When the score reached 14-0 in favor of Notre Dame I quite literally bounded to the bathroom past the rest of my family working on a jigsaw puzzle in the nearby room. My instinct was to announce how awesome Notre Dame looked under Marcus Freeman when, as I worked my way toward them, I checked myself. “No, better wait a little while longer before getting so confident” I thought.
Good thing I listened to myself. Following a mostly strong 1st half to build a 28-7 lead, Notre Dame put together one of the most frustratingly inept performances in years on its way to blowing a chance for a major bowl victory.
The tier 3 level 2017 Citrus Bowl remains the best post-season success for this program in 28 years. If there are college football gods, they really don’t want Notre Dame getting this monkey off their back.
Stats Package
| STAT | IRISH | POKES |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 35 | 37 |
| Plays | 89 | 95 |
| Total Yards | 551 | 605 |
| Yards Per Play | 6.19 | 6.36 |
| Conversions | 11/21 | 4/15 |
| Completions | 38 | 34 |
| Yards/Pass Attempt | 7.48 | 7.27 |
| Rushes | 21 | 44 |
| Rushing Success | 45.0% | 55.5% |
| 10+ Yds Rushes | 1 | 11 |
| 20+ Yds Passes | 7 | 5 |
| Defense Stuff Rate | 18.9% | 12.3% |
I’ll lay it all out here, I haven’t been this disappointed, mad, or upset with a loss in years. I’ll get into the reasoning below after I go through the torture of breaking down more of this loss in detail. The wounds are still fresh. This is going to suck.
Offense
QB: B+
RB: C-
TE: A
OL: A
WR: D
Good thing we get to start with the offense and talk about some of the good stuff that happened in the Arizona desert. First, I’m giving major props to the offensive line for putting in a dominant performance in pass blocking (only 2 sacks for OSU!) and while the run game never got going due to the gameplan (told ya) the Cowboys were not nearly as suffocating at the line of scrimmage as we thought they’d be going into the game.
Also, how about Blake Fisher’s performance? Sheesh, what an absolute stud.
If I had told you prior to Saturday that the Irish would score 35 points, totaling 551 yards, at 6.2 per clip, with Oklahoma State only notching 2 sacks and a measly 12.3% stuff rate I’d guess 99% of us would’ve believed Notre Dame won very, very comfortably. Maybe even a huge and fun blowout.
But, they didn’t even win! I think this is why it hurt so much, filling all of that hope of an entertaining Fiesta Bowl win and going full send into the off-season at 12-1 was like spending money we didn’t actually have.
With 1:16 remaining in the 1st half after Notre Dame took a 28-7 lead the overall offense was successful on 59.5% of plays while Jack Coan already had 23 successful passes and a 67.6% success rate through the air.
From this very point forward nursing a healthy 21-point lead, Notre Dame would finish the game with success on just 14 out of its final 42 plays from scrimmage for a 33.3% success rate while Coan’s passing fell to just 30.5% over those final 9 drives.
Did Oklahoma State figure out Notre Dame? Did too much passing come back to bite the Irish? Can we blame a couple of really bad turnovers?
Rushing Success
Diggs – 4 of 9 (44.4%)
Tyree – 4 of 6 (66.6%)
Estime – 0 of 1 (0.0%)
Coan – 0 of 2 (0.0%)
Lenzy – 0 of 1 (0.0%)
The offensive line, Lorenzo Styles, and Michael Mayer all played really well. I have no problem lumping Coan in with this group but eventually his lack of playmaking within this gameplan got a bit exposed.
I’m about as down as anyone in this fan base on the running backs. I knew not to take too much away from this game without Kyren and the Cowboys’ strong run defense limiting the top 2 backs to just 15 combined carries. And while hopefully Tyler Buchner’s legs opens things up considerably I have big questions to ask.
Tyree has 129 carries in his career and has impressed in maybe 5 or 6 total? It hasn’t been many, I know that. He’s a speed back who never breaks even moderately long runs! He only had 1 carry in all of 2021 over 12 yards!!
It seems telling that Diggs is already favored more and even in his 52 carries how many were actually impressive? That too patient running style for Diggs isn’t great and from what we’ve seen so far neither guy makes defenders miss much. I’m prepared for a whole ton of stuffs from both of them on the ground next year.
The scholarship numbers are absurdly low but if Kevin Austin and Braden Lenzy move on after this year it’s fine, I suppose. Austin tacked on a late 25-yard touchdown and to be fair made an excellent second-effort play on another catch. But, these top 2 guys combined for 165 receiving yards in a game where Coan threw the ball 68 times with 28 targets going to Austin and Lenzy. TWENTY EIGHT!!
Especially Lenzy, I’m not sure how much more development there is to be made. He was caught from behind while running the ball for no gain and mustered 60 yards on a team-high 15 targets. That’s well below replacement level receiving production and the Irish should have no problem improving at this position next year.
Defense
DL: B
LB: F
DB: F
Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool. Try to keep your cool.
Phew, okay let’s do this.
For me, this came down to the game prior to Notre Dame’s defensive line getting tired and everything that happened afterward. When the Irish took that 28-7 lead, the Cowboys offense was successful on just 38.2% of plays overall, Spencer Sanders was being consistently harassed, he had only 5 successful completions, and they were doing next to nothing on 3rd down.
Now, you could argue that did flatter Notre Dame a little bit. There were a couple of horrendously bad drops from Oklahoma State and the Irish were not tackling well at all pretty much from the start of kickoff. Once the line got gassed from OSU’s up-tempo it got murderously ugly.
Just as Notre Dame’s offense did a 180 at the same time so did the Pokes’ offense. Over their final 9 non-kneel down drives, Oklahoma State was successful on 63.6% of their plays, only punted once, and out-scored the Irish 30-0 until that late Austin touchdown.
Stuffs vs. Oklahoma State
Hinish – 3
Bertrand – 3
White – 2
Pryor – 2
Ademilola, Jay – 1.5
Foskey – 1
Bauer – 1
MTA – 1
Lacey – 0.5
Kiser – 0.5
Rubio – 0.5
Keanaaina – 0.5
Coan started the game with 23 successful passes and after that 28-7 lead, Sanders would finish with 23 more successful passes of his own. This was not a good Cowboys passing offense and once Sanders wasn’t under much duress he carved up the Irish.
The Notre Dame linebackers and defensive backs played about as poorly as I’ve ever seen in a big game. I don’t even want to waste more time typing words about them.
Plus, remember while both teams missed field goals Okie State had a pair of crippling turnovers deep in Irish territory, including one right on the goal line before a sure touchdown. This game could’ve easily ended something like 51-28. So hooray that didn’t happen I guess?
Final Thoughts
I let the hope get to me. That was stupid on my part. For nearly an entire half of football it looked like Notre Dame was finally going to win a major bowl game. Maybe even rather easily! 12-1 and a big win in Freeman’s first game! All of it thrown out the window and destroyed by a terrible 2+ quarters of football.
It hurts a lot to me. I said as much in the game preview this was an important game. Now that we know it’s a loss let me explain why with 2 big reasons:
1) Look, will Notre Dame ever win a National Championship? Is it going to happen any time soon? I think we’d all agree not without some more boosts to recruiting so in that respect there’s still plenty of hope with Freeman at the helm. That level of success is going to take time. In the meantime, we know these major bowl games aren’t what they used to mean but what else is there to be proud and excited about? Another playoff loss? This one was right there for the taking and the Irish blew it.
2) I don’t want to overreact to one game, especially because Freeman was thrown into such a tornado storm of controversy to become head coach with less than ideal circumstances to prepare for a good Oklahoma State team. Be that as it may, this was not a heartening first impression from Freeman as an in-game coach. You could probably forgive some of his nervousness (which looked very apparent on his face) if things had played out differently and they held on for the win. But when you get out-coached really badly from the end of the 1st half until the end it’s hard to ignore those emotional pictures beamed across the country. Most of all, as fans who follow this program way too closely, this loss really puts a sad damper on this off-season and sucks a lot of the fun out of what could’ve been an exciting next 7 to 8 months.
It seems like Harry Hiestand is coming back to coach the offensive line. After this performance I wouldn’t think Mike Elston would be handed the keys to become defensive coordinator, but we’ll see. I was a big proponent of bringing in some new blood and after this loss either of these moves would feel pretty depressing. That’s where this loss kind of compounds issues moving forward.
I absolutely hated not trying to score at the end of the 1st half. So much so that I was seething through halftime and felt completely sure Oklahoma State was going to come back and challenge the Irish. They had 37 seconds remaining and were having so much success offensively. With 3 timeouts that’s like having 90 seconds to move the ball down field and a field goal felt like a better than 50% chance. It’s going to take such a long time to get over this decision and the mind-blowing momentum change that occurred after it.
That State Farm Stadium field was a joke. It seemed like players could only run at about 70% speed and anything over that they’d fall while trying to make a cut. And yes, I’ll say it hurt Notre Dame much more as the more skilled team.
I’m not real upset that Buchner didn’t play, although I would’ve put him in for at least a few snaps. I get Freeman’s point that Coan was playing really well and pulling him wasn’t ideal–just think if Buchner came in and made some terrible plays and the Irish still lost. The off-season is now 40% darker!
However, I think I’m more or less done with non-running quarterbacks at Notre Dame. I wouldn’t even recruit one unless it’s a Top 50 overall 5-star recruit type of talent. Coan not being able to move isn’t quite like playing with a hand tied behind your back, but it’s close to it. You head into these big games without a massive get out of jail free card. Coan didn’t have a successful carry on the day and with sacks he finished -4 net on yardage. Spencer Sanders had 9 successful carries. Notre Dame had 1 run of at least 10 yards (13 yard run by Diggs, 2nd longest by the team was 6 yards!) and Sanders alone had 6 runs of at least 10 yards with 135 total yards with sacks removed.
I’m not sure what to make of Marcus Freeman and this game introduced much more doubt (although again not trying to overreact too much!) than I was expecting, especially defensively. With the offensive line backbone you have to like the odds of the offense being good to very good next year, plus for all of his faults Tommy Rees’ continuity for the near-term future is comforting. I think the floor is pretty high to win 10 games.
Yet, the defensive recruiting is ticking upwards and that feels good. However, next year definitely feels like some enormous coaching and/or recruiting surprises have to happen in the secondary with a sizable dose of more playmaking at linebacker, all while keeping the line potent which could be tough if Foskey turns pro. We may always wonder if the offense can take its game to the next level (and they are likely going to need until 2023 to even challenge that with better recruiting) but now you have to wonder if Freeman & Co. are going to keep the defense playing at a respectable level in this new era. I’m prepared for a 47-32 loss at Ohio State to open 2022 where the offense surprises and the defense gets torched far too often by Stroud.
Should we be prepared to be a lot more patient with Freeman? Obviously, we’ll have such a long time to debate this and a huge chunk of this argument will come down to how his recruiting evolves. I actually think there’s a case to be made a 8-4 season next year is fine if recruiting responds in kind, like for every additional loss there needs to be 2 more Top 100 commits for 2023/24 or something. I *think* the smart play is to go long-term with Freeman, more like 5 years and not 3 years, and hope that coincides with Saban retiring or some national earth-shaking move to open things up again. After watching Freeman’s debut I think he’ll need quite a bit of seasoning during games.
I’m just so glad we’ve kept Del Alexander around for five years to really recruit and develop some quality receivers.
Shame Freeman didn’t fire him long ago.
(I kid. I will be very annoyed if he’s our WR coach moving forward)
Del is apparently out. Best move of the Freeman era so far?
Has there been another move? It’s the most necessary move. But taking an open layup is hardly going to make a highlight tape.
Apparently Del told the guys after the game on Sat he wasn’t coming back.
I was kind of joking.
Fair. I just wanted to take another shot saying it was a layup.
Also, was Cam Hart out for most of the game? Saw he was hurt in practice but heard he was going to play. If he did, that’s probably good because I didn’t notice him. Clarence Lewis, however, was constantly on screen because he was being abused on seemingly every passing play in the second half. Dear god I hope one of the underclassmen can slot into that position, because Lewis showed why he was a low three star out of high school.
Hart played all game and was quite good. Same with Drew White.
The F grades for LB and DB is fair, but it’s really B/B+’s for those two and “it would be reasonable to cut you this week” grades for Lewis, Bertrand, Kiser, DJ Brown, and to a slightly lesser degree Griffith and Watts.
Agreed. Lewis was identified and picked on, as was Bertrand. We needed a counter-move to help him, and we either didn’t have it or didn’t make it.
They need to build and prepare the program so as that neither of those two are planned to have significant roles for next season. It’s possible Bertrand gets pushed to the bench with Bauer hopefully staying and Liufau coming back, but they absolutely need to recruit a starting CB in the portal over Lewis.
It’s kind of incredible the desperation this program is in portal-wise for this offseason for being a clear top-10 program the last few years – we basically *need* one receiver and probably should take two and *need* one starter at either corner or safety and probably should take 3 players between the two positions. That’s five scholarships minimum if they’re doing it right! Kind of crazy. Todd Lyght and Del Alexander – you get duds at position coaches and keep them too long, it really hurts after a while.
Absolutely.
Here’s the thing–that’s Kelly. He brought in Freeman to do what he couldn’t on the recruiting front, and fix these issues. And then bailed before they got fixed. Freeman has to fix them, but I’m not going to blame Freeman for the holes yet.
Now, am I going to blame him for not having an in-game adjustment? Yessir. Am I going to criticize it if we are saying the same things in game 7 next year? Yep.
And to fix recruiting takes a few years. He’s obviously well on his way to fixing the holes on defense. We just have to find a way to hold down the fort until those replacements become playable.
Yeah, though now that I think about it “fix” seems too strong a word. “Improve,” I guess. It’s not like it was broken, it just wasn’t at the level to A. bring in the top skill talent or B. the depth, both of which we need to do better than we have been.
A didn’t hurt us yesterday. B did.
Either way that takes time to correct/improve, etc. in recruiting.
Bertrand is a little more explainable, since we’ve had three linebackers go down with season ending injuries, and the well regarded freshman missed basically all of fall camp after getting covid. If Marist didn’t wreck his leg, Bertrand would be out there rotating to give guys a break, instead of being asked to play every freaking snap until he falls apart.
The secondary problems seem like a complete failure of evaluation.
Couldn’t Prior have played that position? He’s been much better in coverage this year.
I don’t think Pryor could play corner. He’s a tweener between safety and LB, if I recall.
sorry, i meant for bertrand.
Ah. Carry on then.
They put in Pryor to replace Bertrand some, and he looked fine in limited snaps. I have no idea why they didn’t put him in more.
Bertrand is Joe Schmidt with slightly more size and talent and notably less leadership abilities and know-how. The coaches should not want him to be on the field much.
Bertrand played 85 snaps so it seems he was only not in there on 6 snaps. Pryor did play 30 and was passable in coverage (which means he was 3rd highest coverage grade for the game).
Betrand has been bad all year. He had one pretty good game at Toledo and a couple of average games against GT and Stanford.
Fun fact: Lewis and Betrand had the two highest snap totals on D this year. Yikes.
DJ Brown and Kiser are probably the biggest surprises in how bad they played. They’ve been among our highest graded players by PFF all year – 2nd and 3rd on D.
I think Bertrand is a fine/average MLB. Notre Dame has him playing the Will or whatever they call it, and as you mention, the also just ask way too much of him. He shouldn’t be playing 85%+ of the snaps, out-of-position and he has no coverage skills.
Yea him playing poorly all year has been because he’s at the wrong position and being asked to do things (like cover) that he’s not very good at. It’s not like he was great in run defense either – but perhaps it would be difference if he was at MLB.
I don’t think PFF is all that reliable. Great marketing/branding folks tho.
One big coaching mistake Freeman made, IMO, was going for it on 4th down deep in his own territory. That was like handing OSU 3 points. Punt the ball, OSU will most likely run it 3 times to us up our TO’s then punt and we get the ball back in close to the same position when we punted. Maybe we score, maybe we don’t but at least its only being down one score. Hindsight is great.
I read on another site that Northwestern has a big time all-american type Safety entering the portal ……. pretty sure it was Northwestern, anyway please go get him.
Yep, going for it on 4th and 6 with 2:38 to go from your own 15 with three timeouts left was poor game management and just the plain wrong call for the situation.
And like Eric mentioned, not pressing at the end of the first half (when the offense was in a groove) and allowing Ok St to carry momentum into halftime instead of trying to extend the lead back to a 3 score game and reverse momentum was bad game management as well.
I wonder how much input the “head coach of the offense” had on both of those decisions. I would assume a lot. Freeman finding a balance and stepping in to make the right calls (if he is even capable) is surely something he will need to think about how to handle situations better.
Which is also what we all knew coming into this with a first time HC there will be mistakes, learning on the fly and on a very big stage. Well, there ya go. It’ll be telling if he makes the same mistakes again going forward
The dynamic between “head coach of the offense” Rees and Freeman is pretty odd and I hope they can figure it out. Yeah, Freeman is slightly older and more experienced. But Rees has been at ND much longer and was hand-picked by Freeman’s boss. It might be hard or awkward for Freeman to overrule Rees on stuff, but we need him to figure out that aspect of the job quickly.
Rees’ motivation for staying is very odd, IMO.
From the post game presser, I inferred that Freeman wanted to go for points and tommy talked him out of it. Learning how and when to assert his will as the HC will unfortunately be part of Freeman’s learning on the job
Not to make too much out of this, but…an OC who talks the head coach out of scoring points?
Tommy felt the risk of letting them use timeouts and get the ball back again with a chance to score twice before the half outweighed the benefit of adding 3 points to the lead. I disagree with that assessment, especially as they had shown little ability to stop us in the first half. I think there was a chance to even score a TD at that point, and a FG seemed like a high likelihood. Completely different math to going for it on 4th in 4Q when the offense had been sputtering for 30 minutes
Yeah, that makes zero sense to me.
As the instant reaction post is evidence, the 4th down decision late in the game isn’t a huge mistake IMO. Lots of different opinions on that one which makes it much more understandable of a decision.
I’m really surprised there’s been so much discussion about this. No one around us at the game had anything to say about going for it, and it was a vocal and knowledgeable group including a former player. We did however disagree with not pressing for points and the end of the first half.
100% agree.
It didn’t work, therefore it was wrong, in some people’s eyes. I think that’s a reasonable opinion to have. I don’t think it’s reasonable to act like it’s iron-clad truth that it was a mistake. You had two options to give yourself a shot–he took the more aggressive one, which made sense to me as the D was completely gassed and would have likely given up a first down or two. You roll the dice and take your chances. The bigger mistakes led to us being in the position to have to make a choice between two bad options.
Good point KG. Both options stunk.
I’ll also point out that punting gives you more time IF you stop them, but if you don’t, game over then and there. Not getting the 1st D, they gave up the FG but then scored a TD and had a chance at an onside kick. Again, neither option was good, and all options needed plays to be made that weren’t. But it’s not a clear cut one is wrong, the other is right.
I’m in the minority but I think there is a clear cut right and wrong choice for the situation given field position (own 15), distance to gain (7 yards), time left (significant at 2:38) and timeouts left (all 3). Situationally that adds up to punt the ball pretty clearly to me. Many disagree, which is fine. But unless you just want a “now or never, do or die” type of play, I don’t see the wisdom of doing that.
To me it’s the same as kicking the XP to tie a game or go for 2. Both can be valid decisions, depending on the situation. Our D was gassed. Yes, they caused the turnover in the red zone, but now you’re expecting them to do it again, when all OSU has to do after you punt is run clock. This was the go for two to avoid OT play, and it didn’t work. That’s life.
Yeah, I mean I don’t think it’s the end of the world or the definitive worst thing that happened yesterday, but I do feel it an example of a poor game management decision/inexperience by a first time coach.
The ND D was gassed, but OKST would have been conservative. The D also forced a FG attempt and didn’t allow a first town or TD, so that kinda proves that point alone, I don’t think there’s too much validity in dreaming up a hypothetical that goes against what actually happened.
With 2:38 left, gotta call on your defense to get the ball back more than 4+7 from your own 15. That’s simple stuff you can learn playing Madden/NCAA.
Agree to disagree.
I think it’s the safer play and the one less likely to get you fired as a coach. I don’t think that makes it “right.”
Ultimately it didn’t work, so I guess it was the wrong call. But I’m not going to sit here and let it guide my pronouncements on Freeman’s “poor game management” because I don’t think it was. I liked the call in the moment, and I’m still fine with it.
That’s fine, agree to disagree. I didn’t like it from pre-snap when they left the offense on the field, due to the factors I outlined. I don’t think it’s anything about being safe, you have plenty of time to get the ball back and all timeouts. You’re too deep into your zone to go for it.
Freeman (or Rees and not over-ruled by Freeman) also had poor game management the last drive of the 1st half to sit on their lead and not push to try to make it a 3 score game. That was another example to me of bad coaching strategy.
The latter, yes. I think all of us were screaming at the TV. Honestly, I’m shocked Rees wanted to run out the clock and I don’t know what to make of that.
Being at the game surprisingly kept me much more level headed, popping in the internet afterwards and it was like oh man everyone is so mad. Was more disappointed than anything.
The back 7 was horrendous, they made no plays at all, no plays in space, don’t think 1 db got a deflection all day, which given the volume and mixed accuracy from sanders was rough. Hard not to envision stroud throwing for 500 yards to open next year.
Agree with your assessment on Coan and his lack of running ability. I felt like there was a lot of yardage to be gained running that he just can’t do. Makes things really tough.
Overall it really sucks to lose that game. I will say beating MSU would have been nice but it would have been fools gold and considering the competition at end of year, the offseason would have been great but we wouldn’t have had a read on this team. Yesterday hopefully proved Freeman needs more experience and outside voices in this staff and again the back 7 needs to get a lot better. Hit the transfer portal, be willing to play young guys next year, recruit your tail off.
If not Heistand, who? Hasn’t the “he’s not a good (I didn’t say great) recruiter” take been debunked? This is our strongest position. I want someone that can take advantage of that.
DC, I have no idea. The OSU drive at the end of the half was the worst 40 secs. of defense I can remember. What the hell happened there ?
Grad transfers needed, Safety, Cornerback, Wide receiver (2?) and maybe running back. Was Diggs success due to the teams we played at seasons end ? He was so tentative yesterday. I won’t be surprised to see Estime become the #1 RB or even the freshman. I’d like to see Austin back but I have my doubts that he will be. Lenzy, not so much.
That was the longest 1st Qtr I can ever remember. It seemed each team had the ball 4-5 times. I do remember thinking in the 2nd Qtr that the fact we can’t run the ball at all, is not good and is going to make this lead harder to hold onto.
I’m not worried about a play call or two or not going for it at the end of the half or going for it on 4th down late. I understand not liking some of the calls but, I’m not sure that doing otherwise would have mattered. Those couple calls would not have happened with better play beforehand. I’m more worried about the personnel issues going into next year. We are in tough shape at the positions I’ve mentioned. If those issues aren’t plugged Marcus Freeman is going to be 0-2 with the next outing ending much worse.
If we’re looking at 63 year old semi-retired people who haven’t coached in 2 years, then shoot the candidate list could be as big as 300 names!
Except it’s not.
I know, that’s my point dear friend.
Are you saying that Heistand is just a “safe” choice? One that will not cause consternation with most of the fan base? My thinking is that maybe he is a fine 2-3 year stop gap and a safe one at that. I’ve seen lists of possible other choices and some seem far fetched and others not all that great options.
Yup, safe and not too inspired with the clock ticking for when he’ll be replaced either due to age and/or issues with his coaching style and fit within the staff. I don’t hate it, but it’s not something I’m real excited about.
Also, bringing Hiestand back means an off-season of changing the blocking scheme pretty drastically. Which, I suppose they would be prepared to do anyway with other candidates but it’s interesting how they changed things recently, apparently with Rees leading the way, and now that’ll be dropped.
If Rees thought Heistand an issue, would ND be having him comeback ? It seems Rees would have sway with Freeman and Swarbrick.
To reply to ACS, by stop gap, I mean an older guy who is the best option now but, who will most likely want to retire in a few seasons. I would prefer that to a lesser or questionably lesser coach who is hired because he’s younger and might be around longer.
That’s the advantage it seems. Bringing Hiestand back probably helps Rees keep OL issues out of sight as he focuses on more responsibility as OC.
BTW E, Happy New Year.
Thanks, you too!
I turn 40 in 18 days………………………………
I turned 65 a month ago….perhaps that’s why Heistand at 63 bothers me less….ha.
Eric — Champagne!
This is probably overreacting but jeez, hearing about rebuilds and stopgap coaches and 8-4 is pretty depressing given the last 5 seasons.
I don’t think Heistand is any more far fetched than appointing a totally unprepared/unproven guy to be HC. Actually I think Heistand put some pretty good lines together, unless I’m confusing him with someone else?
The sudden negative reaction to Heistand is bizarre. Yes, he’s not into recruiting, but if there’s one position where you’d take a teacher over a recruiter, it’s offensive line. And I believe he had some pretty good ones while he was coaching (with somewhat lower ranked recruits), and the drop off after he left was noticeable. All the sudden, everyone acts like he sucks and would have gotten fired if he hadn’t left for the NFL.
The opposite is true about his recruiting. I thought we saw he really left us in a pretty bad spot when he left. Maybe he realized he was leaving and gave up on it. But it seems he didn’t put much effort into it and again finished very poorly for us.
I think Hiestand only works with a HC who is a big time recruiter. Hiestand can concentrate on recruiting linemen only, because everyone else deals with everything else. I don’t know how I feel about the hire honestly, but I am not worried about recruiting o line here. I’m more worried about his personality. He either really clicked with some kids or really didn’t. Maybe that’s a good balance with the “players coach” though, I don’t know.
The offensive lines have been very good since he left with multiple NFL draft choices. The cupboard was not left bare for Quinn.
This is the year where we saw the cupboard was left bare, so to speak. One class that should have been upperclassmen starters this year turned out to have no one except Quinn’s late catch of Patterson. So one class was left basically bare and that hurt this year’s team.
“If not Heistand, who?” How about, like, freaking anyone? Justin Frye would be a good start but not knowing the lay of the land on college OL coaches is not a good excuse to rehire a guy who already retired.
Also, nothing was debunked. He was an inconsistent recruiter and non-existent towards the end of his previous tenure.
also forgot to mention the length of that game was stupid. each time ran 90 plays, that is absurd. the clock stop for everything, it was 4+ hours. also we talk about player safety a lot. well 180 plays across potentially 15 games is not promoting player safety.
NBC is sad they didn’t get this broadcast marathon.
I thought the ending to our game might get pushed to ESPNEWS because the Rose Bowl was going to start hahaha.
Our game was 14 game minutes behind the other 1 PM start at one point in the second half.
Games last a long time when you either can’t or won’t run the football. I was astonished that the first quarter took as long as it did.
I totally disagree re: giving Freeman a lot of time. 8-4 is fine for Y1 given that schedule, but if it goes bad in Y2 (“bad” meaning, say, 8-4 or worse and not having a top-5 class in line for 2024) it may be time to cut bait Jimmy Lake style, particularly if Fickell is still at Cinci and is willing to come. They can’t let the program circle the drain.
Notre Dame really shouldn’t be a job where you let people grow into it. Perhaps Freeman should hire 2 or 3 ex-head coaches as analysts this off-season and lean on them hard for big-picture guidance.
With all that said: I’m still optimistic about Freeman. We got an elite safety commit yesterday! We have the same number of 2023 commits as Georgia and our class is higher ranked. So hopefully we can try to keep some positive vibes for the off-season, because there are probably going to be a bunch of negative vibes after Labor Day weekend.
Jimmy Lake had an awful team (not 8-4, I mean AWFUL) AND punched his own player.
Fair, bad analogy. If he has an awful season and punches a player next year they should fire him.
But, maybe let’s analogize to Weis. If he starts out with the 2008 and 2009 seasons with that level of recruiting, what to do? I think keep, but it’s borderline. Or Ron Zook – great recruiter, new and bad on-field coach who brings the program down a couple notches. How long do you keep that?
Maybe this is me being spoiled/Weis PTSD, but I’d say launch ASAP. I have no interest in going back to 6-6/7-5 land.
2008/09? No, that’s not acceptable. Period.
8-4/9-3? Depends. Weis had “good” classes but horrible recruiting from a balance perspective. And honestly, that’s a bit of a concern with Freeman so far, as things seem very weighted to the Defense (kind of the reverse of Weis). So if Freeman brings in either not great classes, or classes that have great linebackers but no offensive linemen, etc., then to me that’s not fulfilling the promise he was hired with. And 3 years, I’m fine with moving on.
If the recruiting is gangbusters, maybe 4-5 then, but it also depends on how things are going on the field. HOW are we losing?
My larger point in all my rambling is that we shouldn’t be assuming we’ll get 2008-09 Weis for the next 3 years based on one game. It’s counterproductive to make that assumption.
That’s fair and I basically agree with all of it (and in fact it sounds like I may be willing than you to put up with more bad in the coming two seasons if recruiting is hitting!); I’m just a natural pessimist/worst-case-scenario planner.
With that said: I think it’ll be fine. I’m still well aboard the Freeman train.
I do not assume we will get that.
No, but it’s the example nd09hls12 used.
And to be clear, my reactions are based some on comments by people (not just you) here, but also comments I’ve seen (way more ridiculous) elsewhere.
Freeman’s biggest task is bringing in the offensive skill players that have kept us from being elite. I seriously doubt he can do that.
Based on?
And, if not, then okay–who do you think could?
Totally agree that’s the primary task. And I have no idea if he can or can’t do it, but I don’t think we have any reason to judge one way or the other yet. Unless you just think it’s not possible at ND, which maybe it isn’t.
Couple reasons:
a) he’s never done it so it’s my opinion that he can’t out recruit the elites in these skill positions.
b) no coach at ND since Lou has been able to field an elite offense. The elite teams have elite qbs, a fleet of elite receivers, and elite rbs. We get onesey twoseys
Not my job to figure out who can do it, but I will say I do not think it’s achievable with the self imposed strictures ND places on itself. We are at this point no closer to being able to beat the Bama and OSUs than we were going into the Davie etc years. We’ve made progress lately under Kelly, but we still get curb stomped by them.
I’m not looking forward to the OSU game in September.
So you’re going to complain that Freeman “can’t” because you haven’t seen him do it, in the 1-month he’s been head coach, but you also don’t think anyone could, given the current ND strictures.
It’s not any of our jobs to figure out who “can,” but it seems silly to think a hiring is a mistake because he hasn’t done something he hasn’t had time to do and you don’t think is possible anyway.
I don’t think you’re open to comprehending what I actually said.
maybe you can tell me what actual data causes you to disagree with me regarding our institutional recruiting limitations and resulting outcomes over the last 30 years?
Freeman’s been head coach for all of 31 days. Before that he wasn’t really focusing on recruiting good offensive players. I’m not going to give up on him being able to bring such players in just yet. (And FWIW, if you believe the reports, Rees has us in on some pretty good ones for the next class himself.)
If he starts bringing in top 5 classes (which are also balanced, etc.), it seems like we should be patient.
That being said, with the talent we have we should *not* be dropping under 8-4 in any of the seasons it would seem.
Special teams didn’t get a grade or much mention but was another poor area. Feels fitting to end up losing by 2 and remember that Doerer left three points out there missing a makeable 41 yarder. And yeah, Okies missed a FG too so it evened out in the wash and Doerer certainly wasn’t reason #1, 2 or 3 Notre Dame lost…But kinda fitting end to Doerer’s career to be inconsistent.
And I know he was injured earlier in the season, but Doerer was the only kicker in Notre Dame games all season that couldn’t drive the ball to and through the end zone on kick offs. It seemed like every kicker in college can do it but he can’t. Does the backup have no leg strength either? That feels concerning moving forward.
Matt Salerno returning punts is totally uninspiring, why can’t Styles do that? Salerno is diet Chris Finke (now with 0% Slippery-ness but still all that walk-on taste!)
and you didn’t even mention bramblett, who was pretty bad yesterday. There were a ton of punts and not sure he had any longer than 40 yards. hell I think half the argument for going for it on 4th and 6 was bramblett will only punt it to our 45 anyways
Good point on Bramblett, he was always very inconsistent too. Each punt could be a 50+ yard boomer with plenty of hang time (had one yesterday) or really short for no real reason. Very strange performer with seemingly no rhyme or reason for why.
I was extremely frustrated with Bramblett yesterday. McFerson should, hopefully, be an upgrade.
His first punt was really great, and the rest were not at all good.
I’m not sad to turn the page on Doerer, either. He seemed to make all of the must-make, game-winning type kicks, but missed most of those which fell into the next grouping (like the one on Saturday).
I said in our Slack that Doerer is the best kicker we’ve ever had that I’ve never once felt confident would make a kick. He drilled almost all the big ones in his time here, and beyond that it felt like a coin flip.
That’s a good way to put it. Crazy since you would expect the opposite: be really proficient at the routine kicks, maybe have nerves and be poor for game-deciding kicks. He’s the opposite! Nothing is a “gimme” but he always comes through in the clutch. Distance means nothing in either regard. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a kicker quite like him.
184 total plays is insane. I bet that’s a school record or close to it.
One game management thing Freeman did well was his timeout usage at the end of the game — compare it to what Whittingham, a far more experienced coach, did at the end of the Rose Bowl. So that’s encouraging and offsets the end of the first half, I think. And the first half was encouraging for the offense. If we can do that against a good defense with a statue QB, imagine what we might be able to do with a mobile QB. Would have been nice to see a glimpse of that yesterday but oh well.
On next season: Let me premise this by saying that I’m not giving up on or pre-firing anyone 9 months before a single game has been played. We’ll see what happens. But what will be frustrating to me is if the goalposts on this coaching staff start moving at the first sign of trouble, i.e., if we start hearing about rebuilding and lack of talent instead of continuity and culture. This is already kind of happening and it feels disingenuous to me. Everyone should keep in mind the rationale behind how and why this staff was constructed — there’s plenty of ND-produced media out there that documents it.
Agree with you re moving goalposts. Multiple sites I’m seeing discussion about low quality talent depth and development at LB,DB,WR. Thing is we still had a huge talent advantage over okst. Kelly got boatraced by Bama and Clemson and you could say “well we need to upgrade talent”. This loss, though close in final score, involved a total collapse on both sides of the ball and coaching staff being completely out-adjusted. That’s where the emphasis needs to stay. This game was not the players’ fault.
Which, let’s be fair — does talent at those positions need to be upgraded? Yes. Is part of why Freeman was promoted because of his recruiting ability? Yes.
But this program is not in rebuild mode or anything close to it.
Exactly. We had the talent to beat this team. It’s disingenuous to suggest that the reason we couldn’t beat OSU was because of JD Bertrand and Clarence Lewis.
Where are you seeing people say “rebuild”? Honest question.
Because “rebuild” is different than “upgrade talent while letting Freeman grow a bit.”
Eric said a rebuild sounds fun to him. Doesn’t sound fun to me at all. Nor was it the justification for this unusual and high risk hire.
Well, okay then. I don’t see it as a rebuild. A rebuild is what you do when you fire a coach, not lose a successful one. This isn’t a rebuild. Maybe a retool, or a reshaping. In other words, it’s semantics and not really all that important. We’re not tearing it down.
I sure hope not.
I wouldn’t let one person’s use of the word “rebuild” worry you that much.
Yeah, that’s kinda where Ok State pushing and to pass 68 times just wasn’t wise. ND needed to run more in the second half. I get taking what the defense gives and they were giving a lot of soft cushions and all early, but the game plan worked out for them to have ND totally abandon any thoughts of running or controlling clock.
I also wondered how long it would take for a team to go 4 WR consistently, push ND into even some dime looks, when they have like 2.5 corners at most they can trust to be on the field. It was a great game from their QB all around
The fact that Buchner didn’t get any snaps in the second half is perplexing. If we’re trying to eat some clock and give the defense a rest, why keep in the increasingly rattled qb with bad foot speed and terrible pocket presence so he can throw passes that Lenzy will drop?
This season, I’ve been a “get Buchner in there” fan as much as anyone. I never thought there was a great time to put him in yesterday. . I understand the leave Coan in because it’s going so well mentality of the first half. By the time it became apparent that Coan and more importantly the defense was struggling, I don’t think it would have been fair to Buchner to put it on his shoulder’s. I think you had to hope Coan could get his mojo back.
Which is why I was arguing for us to throw Buchner in while we were up big in the first half, just as a change of pace and to see if we could get anything going in the run game.
That’s just it. In the first half things were going so well it seemed to change would not be prudent. If things came apart after putting Buchner in, what would we being reading today?
Given how the game was going, I agree that there was no place to go to Buchner. No point or fairness in Sunday morning quarterbacking that decision with how the game unfolded.
Overall, though, I question the game plan to spread and pass and think you are going to win throwing almost 70 passes when you have 3 scholarship receivers right now.
Notre Dame is in a bad place when they don’t have the o-line and mobile QB to be able to run the ball. That should be and has to be a program strength, given the recruiting advantages and skill input at the position of o-line.
I get how Rees thought “I can’t run on this defense, need to pass a lot” but it’s sad it got to that point. Also, I feel like if they gameplanned to incorporate Buchner and try to run (which clearly they didn’t), perhaps that would have helped control clock a little better and more. That is more my contention.
None of that was changing between Stanford and yesterday, though. You play the game with what you have. And Lugg was out, so that’s two freshman OTs, even though we may all believe that Fisher was better (and I think he proved it). Running wasn’t going to work, at least in the first half. Passing did until they adjusted and we stopped executing. At that point maybe Buchner, but I have serious questions about Buchner at this point.
PFF graded Fisher as our a best linemen yesterday and by a longshot. That’s good news moving forward that he could come in and immediately be an objectively above average linemen. With his apparent talent, the bar should be pretty high for him next year.
The overall run blocking grades were not very good too for what that’s worth (besides Fisher’s).
Yep. Fisher is a monster. All I’m saying is that I understand some choices when you consider two freshman OTs, one having not played since the first game and coming off an injury (and oh by the way the line was butt much of the first half of the year against decent competition).
Buchner maybe can change it up since he’s not just a RB. Kyren would have broken tackles and gotten yards too. But alas.
Maybe I’m recalling things incorrectly, but it seemed that Okie State was dropping 7 or 8 into coverage for a lot of the fourth quarter, and leaving room that a mobile qb could take advantage of. Hell, there was so much room a couple of times that Coan actually tried to run. I’d rather we would have tried Buchner at that point to at least make the defense react. I realize there’s concern with his passing ability, but it wasn’t like Coan was still marching the offense up and down the field those drives.
Sure. I don’t disagree there. I was at the point where I was like “well, worth a shot.”
Maybe I’m just reacting to so much of what I’ve seen that seems to think Buchner is the answer to all the offensive problems, which as far as I can tell is 95% hope and 5% potential. Maybe he gets better being “the guy” in the spring, and I get that he had the HS injury and then canceled year. But until I see him pass besides RPOs, I don’t buy him as the long term solution.
I agree with what you’re saying Hooks but, I put more of that on Kelly’s program than Freeman’s offensive game plan. The situations at QB & WR fall on Kelly.
I am pretty worried about both positions next season too.
One of my concerns, which I will leave on simmer, for now, is that it wasn’t Freeman’s offensive game plan
Offensive game plan looked fine for 25 minutes.
It’s adjustments/counter adjustments that didn’t get made.
Agree. My point was more that I fear that Freeman doesn’t insert himself into offensive gameplanning or in game decision making, and instead gives Tommy carte blanche. For example, how he stated that Tommy felt we shouldn’t go for points at the end of the half. My inferrence is that Freeman wanted to but Tommy talked him out of it. The worst fear would be that Tommy *overruled* him
Sure. This is where I say “one game sample size.” Hopefully it’s a lesson and not the beginning of a pattern.
That’s one thing that has been irking me: there’s been a lot of complaining (not just here) about how ND didn’t have the depth at receiver or defensive back to keep up, and somehow Freeman gets the blame for this, not the guy who spent 12 years as the head coach and received constant plaudits about a ‘2.0 reinvention’ of himself and the staff. Freeman could have definitely adjusted better as the game went on, but the biggest contributors to the loss were structural issues that a new guy can’t fix in three weeks, not so much on field decision making.
Funny, because I’ve been bringing that up to (loosely) defend Freeman. As the DC and now HC it’s his job to coach the players he has up and put them in better position, but he can’t be held responsible for the lack of depth, completely right.
Yeah, I had listened to Pete Sampson and Matt Fortuna’s recap podcast, which was all doom and gloom vibes to the point where I was wondering which one would suggest just shuttering the program first. It felt like they kept bringing up the depth issues and laying that at Freeman’s feet, while saying that Brian Kelly would have won the game. Just bizarre.
I listened to it last night and while it was definitely down, I didn’t quite get that. I thought it was more of a “these are the hard truths to be fixed, and now he knows.” Which is still kind of silly, not like he didn’t know before yesterday.
First three run attempts in 3Q went for 5,2, and 5 yards. Looked like they were softening up in the middle and dropping more into coverage (which they were). And then we proceeded to go on a stretch of throwing 13 passes in a row…
I think some goalposts moving is fine and actually pretty normal in these situations.
We are in a pretty weird situation right now. Looking back at our record you’d think these BK teams would’ve won maybe 2 major bowls, at minimum. But we’re still shut out.
Theoretically, a rebuild kind of sounds fun to me if we’re promised something better than the peak of Kelly’s teams. I just don’t know how that looks in the coming year or two, though.
I’m still so angry about yesterday I don’t know what to think. I both desperately wanted that major bowl win and also feel like the program has been good enough that it’s almost beneath us to care about it.
I’m having trouble following this logic. Goalposts moving is normal in these situations, but this situation is weird? A rebuild is fun when we were promised the opposite of a rebuild? We’re 0-8 in major bowl games but even caring about one is beneath us?
I’m really not trying to go after you personally but this is just very jumbled to me.
I feel very jumbled!
Maybe the issue is thinking we were promised something that wouldn’t be a rebuild? At least in some respects, any new coach is going to rebuild at least a little bit and I think it’s normal for people to suddenly become a little more honest about problems, especially roster-related.
I know for me personally I never felt with Freeman, “Oh cool, hiring him means we’re going to keep the floor at 2 losses maximum and the next 3 years is just going to be continuation of BK’s winning percentage with attempts at further knocks on the ceiling.”
Was this a common belief with hiring Freeman? I thought many people believed he was pretty risky and with risk comes possible rebuilding for a bit, no?
Ok that makes total sense.
I guess I did think that about Freeman — sort of a Ryan Day type promotion. So that’s why I’m surprised to hear all this stuff about resetting and rebuilding
I don’t think it matters who the coach is/was, the numbers and talent at DB, WR, and the play of our QB are/were questionable going into next season. So at least at those positions and maybe RB too, it will be a rebuild. It may all workout by next season but, that’s a big ask.
THIS
Here’s the rebuild right here for you. I know there’s some semantics going on here but the fact that we’re already hearing this does not make me feel good.
I used rebuild because someone else did. Some bad recruiting has left some holes. They’d be there Kelly or not. We wouldn’t be calling it a rebuild for Kelly and shouldn’t be for Freeman. I have more confidence in Freeman fixing this program weakness, than I would in Kelly.
Right, it’s more like rebuilding a few positions. Which is not really a rebuild with respect to a whole program.
Why more confidence? Serious question.
I don’t know that I’d say “confidence,” myself, but maybe “possibility.”
Freeman may turn out to be a dud. I don’t know. But Kelly had us as high as he could get us, and the only thing that he could improve on was recruiting. HE himself wasn’t going to do it–that’s just not who he is. Many want to vilify him for that, but I think it’s just not part of his makeup to be the aggressive recruiter. He tried to shore that up by hiring Freeman, along with the change in defensive style. But then LSU came along, and as long as you’re semi-competent at LSU you can get 5-stars from in-state to line up at the door. Kelly doesn’t need to do anything different than what he already is. I don’t know if Kelly will succeed down there, but LSU has no problem with the one thing ND can’t seem to overcome. I get why he left.
On the other hand, the only way ND does overcome it is if the HC is a tireless and relentless recruiter. We know that’s what Freeman is. He’s also a DC, so so far that’s where he’s concentrated, and he’s done pretty amazing for the first year (recruiting-wise). IF–and it is an “if”–he can translate that to offensive skill talent too now as the HC, then he might be the answer to get over the hump that BK never could.
However, recruiting alone won’t do it, of course. All the 5-stars don’t matter if you can’t win games. We’ve got a sample size of one. We’ll see where things go from here, but it’s too early to tell if he can or can’t do anything.
yep, that’s fair–it is the word used here. I just don’t see it as a rebuild, so it doesn’t bother me as much I guess.
Nailed it Tindma
I think if we as fans look at the successful first time head coaches at major programs you have from one end of the spectrum to the other:
Ryan Day
Lincoln Riley
Kirby
Dabo
I mean Ryan Day is not a reasonable ask considering what he Inherited plus justin fields and conversely a Dabo 3 year start would be really rough. I think somewhere around Kirby would probably be most likely if an aspiration.
I do think if we look at the last 5 year run, specifically 2019-21, there is a bit of fools gold there. There were some really weak schedules and ND feasted on those. I think ND is more like 7-12 like the metrics show than top 5 program. i mean what are the top wins from the last 3 years: clemson 20**, carolina 20, usc 19, virginia 19, wisconsin 21. it’s a really weak list. Continuing with status quo against better schedules was automatically going to become 9-3 seasons
Did any of those coaches have the combined lack of experience that Freeman and Rees have? I ask because I don’t know. What I mean is, when Riley was hired at OU, was his DC a 29-year old?
I agree on the schedules, but again, you go to war with the army (or the enemy) you have. Jack knew that the schedules were about to get substantially harder when hired this staff — he made those schedules.
Ryan Day would have been like 38ish, had been OC for 1 year, and had otherwise bounced around a bunch as mostly a QB coach. I’d say similar to Freeman, maybe a bit more, but not as a coordinator. Hired Coombs in 2nd full season.
Riley would have been 34ish, had been OC at OU for 2 years, and OC at ECU for 4 years. Again, pretty similar. No idea who his coordinators ever were, but they were never good, no matter age and experience.
Smart would have been 38ish, had been DC at Bama for 8 years! Definitely more experience than Freeman.
Dabo would have been 37ish, was only a coordinator for 1 year, had been Bama WR/TE for 5 years and Clemson WR for 5 years. Certainly more big time football experience, but basically only as a position coach. Hired Venables in his 4th season.
It is pretty hard to figure out who exactly were the coordinators 5 years ago, but I’d say Day and Riley are the most similar general paths as Freeman. The thing all of these guys have in common, is they had reputations as great recruiters.
Recruiting travels so to speak.
And after recruiting the next biggest cause of success has to do with coordinator hires.
Agreed on Day and Riley — which is why I think it’s wrong to say that a similar trajectory for Freeman is “not a reasonable ask” as CardinalBaseball put it.
Taking a fully formed program that wins 10+ games like clockwork and dropping to 7-5/8-4 is not OK. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about that.
ohio state went 13-0 and was the second best team and a power house in days first year. lincoln went to the brink in the cfb semi final his first year including a win at ohio state. they also happened to have fields and baker at qb, respectively. i’m not saying 10 wins is unrealistic, i’m saying doing what those guys did is not a fair ask
Not that I disagree completely with your last statement, but given how we won some of the games the first half of this season, I’m not sure I’d say “like clockwork.” And I made my case why it isn’t a fair comp to Day yesterday–Freeman isn’t being handed the keys to a Ferrari. It’s not a Pinto either, probably a good sensible Audi sedan, but it isn’t built to win drag races with tOSU, etc.
Pretty sure Dabo has never been a coordinator. He was a WR coach.
I think that’s correct.he was named interim coach in a surprise. Not sure who did that but it was serendipitous
His wiki said interim HC/OC for 1 year. So maybe as interim HC, he just naturally took over OC role, but was doing it on the fly.
Day and Riley are over rated IMO. Both inherited talented teams from coaches who built championship programs.
Riley has been hyped as a genius, but he’s never achieved much outside the Big 12 at Okie and has never put a team good on both sides of the ball. Now he’s bolted to USC with a comp package that’s made him seriously wealthy no matter what he does there. He has to build a program, something he’s never done.
Day inherited Urban’s team and program, got trashed with it vs Bama last year and somehow managed to lose the BIG this year despite having nuclear weapons on offense.
Both these guys are experienced on one side of the ball, had not built staffs before becoming HC and haven’t shown they can successfully do it yet.
I would hire somebody from Saban’s tree. I’m not at all surprised Smart has been successful. Saban cranks out guys who become successful head coaches and rehabs ones that have flamed out.
Who, besides Kirby and I suppose Jimbo Fisher, would you say is a “successful” ex-Saban assistant? I say “suppose” for Jimbo because of how he left FSU in shambles and has been up and down at aTm, but he has a ring so you can’t knock that.
For every one of those he raised, there’s a Will Muschamp. Some guys figure out how to import his system, some don’t. Jury is still out on Mel Tucker.
And as for reclamation projects, Sarkisian doesn’t seem to have changed much since his USC days, Kiffin is a niche success–he’s great at being a spoiler and a troll, which is Ole Miss’s role in the SEC when they’re good, but not sure I’d hold him up as a model we’re looking for. Mike Locksley? Ehhh….
I don’t have a full list in front of me, so perhaps I’m missing someone obvious. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t say Saban “cranks out” great coaches. If anything, I think the track record shows that Saban himself is the secret, and it’s VERY hard for anyone to take that elsewhere.
That said, I think you may be right about Riley, we’ll have to see. USC has a lot of rot to cut out, and I don’t know how much more there is beneath the surface.
Day I think is harder, because in his first year he actually elevated tOSU–mostly I think because Urban had become a distraction. I think tOSU is in large part idiot proof, the floor is so high that you REALLY have to be bad to drop below 10 wins. Sure, the Michigan loss was bad, but Michigan–as much as it pains me to say–was actually pretty good this year, was as hyped as could be for that game, and it’s not like Urban didn’t have those losses, just to Purdue and Iowa instead of Michigan.
This is a great point that I fear will end up being missed, based on the second-guessing I’m already seeing about the Freeman hire on some other sites.
USC is about to probably be better than they ever were when Kelly faced them. The next 4 years all also include a regular-season game against a currently death-machine level recruiting behemoth – Ohio State the next 2 years and then Texas A&M (insert bag-of-cash emoji here) the 2 after that. And of course Clemson the next 2 years, who may be a bit more of a question mark than we would’ve thought 4 months ago but on talent alone will be a very tough out. To keep the double-digit win streak going will require a step up in coaching/recruiting than Kelly was providing, I think.
Kelly definitely did not prepare us well for the 2022-2023 gauntlet in terms of talent. No question. He knew what was coming and did not recruit well enough.
Did Jack prepare us well for that gauntlet by replacing Kelly in a highly unusual way, with the two main coaches being unprecedentedly young and inexperienced? I guess we’ll see.
Yes 9-3 will be the new 10-2 with these tougher schedules.
On the other hand, it might just be that the two losses are worse or more of a sure loss than the previous schedules. There will certainly be more elite teams on the near-term schedules. I wonder how the rest of the schedule stacks up.
But that would leave very little/no room for error with the remaining part of the schedule. Beating all the teams we “should” or are favored to beat (by however little) is not an easy task.
My view of the “risk” was not that it was a rebuild, but that there was some chance it could totally implode. That’s why I’m of the mindset that, depending on where things are both on the field and in recruiting, cutting bait early might be the prudent action.
If it’s 8-4 followed 8-4, and the #12 recruiting class for 2024 at the end of the 2023, he’ll probably get another year because that’s ND’s MO and the media would crush them if he got fired. But should he? I dunno. And if it’s on a worse trajectory than that? Almost certainly yes.
Conversely, if recruiting stays better than Kelly level notwithstanding some somewhat disappointing results relative to the previous few years, you almost have to give him 4 years or so to see what he can do with his guys as upperclassmen. I think ultimately that’s the key to how long of a leash he gets if on-field results slide a bit in the near term.
And, to be clear: recruiting is very good right now! I’m still happy with the hire and am hopeful it works out. I just don’t think it’s an automatic “let’s check in in 5 years” hire.
Agree with the 3rd paragraph. Obviously it’s not “oh, don’t pay any attention to anything and let’s judge at year 5.” I don’t think anyone thinks that. And losing seasons aren’t acceptable. But if he’s delivering on recruiting promise while going 8-9 wins the first two seasons, that’s fine to me. He THEN needs to turn it into 11-12 and a playoff appearance. No upward trajectory, then, well, at least he stocked the cupboard for the next guy.
Yeah, I mean, Freeman isn’t going to be recruiting near the teens/worse than Kelly in the very near future. If he somehow was, they probably need to move on, but of all scenarios that could happen, I don’t even find it imaginable that he will have problems in 2023/2024 in selling talent on coming to ND, even without huge success.
Obviously he won’t keep his job indefinitely without on field success, but I want to see him build average recruiting classes .920+ And get better skill players. That would be good progress and realistically should happen. If he averages 8-9 wins in the next two years and builds more talent while learning and being a better HC that would be well enough to hope for a step forward in year 3.
Exactly.
We’ve had two playoff “appearances”, even made it to the BCS championship, under Kelly. I thought Freeman or whoever the new coach was to be had to do better than that?
You don’t like the hire, so you’re setting the bar at NC before he’s even had a spring practice? Cool. In other comments you’ve said you don’t think anyone else could recruit better, so I don’t really know what you are doing other than letting out frustration.
Yes, the point is that if he works out as planned, he’ll get the guys in who can be competitive with Bama, Clemson, UGA, etc. It’s a risk, and not one that’s going to pay off next year. In my mind, the reasonable options were A. gamble on Freeman, B. gamble that Fickell would leave a playoff team, sacrificing this year’s recruiting class but possibly resulting in more early success, or C. get a Kelly 2.0 in Matt Campbell who would continue to win the games we should win, but I have no confidence would do any better than Kelly. A in particular has a great risk of going sideways, but also the highest reward if it works. I don’t think B was a serious option. C. might make us feel safer in the short term, but doesn’t solve any of the angst of bumping the head against the ceiling.
But you’ve already decided the hire was a mistake. That’s your right. I’m going to wait and see.
I was reacting to the goal post for Freeman being moved to making a playoff appearance in 3 years. We’ve been there, done that multiple times under Kelly and that wasn’t good enough for this fan base. But you seem to be saying that’s good enough with Freeman?
I never would set the goal post being set at playoff appearance next year. I wouldn’t have set it there with Kelly either. Not with this roster and that schedule. The roster isn’t crap, but we have a lot of holes to fill, and they aren’t going to get filled in the transfer portal enough to get there.
If your bar is “playoff or bust” next year, you’re intentionally not giving any room for a first time head coach who probably needs to learn a bit. That’s fine, because it shows you would have made a different hire. But I don’t know who short of Saban was walking in and taking this team, against that schedule, to the playoff next year, much less winning a game.
It’s funny, so much of the “our ceiling with Kelly is not acceptable” crowd seem so afraid of taking any steps to do better, because it’s risky. I don’t know if that’s you or not, but I’m seeing it a lot of places. Yes, absolutely it’s a risk. But what you’ve presented here, there’s only two options in your mind: do IMMEDIATELY better than Kelly, or it’s a failure. I don’t think anyone was going to step in and immediately win a playoff game, so all choices were failures, if that’s where the bar is.
I think you are both talking past each other a bit. I have the feeling that you could both agree that determining whether this risky but potentially higher payoff hire will work or not will play out in year 3, and should not be anticipated prior to the end of that year. That is certainly where I would think the bar ought to be at the end of that year: “made it to the CFP, and played better than BK’s three appearances e.g., close competitive game(s)/
ND cannot be worried about how the media reacts. The folks in charge need to be dispassionate about this. I’m worried that they’re already off track there.
If he’s having losing/mediocre seasons I don’t think the media is going to react negatively. I’d like to think we’re past the Willingham days, in multiple ways.
If he’s having losing seasons, I don’t think it would be an issue for most people. There is definitely a subset of sports fans – many of them have already made sarcastic cracks about how long ND gave Willingham – that will rake ND over the coals if they fire Freeman even if he somehow lost his next 36 games.
It’s if recruiting falls off and the team is going 8-4/7-5 the next 3 years or so that would be straddling that line. But I’m confident enough in Freeman not to worry about that scenario right now.
I agree with all of this.
The amazing thing is people were making those cracks in 2021, after Ty Willingham completely imploded at Washington.
And it is my opinion that those people will make those cracks no matter what, because they want to make those cracks. Specifically for those people, ND should follow ACS’s advice and not give two defecations.
Yes, I agree that they shouldn’t, but they absolutely will.
Seriously? Have you been away?
You can count on ND being very media sensitive if worst comes to worst. Things are off the charts more “woke” these days and the media are more powerful.
ND is committed to its academic dream. Football is unquestionably a lower priority based on everything we’ve seen.
Yup exactly. Top 5-6 recruiting classes with some years having double-digit top 100 players and we need to be very patient with him while he goes 8-4/9-3.
We’re not getting double-digit top-100 players unless we win more. We had exactly one in this pretty good 2022 class (and lost Williams late, who was #2). Our 2023 class is off to an incredible start and only has four right now, with the potential for maybe like 3 or 4 more but almost certainly not 6 – and that assumes that Vernon stays a top-100 recruit and Keeley stays committed, each of which, I dunno maybe. Gotta crawl before you can walk etc.
Agreed that it’ll be tough. I recently looked and saw that Bama, A&M, OSU, etc. get almost 15 top 100 players many years so once every few years we gotta hit 10 (or regularly get close – it’s not an exact number).
Yea we have 4 – almost 5 – and are in the hunt as you say for 3 or 4 more (seems like 2 is realistic at this point). But what I most curious to see will be how many more *offensive* guys can Freeman get us in on now that he’s the head coach.
That doesn’t make sense champ 23. How does getting 10 top 100’s “every few years, or regularly get close” if the elite programs get 50% more regularly. How does that get us to the top? We’ve been in the top 4 several times and nobody’s happy with that.
Mostly it helps because we’ve been in the top 4 at the end of the year sometimes while only getting between like 1-4 (closer to the 1 than the 4 most years) top 100 players every year. So I’m saying getting to 50% (or really a bit higher) rather than say 25% of what those elite teams will do is going to be helpful. How would it not be?
It wouldn’t hurt, but IMO it wouldn’t be enough to close a gap that seems to be widening. With the portal and NIL, the rich seem to be getting richer.
And actually looking at it a little more closely. The Bama’s of the world have gotten about 15 top 100 players the last two years (wow) but prior to that it was more like 10-11.
So a realistic goal that would definitely close the gap would be a minimum of 6 top 100 level players every year but probably more like 7 would be needed with 8 being a kind of stretch goal.
So in light of that having 4 already this year (almost 5) – those two offensive players would just about put us at the goal.
Though of course because recruiting these top 100 level players has been weak anything more now helps us close the gap faster.
Top 100 players
2019 – 2 (Hamilton leaving)
2020 – 4 (one transferred already)
2021 – 3
2022 – 1 (though we did have an abnormally high number of players between 118-153 = 7)
It’s also important to note that we’ve hit some key needs in the 2023 class too with DE, CB and S being our weakest groups on the team (all with an average below .9000 for next years roster).
I’d say qb and wr and possibly rb are right up there in key needs
In terms of numbers yes that is true. And there is always a need for an elite QB.
But QB average without Powlus = .9282
WR average = .9124
The talent level is not dire like it is/was with DE, CB and S.
It sure is if you look at results on the field vs those subjective recruiting numbers.
check out Bama, OSU, Clemson, LSU, Auburn, USC, Texas and FSU, who’ve won all of the championships going back to 2001. They all had way more talent in those offensive skill positions than we’ve had since the Holtz heydays.
Would Kelly have gone 17-7 over the next two years? Possibly, but the risk of that happening has to be higher now.
Maybe 18-6. As noted elsewhere the schedule is going to be tougher the next few years than it was the last however many years.
Of course the risk is higher of doing worse but also the “risk”/potential of doing better is on the table too with better recruiting (see already the 2023 class that is all Freeman’s doing sine it’s basically all defense already).
Lots of ifs there. Not good news for a brand like ND. You’d think it would have the drawing power to take a less risky approach, wouldn’t you? And if Freeman doesn’t live up to expectations there is no way to fire him before his contract is done. After willingham can you imagine the nuclear fallout?
Such a huge risk Jack took.
It’s only “goal-post moving” if you expected to go 11-1 next season, which I don’t understand why anyone would. “Lack of talent” can mean many things–we don’t have the talent to compete with tOSU or Clemson (well, maybe Clemson if they’re on the way down) or Bama or UGA. But new coach variance means we may also lose a game to a team we’re more talented than next year. This team went 11-2 while being pretty mediocre most of the season. Maybe teams on next year’s schedule take a step back like the ones on this year’s did and we take advantage, but it feels like you’re setting the goal posts pretty high up. Of course, I expected us to be 8-4 this year, so maybe I’m just a cheery pessimist.
Hang on a second here. Please reread what I wrote. I didn’t say anything about going 11-1 next year.
What I’m saying is that the rationale for hiring Freeman and retaining most of the coaching staff is already starting to change and that is a red flag to me.
I promise you that what I think is not nearly as extreme as what you’re reading.
Then I’m confused what you mean by “rebuilding” (again, not a term I’ve seen brought up at all). I think you’re assuming “continuity” meant one thing, when it means another. “Continuity” is a buzzword so that recruits don’t panic. It’s what keeps guys like Foskey from declaring (maybe, hopefully). It means it’s easier to hire Freeman because you don’t have to worry about also making him go find an OC as you keep Rees. It means what could have been a major mess this last month wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. That’s it. I don’t see any of that as “moving the goal posts” because I never interpreted it as anything but that.
If continuity meant keeping the same players and recruits from 2021 to 2022 then I think this was a very myopic decision.
If it means — as I think it did — that the foundations of the program are strong such that an inexperienced coach can step in and have a lot of success with minimal, if any, regression, then I’m on board.
I don’t see those things as mutually exclusive. I think one is part of the other.
I think the issue is what we may consider “minimal, if any, regression.” Ryan Day is a good comp, because of the similarity in age and the reputation as a good coordinator and rising star. He was 39 when he took over at tOSU. No regression. If anything, the first year or so it got better than Urban, probably because Urban had become a distraction.
But Day also had Justin Fields and Chase Young, etc. etc. That’s not to say Freeman is stepping into a team that’s chopped liver, he’s not. But Day didn’t have to “elevate” recruiting at all. And also, frankly, that Day was able to come in and do well is the anomaly, not the norm.
Meanwhile, yes, this was an 11 win team. But do any of us realistically think THIS team was elite? I sure don’t. It was fun to watch. It was good. It got a lot better over the course of the year. But it’s just not fair to expect NO step back when this team overachieved as it was. We don’t have Fields or Chase Young. Well, maybe Young-lite, in the form of Foskey. But I’m not even sure Buchner can throw a non-RPO pass. I’m not optimistic about next year, and I wouldn’t be if Kelly was the coach either. By that, I mean I’d expect a growing year, 9-3, etc.
Therefore my baseline is 8-4, 9-3 for Freeman. If it’s a losing season, yes, things are rotten in South Bend. But I think “minimal, if any, regression” is a pretty high bar that doesn’t take into account where the team actually is.
Ok, that’s fair. I agree it’s a high bar, but I have a high bar because it was a high risk decision.
Who, if you were hiring, would you have chosen instead? Realistically, by which I mean if you say Fickell, for instance, you have to factor in waiting until after the playoff AND that he might say no.
Fickell. I realize that probably would have tanked this recruiting class but bad classes during coaching changes are nothing new. That’s the price you pay.
I know the timing was far from ideal. That’s the situation Kelly left us in, unfortunately. But I do think Fickell was a realistic option whose resume tracks much more closely with successful ND coaches than Freeman’s does.
I am not throwing in the towel on Freeman or assuming he will fail or anything like that.
Fickell would have been my choice as well, and I agree that recruiting classes falling apart happens and you can overcome it. My ideal was that Fickell came over and Freeman stayed as DC, but that wasn’t going to happen. And I don’t have a problem with choosing Freeman, IF it was done with the expectation that we’d need some patience. I think he’ll be a great HC someday. I hope it’s with us.
I think those were the only two options. Matt Campbell in my opinion would have been Kelly 2.0, which is fine (!) but I’d rather take the big swing right now. He or another like him will be there in 4-5 years if Freeman doesn’t pan out.
Campbell would have been my Plan C disaster option. Bleh.
Same. Very uninspiring, but likely wouldn’t destroy the place.
One thing to keep in mind is SOS. It seems next year’s (and the next few years actually) have more elite teams on the schedule than last year’s (and maybe the last few years).
So even if our team quality stayed the same (we had Kelly) we still might lose an extra game here or there over the next few season’s then we are used to.
I agree.
Which is why it’s even more important to be realistic and not say “but in 2021 we went 11-1, what happened?!?!”
Exactly. I meant my previous comment to support your point.
nodding agreement dot gif.
For not the first time this year the D gave up a long drive at the half. What is ND doing wrong in this regard ?
References to FSU game at the beginning of the season have been made, and I can definitely see some lines of similarity. We just were able to pull that one out at the end.
I echoed most of your thoughts during the game yesterday and again this morning Eric. This is one of the more upsetting games to me in a long while.
Being there was fun, but when the score was 28-7, my wife kept asking me why I was so nervous haha. When Okie scored before half, everyone around me kind of looked at each other like “we’ve all seen this movie before and we know how it ends”. Such a bummer.
I got so caught up in the punt/don’t punt situation yesterday (likely because it was the last decision essentially), I forgot all about not trying to score to end the first half. Another frustration, but it is what it is today. I felt like the game was there for the taking and IMO, they really needed to get that monkey off their backs. It’s so hard because it was right there for the taking.
As cardinal said below, the game was painfully long. Media timeouts repeatedly just drug the game out for so long.
hey but at least there were only 30k people to keep at low key as well. Looking back I definitely way overpaid for tickets given the timing thing when I bought them. Was really hoping that would be my biggest regret from the day rather than the whole game
Definitely overpaid as well considering you could get in the door at kickoff for less than 50 bucks. Oh well, was worth it for the experience…I think lol. Everyone basically just moved down to better seats considering there were so many empty ones. Hope you and the kid had a good time despite the loss.
We did, he just loves sports and would never leave even a play early. I tried to dip after the failed 4th down conversion and again after the onside attempt and he wouldn’t leave. He got cards panthers tickets for his bday and my wife took him and he stayed til end of 34-10 loss. so yesterday was fun for him. poor kid still hasn’t seen any team he roots for win in person though. (i’ve been there for 15 fiesta, 18 cotton bowl and 21 fiesta so thinking it may be me).
how bout you? get to westgate early? hang out after? I was kind of jealous of the people hanging out after
He sounds just like my son. I admire his commitment to losing sports teams but he’s the same, loves sports. I tried to dip after the failed conversion as well but my wife talked me into staying which I’m glad we did as frustrating as the end result was.
We had a great time. Made it early to westgate and went back over there post game to watch a bit of the rose bowl. It was packed and the crowd was interesting to say the least. Really appreciate the rec on westgate, Arizona is beautiful. It was our first time out there and we found a couple nice dinner spots as well.
After watching Freeman’s debut I think he’ll need quite a bit of seasoning during games. I’m not sure why apparently 80% of the fanbase expected anything else. Look at this year’s defense–I think that’s the model. Struggled to contain bad teams in the first half of the season, gave up big plays that made us tear out our hair, but also when they got it, played well and made plays too. Got gradually better over the course of the year, and by the end were strangling bad teams. In a game against a team with a pulse, played well for a while (as Eric noted) but eventually the line tired out, OSU found the weaknesses to pick on, and couldn’t hold up. Not ideal, obviously. But putting the emotion of yesterday aside, clearly this D got better. I would expect it to get even better next year, particularly as more talent comes in. I think the next few years are going to be the same, just in the macro. We probably will lose a game or two next year due to a young HC and OC and other staff needing to learn. It will be frustrating. We’ll all get angry, and some of it will be justified, probably. But my bet is that they’ll improve, and be a better team against USC than they will be against tOSU. (Oh yeah, tOSU is going to destroy us. Imagine Clarence Lewis trying to guard Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Nightmare fuel. You aren’t scheming your way out of that.) Year 2 is where I’m looking for serious growth, from both Freeman and the roster. Maybe it’ll take some more staff shakeup as well, and part of learning for a young HC is cutting loose assistants who hold the team back. Not saying that’s Tommy, I don’t know. I’m not smart enough schematically to know if Tommy is a good OC or not, and I don’t think most fans are, either. I think ND fans also tend to think of him as the QB Tommy and how frustrating his play was. He seems well-regarded in the coaching field for being as young as he is. But he needs to learn too. Maybe Freeman ends up having to cut him loose eventually. I don’t know. None of us do. The thing is, Freeman has always been a high-variance bet, as a DC and now as HC. Kelly knew that Lea’s “keep everything in front of you, don’t make mistakes” approach was going to keep winning ND 10-11 games a year, and then get blown TF out by the Bamas and the tOSUs and Clemsons once we faced teams with better talent. When Lea left, he hired Freeman for both his ability to recruit better players and his “attacking” (cliche, I know, but it does focus more on making things happen than keeping the ball in front of you) D, as that was the only way to get over the hump. Elevating him to HC is the same… Read more »
Ugh stupid lack of paragraphs click to see it in a readable form.
It was said by Gundy that OK St. was going to have three different coaches calling defensive plays depending on down and distance. That sounded whacky and I’m not sure if they did it.
Even if they did, that’s easier to manage when you’ve got an experienced guy at the top.
I hate Mike Gundy the person, but he’s a hell of a ball coach.
After sleeping on it, two thoughts:
1. This was probably the most painful game I watched since USC 2005. To get so close was just agonizing. Per Ted Lasso: “It’s the hope that kills you.”
2. A brief shout out to OSU: the number of 1:1 plays where they executed was back breaking. For an offense that was inconsistent, they were dialed in during the 2nd half. On D, they just made tackle after tackle.
As I said to someone else, we unfortunately got dialed-in, good Spencer Sanders, not reckless and wild Spencer Sanders.
My friends and I were texting about where this ranks compared to the worst Kelly losses, and we came up with the following as worse:
Northwestern 2014 (the undisputed king)
Tulsa 2010
USF 2011
and that’s it. I guess that goes to show we don’t mind getting blown out, as one could fairly include Michigan 2019 or Miami 2017 in there too, but it’s pretty clearly top 7 or so.
You’re missing a Navy game in there, and I think all of those are way worse. As was Virginia Tech.
Agreed. Any blowout losses to Navy have to be in the top 5
Man did you have to go and bring up NW 2014? Lol
Bama 2012 is up there
Yeah, I suppose in the moment Bama 2012 felt different than Clemson 2018/ACCCG Clemson 2020/Alabama 2020 because the latter three I expected to get throttled, whereas in 2012 I had hope going in. But when it’s clear 15 mins in you’re going to lose, in some ways it doesn’t feel as bad IMO.
Because you have time to process it.
Split-Zone Duo (I think) podcast mentioned this re: Michigan the other night. They don’t feel upset because it was clear from the first moment they weren’t going to win, and had all game to process it.
It feels worse emotionally to lose like we did, but only because you aren’t already numb. That doesn’t make it “worse.”
This loss was the first to really affect me heavily emotionally since Michigan 2011.
Interesting! I didn’t mind that loss (to the level of the aforementioned games, anyways) because it wasn’t really a game we were *supposed* to win, and the USF loss before that basically drained my spirit for the season to some degree already.
Any loss to Michigan is by definition worse than any other loss, to me.
100%. We’ve lost to Michigan in so many different heartbreaking ways (losses of the 2nd and 3rd kind, according to my chart), and they all “just mean more” to borrow from the SEC
But don’t your expectations change at halftime (as in go way up)?
IMO, you’re kind of comparing apples to oranges. In my mind, there are three kinds of losses:
So, this being a loss of the third kind, I am as crushed by this one as I have been since probably Stanford 2015.
Quibble: We absolutely belonged on the field with 2017 Miami. And maybe 2019 Michigan. Those are different than 2012 Bama, playoffs, etc. Those were poor preparation, not “we don’t have a shot.”
I understand that by recruiting talent, etc, we were peers with both of those teams, but they humiliated us nonetheless. The result of the game made it appear as though we didn’t belong on the same field. I recognize the distinction, and thought about making it a separate category. I could consider splitting “blowout to a peer team” and “blowout to a superior team” into two categories, but I didn’t think it necessary.
I think it depends how we look at losses, our expectations, where we were in our personal lives, etc. They all play a factor in our emotion and the aftermath. For example, I remember Texas in 2016. I was at the game. We were ranked number 10, coming off a great year. Not knowing how the rest of the year would play out, you could have argued that was a bad loss (and a great game). It hurt, but if you were in that stadium and saw how the game played out, we were fortunate to have an opportunity to win it. With FSU in 2014, we needed Golson to perform one of his magical 4th down plays to give us a chance to win. It certainly sucked when we all thought they did (and should have). But because of the collapse at the end of the year, the game loses it’s “big loss” luster.
Don’t forget Pitt 2013, Michigan 2011, or basically all of 2016.
Michigan 2011 is far and away kelly’s worst loss. Up 17, should have been up 30 heading to the 4th. blow the lead, regain it then somehow give up a 75 yard drive in like 30 seconds. Oh against your most bitter enemy in their first night game with a chance to make a statement in year 2. I hate that lose. I didn’t watch football for like 6 days after that game
I know, right? I thought this was the consensus worst loss of the Kelly era by a million miles.
Kelly going for 2 up 11 against Northwestern is the defining, single most unforgivable in-game decision of the entire Kelly era, IMO. Then handing off instead of kneeling when we could have taken the clock down to like 10 seconds was probably also in the top 10. That happened in the same quarter of one game!
Sounds like a legit good time compared to blowing a 24-7 lead in the 4th quarter only to re-gain the lead with 30 seconds remaining only to then still lose in the Big House.
Michigan 19 and Miami 17 were both pretty unforgivable no-shows against teams we knew weren’t that good before we played them and it was proven weren’t that good after. Michigan 11 is probably the worst/most painful loss, with Tulsa #2, both just for sheer absurdity (Tulsa coming on the back of a blowout to Navy gives it bonus doom points), but I would rate those two ridiculous blowouts 3 and 4, well ahead of any other losses.
Michigan 2011 is the only game that permanently rewired my brain re: Notre Dame football.
I, like Eric, was also overjoyed by the 14-0 lead. I thought to myself, this could be a blowout and maybe we deserved to be in the final four. I clearly should have remembered the Weis teams where we came out firing and had no ball control. But, this was a different team! And then we jump out to 28-7! However, I saw something on that drive that concerned me. I think Andy alluded to this. We had opportunities to take more time off the clock. You could argue three points there with no time remaining until halftime put us in a better position to win. Austin takes the pass to get a first down and goes out of bounds. Incomplete pass on first down. For sure Gundy at least has to start using timeouts if the clock is running. When OSU went down the field with seemingly no resistance at all, I felt incredibly uneasy. But, again, this is a different team! We have well over 30 seconds (anyone remember Stanford 2015?). Lets be aggressive and I thought we would be for sure. We didn’t, momentum shifted and our defense, who came out on fire, clearly motivated with a ton of energy, came down to earth after halftime. Gundy adjusted, we didn’t. The defense was gassed, both from emotion and coming out so fast that they couldn’t get their legs back under them, which then leads to bad tackling. Not their fault. We couldn’t establish a run game at all. Easy to look back now and question why we didn’t try Buchner in the second half, but certainly didn’t make sense to insert him in the first half. Coan was threatening Brady Quinn’s 6 touchdown record with how he was throwing. There’s so much to learn from this game for Freeman and Rees, and yet the pain of this will sting for a long time. I know you can learn a lot from a loss, but that’s hard for the young freshmen and new talent coming in. For myself, this ranks up there with Tennessee in 1991, USC in 2005, Michigan in 2011 and that bad Stanford loss in 2015 when we likely would have made the playoff. It will take weeks to get over this game but I feel for the players and seniors even more. Lots of emotion to this one, playing with a new coach and beating the annoying narrative that we can’t win the big game.
I guess I’m just weird. I didn’t know what to expect, so had no expectations, and thus don’t feel very let down. Would have been nice to win a NY6 obviously, but some of you are making this out to be soul-crushing, and I don’t see it anywhere near 2005 USC or Tennessee 1991, etc.
Or 74 USC.
You are weird! (I keed, I keed).
Multiple things happened in this game that I never, ever would have expected to happen:
-Going up 28-7 in the first half
-Blowing that 21-point lead
-Giving up more than 600 yards
-Throwing almost 70 times
-Zero snaps for Buchner
This game just looked radically different from anything this team has done in the past season, or really the past 5 seasons. I think that’s why people are so knocked off balance by it.
All of that is true. I guess my point is more that I didn’t go in thinking anything that happened would be any reflection on what this team will look like come September. Yes, most of the staff stayed, but it’s still a ton of upheaval, and decisions had to be made on how to divide labor that won’t be an issue next year (one would assume). We were playing 2 freshman OT’s, an undersized RG, and a line in total that was BUTT the first half of the year against one of the best run-defenses in the country, so I understand the idea behind throwing that much. And it worked! Until it didn’t. But then we didn’t adjust…which comes back to the real issue, inexperience and holes in the coaching staff responsibilities. Concerning? Sure. But not yet enough to be indicative of anything, I don’t think.
Also, bowl games are wacky.
Austin gone – https://twitter.com/PeteSampson_/status/1477722603393409028?s=20
I think this means next year is officially a rebuilding season.
Thanks, Kevin, for putting me in the position of begging God that Lenzy of all people comes back.
KG you’ve gotten your wish. Lenzy is back.
@great@
Wow, a bummer and a bit surprising. He’s obviously got the physical talent to play in the NFL but never had much of a chance to put it all together.
Can’t say I’m surprised he wants to leave South Bend, though.
He’s not exactly a Stepherson, but maybe we should lay off WR’s named Kevin for a while.
Couldn’t agree more. Not surprised at all. He played arguably his best game of his entire career against a top ten team on the national stage. Depending on how he rates out at the combine, he could have went from a late round pick to an early round pick (particularly when you look at his athleticism). He has more to lose coming back another year and risk injury.
It seems to me he easily has 1st/2nd round talent but won’t be picked anywhere near that this year without much production to back it up. So I think he could be leaving millions in his rookie contract on the table by leaving this year.
I don’t really blame him for leaving now, good decision for him, bad decision for the 2022 ND team. 5 years of ND is a long time, and he went up and down. Kinda proud he stuck it out and didn’t transfer after getting suspended for a year due to the potentially unfair rules of the time.
WR’s who are anywhere close to NFL worthy don’t usually take a 5th year. For NFL, they like prospects who are young and uninjured. He’s already got an injury history, coming back risks adding to that, and he’ll be a year older in 2023. I don’t really see a path where Austin would get drafted THAT much higher in 2023 than 2022 anyways. I think ppl over-rate that. Remember when Te’Von Coney did himself a draft favor by coming back for an extra year, and then didn’t even get drafted at all?
Also, with the suspension and injuries and other stuff, there’s no reason to expect him to stay at ND out of nostalgia or “give it one more go.” I don’t think he’s NFL ready, a transfer might have been a better option for him. But whatever, go do your thing, young man.
Yea, a transfer made more sense to me as well. But I hope he does well with whatever NFL team he goes to.
He had a broken foot right? I don’t think he should risk another one of those. Also, the QB situation being what it is, there’s no guarantee he’d put up great numbers next year…. I think he’s just ready to move on.
I guess I don’t see broken feet as some kind of serious risk of recurring.
I believe there is. Especially for someone who makes their living with their legs. Of course it surely depends on what part of the foot is broken. Austin and/or the Drs. already messed this up once by not having surgery immediately and then reinjuring the foot.
Yea I don’t remember the whole history of it. Thought it was a simple broken foot. But if there is some risk of re-injury then I would lean more towards moving on. But I still think someone like Austin might not make it to the 2nd contract and one more year at ND might make a huge difference in his draft stock next year (QB situation would be why he wouldn’t though)
Think it was a metatarsal fracture. He broke it, opted not to have surgery and instead tried to let it heal and then rehab. Probably never healed right and he broke it again and then had to have surgery. So, can’t blame him for not wanting to risk it again. I’d go too if I were him I think.
Really? He’s still a guy who only has one year as a starter under his belt, was pretty inconsistent, and had real trouble getting open against physical corners. This isn’t Chase Claypool we’re talking about. I wouldn’t be surprised if Austin didn’t get drafted at all.
Yeah, don’t think he moved into being an early round pick.
I just think he is tired of being at ND.
There were 36 wide receivers who got drafted last year. Austin doesn’t have a great college resume, but it’s better to go now because in 2023 he’ll be one year older and risks picking up more injuries as well.
I think with a good year at ND next year though he could have moved himself into an early round pick where this year he’ll be a late-round pick.
Heavily doubt that. What 5th year WR that’s like 23 years old ever gets drafted super high? I think that’s just something people say or want to think. The chances Austin is getting through 2022 in college totally healthy, while catching 80+ balls and being a super high pick for 2023 would be very, very low.
It could happen, but it wouldn’t. He would just be one year older in 2023 than he is now, with more miles on the proverbial tires. And if he gets hurt next year, he might not be drafted at all.
I think it’s a rare exception where he has all the talent in the world but has been held back by injuries + suspension and this year even by the inconsistency of the OL in the first half of the season. Wasn’t this his first year playing basically? One would imagine that going from year 1 to year 2 playing is where big jumps could be made and with some help from the OL and QB (which who knows if he would get that help) he would make that jump.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s undrafted either. Too many much better ones out there
Yea so what do you think that means with respect to record?
OSU – loss (is there a mercy rule at all in college football?)
Clemson – could be a close loss depending on their QB play.
USC could be much improved and BYU is usually tough = 1-1
so 9-3?
With obviously a chance to lose to someone less talented = 8-4
Honestly, from watching the Clemson bowl game they were v unimpressive. Not sure what happened to DJ U. And now they have to replace 2 coordinators with Dabo special internal hires and lost a lot of experience in their senior class. I think Clemson is in a lot shakier a place than Notre Dame right now.
Actually forgot about the coordinators for a sec. They will definitely take a step back esp. on D.
re QB play: I’m wondering if the freshmen 5 star they have coming in will win the job and become pretty good by the time they play us in Nov. If DJ is still playing I’d put them more in the 50/50 category or better (for us) which would solidify something like 9-3 – maybe even 10-2.
DJU was probably less an issue than their line, although both were issues. Clemson’s lines on both sides have, with the exception of the team we (of course) drew in the CFP, never really been at the level you’d expect of a team that was playing at the level they were, and this year it bit them hard because they didn’t have a gaggle of junior-NFL players to bail them out of it.
I think we need to wait before we assume anything about USC.
Riley may turn it around right away, but he also might find there’s way more rot there than he bargained for. Doesn’t mean we’ll win, we’re in the same boat as them in many ways.
I think 9-3/8-4, depending on recruiting and how the losses happen and how the team is playing, is the right ballpark to set the bar, and hopefully we do much better. Worse, we’ve got some thinking to do.
And honestly, I think recruiting counts in the record. Outside the top 10 in recruiting rankings might as well count as a loss, given that the reason we hired Freeman is his recruiting reputation. He HAS to deliver on that, and is so far, but it has to continue.
Agreed with USC. I’m just thinking if they improve some it might be a good game against us if we are going to have a ‘down’ year.
They’re (SC) dealing with an awful and a bad recruiting class. They have to be mighty thin at several positions.
Could be. Let’s wait and see when the dust settles with this class (in Feb.) and transfers.
And oh boy did we just get a reminder on how lack of depth at certain positions will end up killing you
I think there’s a pretty hard ceiling at 10-2 for next season.
Kevin Austin set to declare for the NFL Draft, per Pete Sampson.
What’s the scoop on Foskey? His tweet doesn’t make me feel very optimistic about a return.
Heavy sigh from France. I just read all 350 posts from the instant analysis piece and this thread, and Eric, as one of the first bass players at ND to play the blues on campus, I feel your and everyone’s pain. It’s Slim Harpo time (“How much can a man do?”)… Some context: 1, Of the eight Notre Dame head coaches over the nine decades to be hired without head coaching experience at the college level, all of them failed. Every single one. As Lou Somogyi used to point out, Ara Parseghian was definite when he said that he had needed every minute of his prior successful and extensive head coaching experience before taking the ND job. Which makes the MF hire a very high risk move by definition from the historical perspective. I am now 100% on board with Eric’s heartfelt call a year ago that upgrading recruiting was the ONLY way out of our # 10 team in the nation doldrums. So that may justify Jack’s decision on the hire. But huge gamble it is (and like all of you, I desperately hope MF will be the exception to all this). 2, It simply was inevitable given the inherited situation that MF would struggle with who was calling plays on defense, on giving Tommy total autonomy, etc. and not overruling him on the 37 seconds before the half, etc. etc. As pointed out above, ideally MF will fix stuff like that with more experience. But that’s the point. 3, As for 3 or 5 years, Ara also nailed that one )”if I can’t fix the program in 3 years, I won’t in 5″), and again our coaching history confirms it: Year 3 is the indicator. And honestly, the way the top level recruit carrousel is evolving, MF’s year 3 will give us plenty of time to see if (a) he really can upgrade recruiting to the elite level, and (b) if he can put together s staff that can develop those recruits. 4, My hunch is that his game instincts are sound, and his game management will work out if he can manage to handle the huge overall load. Eric, you thought he looked nervous on the sideline, I thought he looked OK until shortly before he grabbed the play sheet. On the other hand, during the pressers prior to the game he really seemed to be trying to hide the “I am drinking from a high pressure fire hose” look. Which I will submit was part of the problem with the linebackers, they even said it prior to the game, he was not spending the time with them. 5, Bottom line this devastating, rotten loss, one of the absolute worse I can remember (USC 1964 and BC 1993 were worse though), may well be the best thing that could happen to MF. The bloom is off, he cannot hide from this one or wash the stink off except by mastering a job he has no experience with.… Read more »
I didn’t experience USC 1964, but did experience BC 1993. The difference in the latter from the losses I mention is that we will never in it until the end. Michigan State in 2005 was a similar feeling to me. Down by a lot, came back, had a chance to win, but then lost a game where we had more talent and ultimately, the opportunity. Yes, we were the number one team in 1993 and should have won that game, but we came off the emotion of beating FSU and that was a BC team that was underrated and looking for blood. We kicked their tail the year before and they certainly were ready to play. Yes, it was 39-38, we came back, and I wish that we intercepted the ball on the ensuing drive or somehow they miss that kick because that was one fun season that just fell short. Forever the Holtz years bring back fond memories and tears.
Interesting point on head coaches and successes, though I don’t think it translates to the game today. To clarify, I don’t think we had much of a choice at the time, and I am OK with it. He’s a players coach because he’s only 35. That’s not a bad thing if he learns to adapt and change. Freeman clearly went into this game to let this coordinators do their thing and not challenge their decisions. I can’t help but think he disagreed with Rees at the end of the first half (did you see his face on the sideline? He looked a bit disgusted). I also don’t know if that was really Tommy for those last 37 seconds, who came out slinging the ball, or Kelly still in his head from all of those years. In any event, I hope they learn and Freeman learns that he can, should, and needs to make head coach decisions at times as well as make adjustments.
Kyle,
I liked your long post above, and your reply to mine. My classing of this defeat with those two was purely subjective, how bad they made me feel. Why? I am totally aligned with Eric, we had this superb chance to get rid of the major bowl loser millstone, and we just… blew it. Which was my parallel with USC 64 (blew a Natty in the last few minutes) and BC 93 (blew a Natty in the last few minutes).
To your point about the other eight failures not applying in the modern game, I respectfully offer this: the ND job is at least as intense and demanding as the other major college football programs, BUT with the additional complexities that come from our unique culture, our university unwritten demands and associated real job requirements, and our history of trying to juggle academics and culture with football. It was the sum total of all that which contributed to the eight failures — most of the eight were potentially decent coaches. I agree that Jack had no other choice if he wanted to save the recruiting class, and that for a variety of reasons, we did really need to save the recruiting class — plus MF clearly has a truly dynamic and charismatic personality. But as much as I desperately wish for his success, I do feel for all the above reasons that this is a genuinely tough challenge.
Outstanding summation, Noise.
Bass player eh? Still do it?
I saw ND’s first game ever on TV, 1952 against OU. Since that time I’ve seen quite a few bad loses, but a hell of a lot more great wins. This loss really hurts, just because of their past major bowl record, and I thought for sure we were going to put that baby to sleep with a win. At this point in my life and at my age,82, I’m just happy to have had another season of Irish football……hopefully a few more and a freaking NC would be great.
Bill, you are the best!
Amazing Bill!
Bill — super! I am so glad there is a genuine senior member of this 18S community. I remember hearing my dad and uncles listening to that game. We didn’t have a TV!
Bill, you’re in good company. My dear mother (86) can’t challenge you on tenure (she had not yet left Ireland in 1952) but faithfully watches every game. She texted me today to (a) ask why her “little #24 wasn’t playing” and (b) express her frustration that Coach Freeman didn’t stick in in Coach Kelly’s eye with a win. Kelly burned a bridge with Mom. Here’s to you (and Mom) getting to see the next NC. Go Irish.
These are great stories! I became a fan due to my grandfather being such a committed fan. He immigrated from Italy as a 12 year old just prior to the 40’s, so he experienced some glory for sure early on in his fandom. He served in the army during WW2 and I can still remember watching games with him as a kid, especially during the 88 season. My dad called me yesterday before the game and told me he knew my grandfather would be watching along side me from the game. Was a bit of an emotional day to say the least.
Lenzy back. Who are the others now? Foskey, Ademilola, Patterson…?
Yep those 3 are the main ones left (I’m predicting leave, stay, leave, respectively from your list). Also I guess Bauer and just hearing officially that Bracy and DJ Brown are coming back is still to be confirmed but expected. And Lugg too.
Takacs coming back, rumored he might grad transfer somewhere else to start.
This one’s surprising to me….There are youngsters behind him that should be ready. Berrong, Mitchell.
Takacs is a better 2nd TE for blocking sets. Maybe some of the younger guys can get on the field in 3 TE formations since they have no WR’s (said sarcastically but only half jokingly).
I get that, I meant that I’m surprised he didn’t grad transfer to maybe see the ball more.
True. They did a really job making him a big deal late in the year Rees did a film breakdown of like 6-8 great plays for the offense and every single one was a Takacs highlight, when everyone thought it would be like various players and aspects and instead it was all to be like a “team first, this guy is bought in and it helps us” type message. I think stuff like that showed they loved up on him a lot and made him feel special to show that he’s a big part of the offense even if he doesn’t get the ball much.
And doesn’t Brock Wright have as many catches in the NFL now as he did in his whole ND career? There’s a path, probably narrow, but it’s still there for a blocking tight end.
Seems like a good keeper to me.
Eric – do you have any thoughts on Rocket’s nephew Qadir? WR at Villanova I believe, in the portal now.
Google says he’s 6’6″ and plays QB?
It appears he made a switch to WR this year. I just saw some folks discussing the option on Twitter and thought it was interesting.
It looks like Taj Harris from Syracuse is the highest ranked uncommitted WR at this point from the portal, at least from what I can tell on 247. I could definitely be looking at it wrong though.
N=1. Emotionally, this loss hurt a lot. Rationally, it is one data point. Making predictions based on a data set of one game is at best speculative. This was Freeman’s first try at the HC gig, and he had a makeshift DC, playing without the team’s best offensive and defensive players.
I remember Bo(o)b Davie taking over as interim for a game late in Holtz’s tenure as coach. The team beat Vanderbilt 41-0!! Many of us imagined how wonderful it would be if the aggressive and dynamic Davie would take over for the stale, conservative and predictable Lou Holtz. Did that help Davie get the job? Probably. If so, that shows the danger of making conclusions based on a single data point. Bob Davie put ND on the road to mediocrity.
My read on the game is that Sanders is a “streak shooter” from a basketball perspective. He can be ice cold, or he can light it up. Once he got momentum in this game, he and his receiving corps made very few mistakes. It felt like a Johnny Manziel game. Yes, ND could have played better. But sometimes your opponent gets hot and stays hot, while your own QB starts to feel tentative and loses their mojo.
Fingers crossed this N of 1 is misleading, and next year we see growth in the areas well discussed in this thread.
Thank you Eric for running this awesome site! And happy birthday.
Thanks!
Super post, VAMack, totally agree. I remember that Davie game, and all the euphoria about him and his hyper good defenses. Back then Lou Somogyi told me we should tap the brakes, for exactly the generic concerns referenced above about no head coaching experience. Davie’s road to mediocrity (well put!) was less about Xs and Os, and more about his CEO failures and his fundamental failure to get the ND spirit that did him in.
My fingers are crossed that this coaching change to Freeman is in line with the 1986 transition to a coach who had a losing record that first year with some close losses in spite of having an NFL quality quarterback. That was a year marked by a lot of excitement and frustration – much as this Fiesta Bowl was. Little did we know where we would be in 1988.
Per ISD, sounds like ND is hiring James Laurinaitis for some sort of support or analyst role. Cool.
Ohhh what a rush. Great college and pro career, probably has something to help for LBs. Would be nice if Freeman gets the tOSU pipeline with Hartline…
Also breaking in the last few minutes is Houston Griffith is coming back for next year, but OL Quinn Carroll is in the portal as more stay/go decisions trickle in.
Why would Hartline come to ND? Wouldn’t it just be a lateral move? And he’s leaving OSU and the 1st round pipeline of WRs he’s created?
Oh please let the Bears or someone hire Ryan Day
It’s just an internet rumor. who knows if true or not. Maybe Hartline just knows, likes and trusts Freeman, they’ve gone back forever to being college teammates. I would assume money and chance for promotion (i.e. Rees is probably moving on one way or another before too long).
I doubt it will really happen, but I feel like college coaches shuttle around even for lateral moves all the time based on relationships they have and the money they can make down the line.
Pete Sampson shot down the Hartline thing today. Not happening.
Because we melt down the Dome and hand him all the gold?
I’d be tempted.
lol. right. that’s about what it’d take.
In all seriousness you give him as much as you can possibly pay a receivers coach and all the BS resume padding titles you can, like The Mendoza Family Assistant Vice President of Athletics for Scoring Touchdowns or Associate Dean of Torching DBs and Associate Head Coach of Recruiting 5-Stars. Tell him anything. It won’t work, but try whatever you can.
But can he play wide receiver?
Maybe with the extra covid year.