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.
“At best, Leonard looks like an average passer. At best.”
That’s pretty generous!
Yes, entirely yes. I don’t want Kelly back for a host of reasons, but Freeman isn’t it either. Nice guy? Sure. Don’t care. Mike Riley was a nice guy. Actually had head coaching success. Ask Nebraska how that went.
I’m not wowed with Denbrock by any means but to beat a dead horse, how absolutely barren did Tommy and Chansi (and Del) leave this offense at the skill positions? Horribly. Leonard’s not their fault but I do wonder if that injury he had all off season has more or less ruined him.
I think it’s pretty clear there is no one on this staff who can accurately evaluate a QB or how he fits in to our offense, and that has been the case for a long time.
Why didn’t they run Leonard at all after that first drive? That’s obviously what unlocked the offense (for a drive anyway). And it’s not like anything else was working. And it’s not like he’s so valuable that if he gets banged up there’s no one behind him.
It’s what he does best. You might also ask “four carries for Jadarian Price” ? Are they trying to get him to transfer ?
Yea they should be been force feeding Love and Price as well. Not throwing the ball a bunch of times when we weren’t able to.
Not sure how much the broadcast showed it, but in the first half Leonard took a hard shot and was down and favoring his shoulder for a bit before getting up and going on to the next play. I was certain the trainers were going to cone take a look at him but he stayed on the field. I have a strong suspicion he injured his shoulder but his refusal to be injured kept him out there and hurt the team.
Quote of the day from someone a couple rows behind me: “It took much longer for me to hate Hartman than Leonard”
Also, in the stadium there was a clear whistle before the snap on the final kick. To the point that I was indifferent to the block since I assumed NIU had called a timeout before the kick. It’s a moot point since it would just have given us a second try at a 62 yard FG so the result would have been just as successful. Plus none of the players or coaches seemed to be arguing about it with the refs, but everyone in my section all heard this phantom whistle.
They showed Leonard down for a while and I was surprised he didn’t come out after that.
They showed a few clips of him holding his arm/shoulder and I noticed when he came off the field after the drive the trainer was talking with him. It didn’t really look like he was in pain though after that. And I think it was his left side wasn’t it?
I’m still scarred from the post-Holtz through Weis era. Firing a head coach hoping the the grass is greener makes me nervous. But if the goal is playoff wins/championships Freeman isn’t cutting it – no matter how much I’m rooting for him (or how much I love the idea of having 2 great coordinators currently) and the sooner we are able to move on to the next guy the better it would seem (or at least we should be at the forefront of the next coaching cycle – whenever that is exactly).
And maybe that’s not fair. Maybe he was so behind the 8-ball in certain areas from Kelly that he’s really still digging out of a hole – but unfortunately that’s life (and it’s hard to know anyway). There are too many red flags with his in-game coaching decisions, coordinator hires (OC last year), transfer decisions (it’s really looking like taking 2 qbs in 2 years has been a mistake) and not enough recruiting to overcome that (even though the recruiting has improved under Freeman).
We probably need an elite offensive coordinator type to be the head coach who can add some stability to the offense and really get the offense humming. I have no idea who that is or could be but it’s probably about time to find out – as painful as that is to consider. Like Weis I was really rooting for Freeman to figure it out quickly and win. The players love him, everyone seems to love him. He’ll even probably get another opportunity in a handful of years to be a head coach again and do really well. But it’s tough to be a first time head coach in the lime light here.
Maybe the offense will bounce back and Leonard will look more like his soph year and we’ll win 12 in a row before losing a close one to OSU or Georgia. That’s probably what he needs to have happen to save his program here – making this look like some odd aberration. But that’s just wishful thinking at this point and we’re more likely to lose 2+ more than win 12 in a row. Of course I’m an ND fan so I still hold out some smidgen of hope for the 12+ wins and Freeman continuing to develop a strong program the next few years at ND.
Well really glad I didn’t spring for usc tickets at end of the year.
Write up was on point. Felt like the NIU OC schemed up more easy plays. Nothing was ever easy for ND. They don’t seem to set guys up for yard after catch, I don’t think they run any play action. I thought the o line was fine, leonard didn’t do them any favors. This team remind she a bit of 2018; we thought skill talent was horrible through three games then turns out boykin and claypool and add in dexter and it was actually good with a competent qb.
Outside of the two huge pass plays, felt like second and long runs just killed nd, and niu kept extending drives because of second and long success.
Found out niu punter went to my high school and I was really struggling to remember him punting. maybe two punts from their punter?!? oh well get my fall back
Hard not to agree with your assessment that almost all the “talent” on this team is overrated. Don’t recall any front 7 guys being difference makers. Not disruptive at all. Offense had obviously been discussed at length but it makes me cynical that any of backup qbs are special either
I went back and looked all of NIU’s 2nd down runs:
2 x
2 x
11
5
6
8
10
6
6
7 x
7
6
3 x
0 x
7
86 yards on 15 carries for a 66% success rate.
So many of them looked to gain 4-5 more yards than they should have.
Yup, terrible tackling, no effort in pursuit
I just heard today that Denbrock s offenses have been ranked in the top twenty in all his years of being an OC. I wonder if he can make it at ND? Not impressed so far
My takeaway from the game is that every time Pete Sampson says “proof of concept” and “alignment” he’s about to be proven wrong.
From the guy who brought you “Tommy is a genius and everyone in the NFL wants to hire him.”
Deleted
The hackest hack to ever hack
A good head coach, when the going gets tough, takes the bull by the horns and leads the way. A lot of it is just instincts, some is experience. Freeman on the other hand always seems to be asking “somebody help me”. The analytics guy behind him being a perfect example.
The two best players on offense are Love and Price. Denbrock should have been ordered to run the ball.
Far from the worst thing about this game, but Kiser, Bowen, and Sneed stunk. Ausberry comes in and makes basically 4 fantastic plays. KVA is at least never out of position. I really hope those two get the most snaps this week.
The WR room stinks again. Leonard wasn’t good passing, but nobody gets separation and when they finally do, Mitchell and Greathouse have brutal drops. Until this school can recruit and elite WR and QB again, these games where we can’t put away a low level opponent are going to keep happening.
Sneed is a great athlete and a pretty bad football player. Kind of darkly amusing that people were saying “we need to hire Freeman so the recruiting class keeps Sneed” and then Sneed ends up being flashy but not good.
At what point is it an ND problem that almost literally all these superstar players we recruit end up sucking eggs? Max Redfield was supposed to be a stud. Sneed. Jordan Johnson. Either ND is the common denominator or we are just remarkably unlucky at how many 5 stars come here and do nothing.
It does seem to be a trend.
Would be cool to see some 18 stripes investigative journalism to check out success rate of 5*s at ND and at other top 20-ish programs
Mikey, Leonard looks very slow in understanding his reads. Many throws seem late and like he’s guessing.
First, thanks for a truly excellent write up, both for the assessments and second that you even did it. As you can see from my posts last night, this vicious whiplash from way up to way way down pushed my ND agony tolerance button to the max. It’s been 30 years since the 1993 Florida State triumph and Boston College tragedy, and to see yet another head coach regime doomed to failure is brutal. Reading your analysis and the posts from everyone, really helps. Items:
1. Concur Riley unlikely to get benched. As you noted, the new portal/NIL dynamic makes it very tricky.
2. Perhaps he is injured, I noted that before the left arm, a few plays prior it looked like he’d reinjured his right hand. But he didn’t come out and as a couple of you have mentioned to our detriment.
3. On the 2nd and 1 you say Riley made the bad decision but in the post game MF said that was the call they wanted. Hence let’s put that spasmodic totally inappropriate effort to hit big on 2nd and 1 on the OC and the HC. The bad throw of course was all about RL.
4. Concur that Howard Cross must be hurt worse than they are letting on. But I have to admire his determination in the press conference at the end.
5. By the way, what in the world is going on with Oben?
6. As far as the punter, I am wondering if we haven’t ruined him by working on his delivery timing to get the punts off. He doesn’t seem like the same kicker from the fall.
7. Finally, as to the head coach, your take as far as it goes is masterful — there is something “off” and it does seem not only sad but hard to figure. But having seen all the non-successful coaches since Terry Brennan, while in every case it has unfortunately been easy to see in Year 3 their limited potential (OK with BK we had to wait for the Natty), the why has sometimes been hard to judge. Head-coaching major college football teams is a really hard job, multifaceted, and reminds me in my own world of generalship in combat. Basically there’s a lot of complexity and yet very simple yet highly demanding factors inside everything and you really can’t tell until the action whether someone is going to have the genius required to succeed.
Anyway, this is been too long but thank you all for sharing what has to be one of the most painful moments of my Notre Dame fandom.
As to 3), just to torture myself, I looked up the Clemson game from 2020. Ian Book drops a really good pass (slightly behind but didn’t have to break stride) to Avery Davis in double coverage late in the fourth quarter. 40+ yards in the air. Clemson inexplicably bringing 5 rushers plus a spy on Book while ND running 4 verts.
For the game tying TD, btw, Book has to scramble right out of the pocket but keeps his eyes open, drills a TD on the run into a tight double covered window that comes open because they have to respect his running.
Here’s the difference: Notre Dame was down by 7. They had to take a shot.
What shouldn’t be a difference: an experienced senior QB who knows what he can and can’t do.
So for #1 and #2, Leonard is broken right now. He ain’t even Ian Book. Junior or Senior Ian Book doesn’t lose this game. Which makes me mad that I think Angeli can play at least to junior Ian Book levels right now.
For #1, I’m hoping the way out of this mess is to start Angeli and to make Leonard the wildcat Red Zone QB. He’ll probably stink because he isn’t accurate like the Book TD throw above. But at least it’s a face-saving way to play the NIL game.
Great comp to that Clemson game!
And yes, why not try something face saving and clever/
Last comment (for now): Part of the deal of coaching at ND is that every team on your schedule circles two games at the beginning of the year.
#1 Their main rival
#2 Notre Dame
And if it’s a small school or one without a big rival, ND becomes the most important game of the season.
So if you are going to be successful at ND you have to realize there are no down games. Every week you are getting everyone’s best shot, that they have prepared for 8 months for.
If you can’t stand that heat…
I’m having a hard time moving past the 2nd interception. In a vacuum: correct call. 2nd and short at midfield begs for a deep shot. Throwing that pick meant the winning percentage dropped from 80% to 40%.
But that play wasn’t even close. That ball was easily 10 yards underthrown. Was Leonard injured? Can he not throw that far? Was it a fluke? Because if Leonard can’t reliably throw that, you hand off 10/10 times. So what happened? It feels representative of the disconnects we’ve seen on offense the pat 3 years.
How many MLB pitcher in the history of baseball, when the manager comes to the mound with the bases loaded and the game on the line, say “Yeah coach, I’m done. I just can’t get this next guy out.”
Zero. Ever. Not how they are wired. Their arm could be hanging on by the last shred of their UCL and they will tell you they can get the next guy, even if it’s clear to everyone else they are cooked.
So it’s the manager’s job, HIS MAIN JOB, to pull the plug at the right time. I think Leonard is hurt or has the yips, and either way, it’s Freeman and Denbrock’s job to RTDB in that situation, or to replace him.
Tim Prister just laid the blame directly on MF for having pushed the team way too hard on the Tuesday-Wednesday hard practices MF was boasting about.
That’s nonsense, IMO. Prister was there at practice? Do you think NIU practiced hard last week? It’s Freeman’s fault alright but, not for trying to get his teams attention.
I am not saying he’s right (or wrong), just saying. I know Tim a bit, he’s a good guy, but maybe a little too sure of himself at times. Certainly having confronted Freeman at the presser last week with the question about pushing the ball downfield not being a strength for Riley, getting pushback from Freeman and then being shown 100% correct, Tim is probably feeling very cocky. And for whatever it’s worth, Freeman did brag quite a lot about how extra physical last week’s practices were.
So Prister’s point was more, if one takes MF at his word, then that would be at the root of the team’s problem, pushed too hard after the A&M game and the flight back in the middle of the night.
Now I myself think that’s real hard to prove, and it can be argued both ways: if you did NOT practice extra hard physically maybe you’ll get criticized that way.
But if you look hard at Freeman’s own words, it COULD explain at least some of why the team mostly looked like they were sleepwalking…
Noise, I’ve known Prister’s work since 1981 (B&G). I don’t have II but, I listen to most all of their podcasts. I’ll have to see what they say Monday.
IMO, It’s a stretch taking “we had a couple hard practices” to “it cost them the game” level. They were worn down in week two ? Prister’s looking for a different angle than others and I’ll bet O’Malley and Bryce will go along with it. Freeman’s reasoning (if they really did have hard practices) was he had worries about his team being flat. They sure were, despite him trying to prevent it.
My take is the team, including the coaching staff, didn’t respect their opponent enough. By the time they realized it, they had a tiger by the tail.
All good points, tlndma. I cited this to get us thinking about it, because how hard to practice in a given week has been a topic that comes up in CFB from time to time. But yeah, maybe Tim is just looking for another angle. I’ll listen to that podcast as well!
That’s my + vote noise.
I’d guess that’s yours too.
I’d say much more straightforwardly it’s on Freeman for not taking a timeout under two minutes while NIU was burning 40 seconds off the clock. It would have been nice to have 44 seconds on what turned out to be the last play of the game rather than 5, IMO.
I don’t know if he’s a bad coach overall but he’s a truly awful in-game decision-maker.
I can’t argue with the TO issue, well put; but I think you’ll grant that it should never have come down to the last play in the first place.
In the interest of fairness here – apparently this was an NBC muck-up mostly. Apparently Freeman took a timeout after the third down run by NIU/where they reviewed the spot (which makes sense in retrospect, because the clock stopped rather than ran). Still, even so, as a process matter it was still a Freeman screw-up: you should take that timeout after second down rather than third down, as they could have passed or fumbled or whatever on third down.
Basically, it’s a garden variety “Freeman is definitely not good at this” end-of-half/game thing rather than a hilariously bad/borderline inexcusable one.
….two days of hard practices in week two is why Leonard can’t put the ball within 5 yards of a receiver? That’s why we can’t punt?
That’s pretty dismissive of a guy who just coached circles around our expensive brain trust.
The media access point is…interesting. Is access the problem? Or is the problem that the beat reporters are feeding you stories the coaching staff wants you to hear regardless of whether they’re true?
Observe with your eyes and think critically with your brain. The picture that the media paints of this program hardly ever matches reality.
There’s more truth there about the beat guys than we want to admit ACS.
It’s all one in the same.
I thought a segment on an II podcast 2-3 weeks ago was instructive. They were asked about who has improved and it was like a laundry list of players to discuss. Then they were asked who has stagnated or fallen down the depth chart, and it was like, “Oh gee, well, we really don’t get to see many practices and that’s really tough to answer” while basically no one (except maybe Tuihalamaka who seems to have disappeared to Narnia on defense) was brought up.
I thought BK started this later in his time here and Freeman has made it worse. Access to practices is abysmal and we’re not getting a near accurate enough picture of things. I don’t really blame the media for pivoting to more sugar coating as really digging in with something negative is tough when you’re not seeing much with your own eyes.
So who was here last week talking about how there aren’t a lot of comments after a win? Way to jinx it.
You’d think people would have learned by now. Shouldn’t have made The Shirt gold either.
A few thoughts: (1) Clearly MF and the team did not take this game seriously (starting the week with a comment like “I’m not sure who we are playing next week”)
(2) Regardless of whether Leonard is hurt or not, the outcome is the same — he cannot throw deep, he bails from the pocket very quickly, and for some reason he stopped running as the game moved along. I would rather see Angeli or Minchey get a chance to come out of the bullpen
(3) The defense did not play their best game (allowed too many NIU runs, could not always get off the field), but 16 points is not the reason why ND lost — the offense was atrocious
(4) I’m not sure what the fix is moving forward. Bench Leonard (I would be okay with that)? Run the ball more (fans have been calling for more passing in recent years)?