1) This will be short (but in no way sweet) because I’m sure you all want to read about this game as much as I wanted to write about it. Our friend
Jamie Uyeyama asked in the fourth quarter if
this was the worst loss of the Brian Kelly Era and I am almost certain it was. Throw out any games from 2010 because that was digging out of the Weis hole, throw out Alabama and Clemson in the postseason because those were legitimately great teams, throw out all the heartbreakers because heartbreakers are close so at least they’re respectable and then you’re pretty much left with Miami 2017 and this. Considering the situation — Notre Dame on a two-and-half season run of quality football, coming off a bye, against a Michigan team that had been wobbling all year — I think this probably takes the cake. It was a shocking result. What exactly did this team do on its off week? Focusing on cheeseburgers is for Fans Only!
2) A true disaster from the start. Notre Dame is gifted an extension of their opening drive on a roughing the kicker penalty and gets nothing out of it save for pinning back Michigan on a nice Jay Bramblett punt. The defense forces a three and out, the special teams blocks the punt and then pretty much everything else the rest of the way was a mess, including touching the blocked punt (bad idea for both Notre Dame and
Texas Tech this weekend) and a pass interference call on third down. I don’t know what either coordinator was doing in the early going, as the defense wasn’t overloading the box and the offense was attacking the edge in slick conditions. Considering the Irish offense’s success rate with screen passes this year it is flabbergasting they called any in a driving rainstorm. Both lines got whipped. They had been playing really well and then they didn’t. Is that an aberration or were the games coming into this one false hope? We’ll find out!
3) Quarterback is the most important position in college football, a cheat code and ceiling raiser that can take your team from middling to good and from good to great and from great to title-winning. I don’t have any idea what is up with Ian Book, who was missing guys again on Saturday. God Bless Chase Claypool for a series of acrobatic catches but Book simply wasn’t good enough, earning
justifiable criticism from one of his predecessors in the role.
The coaching trio of Kelly, Chip Long and Tommy Rees took a guy who was the 517th best player in his class and by the end of his second year on campus had him ready to step in and beat a good SEC defense in the bowl. He came in during his third year to set school records and take Notre Dame to the playoff and now it’s…not so good. Miles Boykin was awesome last year and is doing great with the Ravens but taking away one receiver shouldn’t completely submarine an offense.* What makes it extra confounding is that when Kelly came from Cincinnati one of the main selling points was his quarterback development, as his last Bearcats team had an undefeated regular season despite a carousel at the position.
* Unless that wide receiver is Will Fuller, then it maybe makes sense.
It’s a confusing mess and people are understandably going to want to see more from Phil Jurkovec, particularly now that the playoff is officially off the table. The future is just as cloudy, as it doesn’t seem like Book has a path to the NFL and yet would you bet on him being the starter in Dublin? It’s possible Kelly goes his entire tenure at Notre Dame without a multiple-year stretch from a stud QB that elevates the team, which is wild when you consider how college football usually goes, particularly with programs who’ve had as much success as the Irish of late.
4) I don’t want to dive into attempting a clinical analysis of the locker room but between Michael Young transfer news coming out the day before Michigan and the really poor performances by basically every captain, it doesn’t seem like a good situation. Also, both Tony Jones, Jr. and Tommy Kraemer went down in the game, two guys who had been key pieces of the offense so hopefully they can get back in some form or fashion. This team still has five regular season games remaining and while they’re capable of winning them all it’s more than possible they drop another game or even two, which would be a tremendous disappointment.
5) Quick reminder: As bad as that was, please remember that Notre Dame is not the only college football team that struggles on the road. This is a weird take that sometimes slips out when we’re filled with sorrow and it’s very myopic to think that in all of FBS it’s only our team that plays better at home. The Irish weren’t even the only top ten team to lose on the road this weekend, plus everyone’s favorite Fox Sports analyst lost at Iowa by 31 and at Purdue by 29 in consecutive seasons. It sucks that it happens but it happens.
6) Saturday night was a debacle in every way possible but I’d like to focus on perhaps the most disappointing part, which is how much joy has been robbed from us. We talk a lot about how quickly the season passes: A dozen autumn Saturdays, a bowl and then bam, eight months with nothing. The usual spaces where people converse about Notre Dame football are going to be absolutely toxic, you’re not really going to want to chat about this with the important people in your lives and these next five games — nearly half the season! — are going to have a pallor cast over them unless the team looks much much much better, although it seems just as likely there will be a quarterback controversy and another loss and everyone will be quite sad. Notre Dame football had been really really fun for the last couple years and this really just knocked the wind out of us.
All that said: This too shall pass. We survived 3-9 and 4-8 and both 21st century trips to Pro Player Joe Robbie Hard Rock Land Shark Sun Life Stadium and we’ll survive this, too. It really sucks this happened against Michigan and they’re now the beneficiary of so much happiness at our expense and it sucks because it felt like we weren’t going to have games like this anymore but here we are. There’s still plenty to accomplish (extending the home win streak, finally winning in Palo Alto, a third straight 10-win season, another Top 10 finish) if the team is able to rally, but after this weekend I am certainly not predicting it because who knows how the team will respond. This can no longer be a special season but it can still be a successful one that continues to build on the last few years and helps in the recruiting of guys to take the program over that next hump so these games truly stop happening. It’s not what we wanted but it’s what we’ve got, potentially, at this moment.
7) If you made it all the way to the bottom of this, I appreciate you reading as I know I certainly cut down on my Irish media consumption because, ya know, it doesn’t feel great at this point so you choosing to work through this means a lot. Virginia Tech is coming off a bye, on a mini-win streak and definitely knows they’re playing a shellshocked Irish team so Saturday will not be easy, although Vegas has installed the Irish as 17ish-point favorites so the folks in the desert are expecting a bounce back at least. Notre Dame hasn’t lost two in a row since 2016 so let’s keep that run as well as the home winning streak intact, please, as we start giving some
punishment back.
