursue the goal, and execute it.