SOUTH BEND, Ind. — This doesn’t seem right: The defending national runner-up is 0-2?
Can’t be.
No way.
The team that won 14 games just a season ago, perhaps the most valuable brand in college football, playing at home in front of a rocking environment on a beautiful fall night, that team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, has zero wins and two losses?
Two games. Three weeks. No wins.
Despite a bye last week, despite all that returning talent (14 starters), the Irish are on the very cusp — well before October even arrives — of playoff elimination.
Notre Dame followed a season-opening 27-24 loss at Miami with a nail-biting, heart-pounding, scoring fest of a game against Texas A&M here on a brisk Saturday night — a 41-40 loss that will, perhaps, be most remembered not for its wild ending (a last-second A&M TD pass after a botched Notre Dame extra point) but for the Irish’s pursuit of the ever-present goal here of winning a national title.
Are the Irish already out of chase?
“The future is uncertain,” coach Marcus Freeman said afterward when asked if that goal still existed for this team. “I don’t know what the playoff number is.”
Newsflash: A 10-2 Notre Dame is likely advancing to the 12-team College Football Playoff, with the caveat that at least one of their first two opponents is also good enough to be in the field. Let’s be real here: The Irish lost to two ranked teams by a combined four points with chances to win each in the fourth quarter.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Miami and Texas A&M aren’t the Little Sisters of the Poor, more like the Big Brothers of the Rich. They employ proven, experienced head coaches with talent-laden rosters, each not so shy about spending big money to land big players.
Those are the positives if you wear Irish blue and gold.
The negatives? Whew boy, that mostly belongs with Notre Dame’s defense. And they know it too.
“We take accountability for that,” cornerback Leonard Moore told a crowd of reporters after the game. “No more going to practice and trying to have fun.”
Things are getting serious here, already bad enough that Freeman was asked in the post-game news conference if he’d contemplate a defensive play-calling change.
“It’s not the calls. It’s the execution. I’ve always believed that,” said Freeman, himself the program’s former defensive play-caller. “A play-caller can be overrated.”