We have to question Marcus Freeman as head coach of Notre Dame football. We just have to. Just when I started to believe he was more seasoned, more ready for the big time, he leads his team to arguably the worst loss in the history of the storied program. And the repercussions are enormous.
This isn’t a “fire him now” rant. I honestly felt a Brian Kelly team would have lost that game last weekend to Texas A&M and raved about Freeman. But Freeman is now 20-9 as the head coach at Notre Dame. That’s two wins for every loss which is not what Notre Dame fans want. And his 9-4 first season and 10-3 second season are marred by losses to programs like Marshall, Stanford and now Northern Illinois — all at home. Northern Illinois was a four touchdown underdog and won outright on the hallowed turf of Notre Dame under the eyes of Touchdown Jesus. That’s a joke.
What has Freeman done wrong? Recruiting on the high school level has been up since he took over for Brian Kelly so that’s not it. And Notre Dame, by and large, has played well overall going head to head with Ohio State and beating ranked teams like Duke, USC, Oregon State, Clemson and others. But Notre Dame has no major signature wins under Freeman as those teams above were either over ranked or heading on a downward slide. And his teams seem up for some games and not prepared at all for others as evidenced by losses to Group of Five teams and a horrible Stanford squad. Finally, player development has been an issue especially at the quarterback position where he’s gone with middling ACC transfers like Sam Hartman and now Riley Leonard in lieu of developing his own guy for a few years.
Northern Illinois was an experienced and physical football team. That’s exactly what Notre Dame has always been. But Notre Dame was pushed around by a MAC team, he was out coached by a head coach no one has ever heard of and he led Notre Dame to the first loss EVER of a top five program to a MAC program.
Notre Dame can rally and make the playoff. A 10-2 ND team was supposed to be a shoe in and who knows how much favor they would have gotten from the committee as a 9-3 team. But now, with an embarrassing loss to a Group of Five team at home, they need to run the table or be very impressive going 9-1 from here on out. And based on how this team looked and how they were prepared, that all seems unlikely.
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We have to question Marcus Freeman as head coach of Notre Dame. A first time head coach being handed the keys to the most storied program in college football history? This isn’t turning out as many hoped.
