The Season Is OVER: Notre Dame Is Terrible. Cancel The Program
Unbelievable and yet, completely believable. I want to like Marcus Freeman. He seems like good man. A family man. Kind of cool. I just can't at this point. Loss to Marshall. Loss to 3-9 Stanford team. LOST TO OHIO STATE BECAUSE THEY HAD TEN GUYS ON THE FIELD. LOST TO FUCKING NORTHERN ILLINOIS!! This can NOT keep happening. It's happened too many times already. I don't miss Brian Kelly, but at this point Freeman's seat has to be hot. This team gave a completely different effort this week than they did last week. I can't even wrap my mind around how different the energy was from ND.
I know the line is young. I know the receivers, the QB, and the OC are all brand new. Well...they're still elite athletes who got embarrassed by NIU. That wasn't lucky. NIU was the better team all day long in every phase of the game. It stunk almost immediately.
As I just said above, this is a young team on offense. It should get better, but clearly this team isn't it. That was pathetic today. Bad effort. Worse gameplan. And...Riley Leonard reminds me of 2023 Justin Fields. No anticipation. Everything is late. Accuracy issues. Tough kid who runs hard which I respect, but you'd have to be crazy not to want to see an open competition at QB after the start to this season.
PS: This is a drawback for the 12 team playoff. If you lose to Northern Illinois your season should be over. I don't care if you finish 11-1. If the 1 is to a MAC school then you can pack in the National Championship. In reality, ND can rally here and save Freeman's job with a playoff appearance.