Notre Dame Is At A Crossroads Under Marcus Freeman

Far too often when a team loses a football game there is a dramatic overreaction. Coaches need to be fired, players need to be benched and emotions run high. This is especially true in the social media age. In most instances those are nothing more than emotional reactions, and staying the course is the right plan for a program.

Last night's Louisville game was not that kind of game. Minutes before the game I made a post during the Irish Breakdown live chat that stated simply that I had a very bad feeling about what was about to happen. It wasn't a premonition, it wasn't any kind of prediction, it was a reaction to what I was seeing. During warm ups I saw a team with no energy, a group simply going through the motions, and they were about to play an opponent that was clearly fired up about playing this football game.

Then the game played out exactly as I feared. One team was incredibly prepared, filled with passion and made the plays it needed to win the game. Unfortunately for Irish fans, that team was not Notre Dame. The way that game played out was more than just a bad night, it was a trend.

That loss, which followed a disappointing home loss to Ohio State and an ugly win over a quality Duke team, showed there are major flaws on this football team. It's easy to say "Fire this coach" and "They lack the talent," but now is not the time for either discussion. It's an emotional reaction, and while there will be a time to have those discussion, now is not the time.

Notre Dame didn't lose to Louisville because it lacks talent to beat Louisville, and it didn't struggle to beat Duke because the two teams are on the same level from a talent standpoint. Notre Dame was out-played and in some instances out-coached by both staffs. Those two teams went into that game oozing confidence, while Notre Dame looked like a shell of the team we saw jump out to a 4-0 start while outscoring its opponents by an average of 46-12.

A season with so much promise has quickly been wiped away, and now Notre Dame is scrambling to salvage its season. Instead of talking about the College Football Playoff, Notre Dame is hoping it can simply improve on last season's 8-4 regular season record.

PRESENT STRUGGLES

Head coach Marcus Freeman will have some very tough decisions to make from a coaching and personnel standpoint in the offseason. He also has some soul searching he needs to do about the direction of the program, and just what his philosophy is (and should be), especially on offense.

But Notre Dame cannot afford to wait until the offseason to find answer, it needs to find answers right now. For the second time in two seasons as the head coach at Notre Dame, Freeman must push the buttons needed to rescue a season.

Last fall, Notre Dame was 3-3 and coming off a devastating loss to a really bad Stanford team. This followed an embarrassing loss to Marshall in the home opener. Just six games into his tenure, some were already questioning the decision to hire Freeman, who had no previous head coaching experience.

During the 3-3 start to the season, Notre Dame outscored its opponents just 23.7 to 22.0.

Freeman made changes, and Notre Dame quickly got back on track. Notre Dame won its next five games, and six of its final seven contests to end the season. That 3-3 disaster turned into a quality 9-4 finish.

During the five-game win streak that followed the loss to Stanford, Notre Dame outscored its opponents 39.8 to 18.2, and it outscored its opponents 38.7 to to 23.9 in the final seven games.

With his program teetering on the brink, Freeman made the necessary changes and pushed the buttons needed to to get the team back on track,

The parallels between the two seasons are intriguing, and concerning.

Notre Dame started the 2022 season with a 1-2 record, and it was outscored by its opponents 64-55. Notre Dame is just 1-2 in its last three games this season, and it's opponents have outscored the Irish 64-55. Offensive woes were the major problem, and that is once again the biggest issue facing the team, at least from an on-field results standpoint.

The fact this is happening with Sam Hartman at quarterback makes this a much more concerning stretch, and surprising. It's as if the team we saw in the first four games has disappeared in a very short period of time.

The team that played with so much confidence to start the season, and played with so much fire - fire we saw plenty of during fall camp - has been nowhere to be found the last two weeks.

Notre Dame and Freeman are at a crossroads. The recent stretch is what is fresh on our minds, but when we look back on Freeman's tenure - whenever it comes to a close - we won't look so much at the loss to Ohio State or Louisville, or the struggle against Duke, we'll look at what happened next.

How this team responds will go a very, very long way towards determining if Freeman will have the momentum and support needed to turn the program around.

Freeman will once again need to push the right buttons to cure all that ails this team, which goes much deeper than an offense that isn't scoring enough points.

WHAT'S NEXT

A coach struggling early in his tenure, or suffering bad losses, isn't new to Notre Dame coaches. It's something we've seen plenty of over the decades.

Legendary head coach Frank Leahy went 7-2-2 in his second season, suffering losses to a highly ranked Georgia Tech team and a highly ranked Michigan team, both at home. The Irish also tied Wisconsin and ended the season with a 13-13 tie against Great Lakes Navy.

The following season - Leahy's third at Notre Dame - the Hall of Famer led the Irish to a 9-1 record and his first national championship at Notre Dame. They rebounded and handed Michigan its only loss of the 1943 season (35-12), pounded Wisconsin 51-0, dominated No. 3 Navy (33-6), No. 3 Army (26-0) and No. 8 Northwestern (25-6) during that season.

Another Irish legend - Ara Parseghian - went 7-2-1 in his second season with the Irish. Notre Dame started 7-1 but fell to Michigan State at home (12-3) and tied an average Miami team 0-0 to end the season.

The following season - Parseghian's third at Notre Dame - he led the Irish to a 9-0-1 record and a national championship. Notre Dame outscored its opponents 362-38 that season and ended the 1966 season with a 51-0 road win at No. 10 USC.

In 1976 - the third season of the Dan Devine era - Notre Dame began the season wit ha dominant 31-10 home loss at the hands of Pittsburgh, the ultimate national title winners that season. Notre Dame improved to 6-1 before falling 23-14 to a Georgia Tech team that finished 4-6-1. Three weeks later the Irish lost to USC.

A season later - Devine's third at Notre Dame - the Irish went 11-1 and won the program's 10th national title. It earned redemption against Pittsburgh, winning 19-9 to start the season. After suffering a loss to Ole Miss a week later, Notre Dame rattled off 10 straight wins, including a 38-10 beat down of No. 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl, which vaulted the Irish to the title. Along the way Notre Dame destroyed No. 5 USC (49-19) and went on the road to beat a really good Clemson team (21-17).

Another legend - Lou Holtz - began his Notre Dame career with a 5-6 record. In season two, the Irish jumped out to an 8-1 start, climbing as high as No. 4 in the polls. The Irish were coming off a 37-6 beatdown of No. 10 Alabama, but the bottom fell out. Notre Dame lost to an unranked Penn State team a week later (21-20), were blown out by Miami (24-0) to end the regular season, and then got whipped by Texas A&M (35-10) in the Cotton Bowl.

Holtz has gone on record talking about the changes he made following that season.

The next year - his first at Notre Dame - Holtz led Notre Dame to a perfect 12-0 record and the program's 11th - and last - national title. Notre Dame beat No. 1 Miami, No. 2 USC, No. 3 West Virginia and No. 9 Michigan during that season.

None of those coaches were defined by bad losses in their first two seasons, or whatever struggles led them to those defeats. Each coach did what was necessary to get things turned around, and that's why we now know them as champions, and Hall of Famers.

Of course, this doesn't mean Freeman is guaranteed to have that kind of success at Notre Dame.

Terry Brennan had similar issues in his second season, losing 21-7 at Michigan State and 42-20 to USC at the end of the season. Brennan's team went 2-8 in year three and he didn't last beyond five seasons.

Gerry Faust led the Irish to a 4-0 start in his second season, with Notre Dame climbing as high as No. 9 in the polls before losing to Arizona and tying Oregon. Notre Dame did beat No. 1 Pittsburgh two weeks later, but the Irish lost their final three games of the season. Faust never recovered and he was gone by year five.

Bob Davie led Notre Dame to a 9-3 record and a Gator Bowl appearance in his second season, which included a win over Michigan, the defending national champions. Instead of building on that success, Davie and the Irish went 5-7 the next season and he too never made it past five seasons.

Tyrone Willingham started his career off well, winning the first eight games of the season and climbing all the way up to No. 4 in the polls. Notre Dame dropped three of its last five games, finishing 10-3. Willingham never got close to that level of success and he was gone after just three seasons.

The four coaches in the first part of this final section made the necessary improvements, established a strong foundation and built champions.

The four coaches that followed weren't able to make the moves and built that kind of foundation, and they all ended up failing at Notre Dame to varying degrees.

Which camp Marcus Freeman ultimately ends up in won't be determined by losses to Marshall and Stanford last season, or Ohio State and Louisville this season. It will be determined by what he does next, from the standpoint of getting the 2023 team back on track, and then how he learns from this team's struggles and builds his program moving forward.

That means we are entering the period where we will truly learn who Freeman is as a head coach, and how his legacy will be defined.

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