The most somber aspect of 10th-ranked Notre Dame’s decisive exodus from the biggest stages and most ambitious postseason dreams on Saturday night was not the sight of a good chunk of the largest crowd in 25-year-old L&N Stadium (59,081) spilling onto the field to punctuate it.
But rather how the team they were suddenly celebrating as a surprise entrant into high-ceiling, playoff long shot rhetoric conversation, 25th-ranked Louisville, trampled on the very identity and the principles Irish coach second-year Marcus Freeman has built as his vision and foundation for the Irish program in the post-Brian Kelly Era.
Offensive line/defensive line-driven program?
Louisville outrushed the Irish 185 yards to 44, sacked quarterback Sam Hartman five times and coaxed five turnovers largely by owning both lines of scrimmage in the 33-20 upset that shoved the Irish (5-2) into the consolation pool 23 days before the first set of College Football Playoff rankings are concocted and revealed.
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A program that admirably puts weekly improvement ahead of bottom-line results, whether it’s coming off a win or a loss, stumbled on a path to woefully regress
“We don’t have a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Freeman said.
If it were only just about mental wherewithal and an emotional rescue. But Freeman is backed into a X’s-and-O’s corner that he and a first-year offensive coordinator, Gerad Parker, can count on its future opponents plagiarizing how Louisville accomplished it, until they produce an antidote.
And then come up with another one when the Irish are outschemed again to the point where sixth-year quarterback Sam Hartman is reduced to Drew Pyne comparisons.
Actually, Duke head coach Mike Elko and his staff, on Sept. 30, were the first to implement the notion that the Irish offense could be rendered one-dimensional if the defense leaned into stopping the run by loading the box and taking their chances with ND’s downfield passing game.
But you could argue that worked in ND’s 21-14 survival at Duke in large part because of missing pieces from the Irish offense — namely wide receivers Jayden Thomas and Jaden Greathouse. And that left Parker to put the passing game in the hands of inexperienced receivers Tobias Merriweather, Rico Flores Jr., and converted running back Chris Tyree against the Blue Devils.
That wasn’t the case against Louisville.
In fact, Greathouse and Thomas returned from hamstring injuries to play, and tight end Eli Raridon made his long-awaited debut after a year of rehabbing an ACL tear. And future Irish lacrosse star, football walk-on Jordan Faison made his wide receiver debut, converting a third down with his first college catch and dancing into the end zone with his second, a 36-yarder.
It turned out to be Notre Dame’s only touchdown until underused tight end Mitchell Evans’ six-yard reception in mop-up/desperation time with 97 seconds left.
Lost in Louisville’s second-half dominance were two of the longest field goals in Irish football history, from 53, and a school-record-typing 54-yarder by Spencer Shrader without a miss.
Not lost was a stunning coaching miscalculation by Freeman with 9:49 left in the fourth quarter with the Irish trailing 24-13. From ND’s 35-yard line, he elected to go for it on fourth down-and-11, on a night when even converting third-and-shorts were monumental challenges.
Hartman’s fourth-down pass fluttered incomplete.
“Two-score game. You play the percentages,” Freeman said of his rationale. “We’ve either got to get a three-and-out if we punt the ball and hope that we get enough time to have two separate possessions or you try to convert right there and play the percentages.
“Even if you don’t convert here, you make them go three-and-out and force them to kick the field goal, [and it’s still] a two-[score] game. So, that went into my decision.”
Louisville couldn’t move the ball and converted a 45-yard field goal by Brock Travelstead for a 27-13 lead, then tacked on two more, after a Hartman interception and another turnover on downs in Irish territory.
The Irish, whose regular-season win streak against ACC competition ended at 30 games, finished a combined 3-of-15 on third- and fourth-down conversions, saw junior running back Audric Estimé limited to 20 yards on 10 carries, got the worst pass-efficiency rating from Hartman in an Irish uniform to date (115.6) and lowest overall since a four-interception clunker against Pitt during the 2021 season.
He threw three Saturday night, 11 months after doing so in a 48-21 Wake Forest upset loss to Louisville, with the Demon Deacons coming into that game ranked 10th as well.
The No. 84 sacking team in the FBS registered five of them against Hartman, with the No. 6 team in that stat category and No. 1 in tackles for loss per game, unbeaten (barely) USC, coming to Notre Dame Stadium next Saturday night (7:30 EDT; NBC/Peacock).
The Trojans do have massive issues on defense, surrendering more than 500 yards to an offense with a backup quarterback in their 43-41 triple-overtime edging of unranked Arizona in Los Angeles late Saturday night.
But getting pressure on QBs is not one of their problems.
“Everybody’s going to point the finger at Sam [Hartman],” Freeman said. “You’ve got to point the finger at us, at me. We’ve got to protect him. We’ve got to do a better job of protecting our quarterback, and put him in situations to have a higher percentage of success.”
And yet Freeman and his staff decided to debut the concept of rotating interior linemen in the first half of the game, shredding the notion of unit continuity in the process. Even All-America left tackle Joe Alt seemed to be the worse for it.
“As an offensive line, we have to work together and be five-as-one,” Alt said diplomatically. “We have to break it down individually and then as a group, and see where we need to improve and go forward.”
All the elements that made it reasonable to not get caught in knee-jerk overreactions during the dark chapters of Freeman’s first season, or the math problems in the closing seconds of the loss to Ohio State two weeks ago, are still in play for him.
But the need for redemption, for a crossroads moment has never been higher in the 21 games Freeman has been presiding over a storied program that so desperately wants and needs to find its footing for the next step toward producing new chapters on college football’s biggest stages.
After in explicably falling hard off a modest one on Saturday night that shook it to its core.
“We have to move forward,” Freeman said, “and so this will be a true test of our leadership, starting with me and our captains.”
Especially Marcus Freeman.
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