Not even the most pessimistic fan had this week 2 matchup against Northern Illinois as the game to blow up Notre Dame’s season. An obvious let down game and sleepy home opener after the hyped matchup at Texas A&M? That made all the sense in the world. But to lose a game like this in Marcus Freeman’s crucial 3rd year is a massive setback that likely permanently alters the direction of this program in 2024 and beyond.

Here’s our review of the loss to NIU:

QUARTERBACK: F

I thought there were some pretty obvious warning signs last week but it was understandable if anyone wanted to write them off in Riley Leonard’s first game with this program in a tough spot on the road. Now, we see there are some glaring issues.

At best, Leonard looks like an average passer. At best. We’ll see if he gets benched (I doubt it) and I’m sure eventually he turn in a few nice performances as he gains more comfort and confidence. However, he doesn’t have a strong arm and he’s been alarmingly inaccurate over 62 pass attempt in 2024 so far. He doesn’t look too uncomfortable in the pocket but seemingly struggles going through progressions and throwing receivers open. In his brightest moments against NIU, he simply looked like a backup quarterback in the NFL only able to hit a few check down throws and scramble around a little bit.

Even if he improves a bit this offense looks like it’ll drag the team down to a couple more losses at least in 2024.

He’s a good athlete but is Leonard really much of a difference maker running the ball? He carried the ball 5(!) times on the opening drive for 33 yards and finished the game with (sacks removed) 4 more carries for a grand total of 6 yards.

Leonard was far from the only bad player on the field. Still, his deep ball interception to set up NIU’s game-winning field goal is an all-time bad decision and horrendously inaccurate throw. This isn’t completely fair but his demeanor as a goody two-shoes has now become incredibly off-putting with a sudden lack of success on the field.

In the era of NIL, where a transfer quarterback is such a huge priority and focus for a program (how much will the Peacock series be altered now!???), Notre Dame is in a real pickle facing issues with it’s offensive captain.

RUNNING BACK: B

These guys were fine overall. Love gave us a highlight (maybe the only highlight?) of the game with an impressive hurdling touchdown run. He was largely bottled up otherwise (45 yards on his 10 other carries) and it felt like Jadarian Price (4 carries) was purposely not much of a part of the gameplan for some reason. They also gave a crucial carry to true freshman Aneyas Williams out of nowhere for some reason.

NIU was able to chew clock and most won’t care about a low amount of 61 offensive snaps. Still, 15 combined carries for the top 2 running backs felt really low and kind of dumb.

WIDE RECEIVER: C+

I wonder how much this group misses and will miss Jordan Faison?

Beaux Collins showed some toughness and looked like one of the few players not half asleep on the afternoon. Jaden Greathouse had an absurdly bad drop on the one accurate pass from Leonard–that just can’t happen in a tight game like we saw. Greathouse also had 9 targets and not much production from that attention by Leonard.

8 targets and 3 catches for Mitchell is also really poor. This unit has been decent taking some short passes and making something out of nothing which might have to be a larger part of this offense going forward. The return of Faison would really, really help that gameplan.

TIGHT END: B

As I write this, I haven’t seen any snap counts. A week after seeing Flanagan so much I didn’t think he played much against NIU. Although, it appeared All-American candidate Mitchell Evans was back to full health and playing a ton of snaps.

In general, with the struggle throwing the ball I don’t understand the lack of targets to the big tight ends. We saw in this game, even when Evans is covered he can still make catches. Was a ball thrown to Flanagan or Raridon all game?

OFFENSIVE LINE: B-

Grading on a curve for NIU’s defense here. A step back from last week seemed inevitable and we got that. Still, I thought the offensive line played fine overall. Leonard was sacked twice but had plenty of time to make plays throughout the game. The Huskies only mustered 2 tackles for loss outside of the pair of sacks.

If you had told me beforehand that the Irish would total less than 300 yards and under 5 yards per play I would’ve guessed the offensive line played horribly. They didn’t though.

DEFENSIVE LINE: D

I’ve been saying this for a while, this defensive line is far from elite. I haven’t understood the praise and hype at all. Howard Cross has to be hurt more than we know and isn’t playing a ton of snaps. I truly don’t think there are other players on this unit right now who are that scary to play against. I’ve seen comments about the incredible depth of playing 9 or 10 guys up front and I don’t think the backups are being effective at all.

It’s not talked about enough that this unit up front is pretty under-sized.

This was a perfect disaster game where NIU had a Ron Dayne-like player in Antario Brown (99 rushing yards but it felt way way worse because of his receptions for 126 yards) barreling his way through holes for positive yardage all game long.

LINEBACKER: C+

You could probably go lower with this grade. The linebackers seemed to really struggle early on, and NIU’s 2 longest plays from scrimmage (126 yards mentioned above) were both lack of playmaking from linebackers on pass plays to a running back.

I thought they tightened things up in the 2nd half (NIU only averaged 3.48 yards per play over the last 2 quarters).

However, this game was screaming out for some major disruption from Notre Dame’s linebackers and it never came. The Huskies were able to stay in 3rd and short opportunities far too often and the Irish struggled to get them off the field.

SECONDARY: B

Besides those stupid completions mentioned above, NIU quarterback Ethan Hampton went 8 of 17 for 72 yards. He converted only 1 of his 6 throws on 3rd down, as well. I don’t have any bad things to say about the Irish secondary.

NOTES

Notre Dame lost to a grown man head coach with braces. Brutal.

The first drive of the game saw Notre Dame march down and score a touchdown. They didn’t enter the red zone the rest of the game. The average offensive series after that first touchdown was just 5 plays. That and going 3 of 10 on 3rd down are major symptoms of an ineffective and inconsistent passing game.

If you need some cheering up, at least Michigan lost and I have to say a 3:16 game time completion is really respectable for NBC. We didn’t have to sit through 4 hours of that slop like the old days!

If the Irish scored 45 points and won this game easily how pissed off are we with Al Golden and the defense? I go back and forth on their performance, to be honest. It’s just, the offense was so dismal and depressing in comparison.

The Huskies didn’t throw a ton and moved the pocket a lot, still having 0 sacks against a MAC team is pretty piss poor.

There was a stretch in the middle of this game (sandwiched in between both of his interceptions) where Leonard went 10 of 15 which seems pretty good! It amounted to a measly 97 yards.

I hate the gold foil monograms and will call them a curse until proven otherwise. Also, Notre Dame lost to a football team with tiny little shoulder stripes on their jerseys, how embarrassing.

Losing in more ways than one. 

If you didn’t like The Shirt for 2024 how about its home debut, huh!!??

Mitch Jeter having both of his field goals blocked about sums up the special teams in this game. Although, Notre Dame should’ve never attempted a 62-yarder at the end to win it–that’s not Jeter’s fault. Also, there has to be at least 10 students on campus who can punt better than James Rendell.

I preface by saying this is not the media’s fault, or at least I can’t blame them too much. I cannot stand how little access is given to this program in the spring and fall and it was incredibly irrational to believe that this was the most talented Notre Dame in 30 years. There just wasn’t enough substance behind talk like that and far from enough evidence throughout the off-season to back it up. Outside of Mitchell Evans, the offense really had no one proven to perform at a high level in their career and when things aren’t witnessed up close that much it becomes way too easy to gloss over things in the excitement of the off-season. The media should’ve been given more access and the people who care about the program should’ve been more aware that things aren’t quite so amazing as they seem before the season starts. This team had holes, it has very obvious holes right now, and it sucks that we went into this season feeling like there weren’t as many issues.

Mike Denbrock, my goodness stock down now. I liked a lot of things that NIU were doing on offense while Notre Dame looked like a vanilla basic spread offense incapable of coming up with easy and creative ways to get yards against a MAC defense. It’s tough when your quarterback looks broken in Denbrock’s defense.

Marcus Freeman reportedly signed a 5-year contract when he became head coach for the Irish. Under normal circumstances–and I’m guessing his agent was thinking this fall would be a perfect time given the way this schedule laid out for Notre Dame–we’d be looking at a contract extension announcement for Freeman sometime in the next 6 to 8 months. Now, surely there has to be a step back and reassessment of things.

How Pete Bevacqua handles this will be fascinating. He didn’t hire Freeman, remember! My gut instinct is that Notre Dame’s power brokers are extremely far away from firing Freeman. It doesn’t really matter if I like Freeman or not but something just feels off about him and the program. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like there’s this shiny veneer coming from the program (in contrast to the bulldog-nature of the Kelly regime) that seems hip and cool at times but also somewhat empty. Many of the pieces feel like they’re in place and he has a ton of qualities that should be paying dividends by now–and they just aren’t. It feels like someone great is driving the ship but the ship keeps hitting an iceberg out of nowhere and dear readers Titanic references are never good in year 3 of a coaching era.