SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Howard Cross III was the last player off the field. By then, his head coach was long gone up the tunnel after Notre Dame’s chastening 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois that may end this season before it could barely get started. The All-American defensive tackle held his helmet behind his back and stared blankly forward. There was nothing to acknowledge, nothing to salute as Cross exited toward the locker room while a chorus of boos cascaded down.
Marcus Freeman tried to explain how his most talented team could lose in Notre Dame Stadium as a four-touchdown favorite, the most devastating home loss since going down to Northwestern in the 1995 opener. He couldn’t. Riley Leonard tried to make sense of his second-half interception that never should have been thrown. He was slightly more successful. And then came Cross, more experienced at Notre Dame than its head coach, athletic director, president or virtually anyone else.
Cross recounted the losses to Marshall in 2022 and Cincinnati in 2021. He even went back to Toledo in 2021, the last time Notre Dame flew too close to the sun against a MAC program. Cross has been there, done that. None of that makes being here again any easier. Because Notre Dame was supposed to be finished with moments like this.
“Yeah, this sucks. We know that. All of our fans know that. We know that. All of our coaches, top down, all know that,” Cross said. “They’re gonna be hearing it all week, ‘We suck.’ All right, use that. Because with all due respect, seven days, we’re on the field again. Are we gonna be like, ‘All right, damn, I guess it’s over.’ Or are we just gonna keep rolling?
“I think that’s what we’re gonna do. Just keep moving.”
GO DEEPER
Notre Dame suffers stunning upset to NIU: How did everything go so wrong for Irish?
What else can Notre Dame do? For all the good Freeman has done through two-plus seasons at Notre Dame, what happened Saturday threatens to undo so much of it, if not the whole thing.
It invalidates last weekend’s win at Texas A&M, which felt like proof of concept for Freeman and Leonard together. Instead, while driving in the fourth quarter with a one-point lead, Leonard tried to complete a pass he’s yet to hit at Notre Dame, as he was picked off on a horribly thrown deep shot when a run up the middle would have sufficed. Eleven plays later, NIU kicked the winning field goal.
The maturity Notre Dame flashed in College Station when offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock called the game he had to call with a new quarterback and young offensive line? Wasted with that ill-disciplined pass that didn’t need to be thrown. The locked-in defensive performance that stopped Texas A&M from hitting the big play? Wasted with a young linebacker group fooled by the Northern Illinois game plan and pushed around by a Huskies offensive line that should have been pushed back.
But the most troubling part for Notre Dame’s football program right now is its head coach.
Notre Dame is 20-9 since Marcus Freeman took over as coach. (Matt Cashore / USA Today)
By promoting Freeman, former athletic director Jack Swarbrick gambled that he could help a first-time head coach succeed at a place where first-time head coaches have failed over and over again. There are too many trap doors. There is too much learning on the job. Because once those lessons are mastered, it’s often too late.
It’s easy to pick apart Freeman’s postgame news conference because what really could he say? He said the preparation needed to be better, then said Notre Dame practiced well during the week. He said Notre Dame needed to hit in practice, then ignored the fact the Irish played a sluggish first half. He questioned the game plan, but the head coach has final say on what’s called and when. He’s a linebacker by trade, but no position played worse. He talks up Notre Dame as an offensive line- and defensive line-driven program, but both positions bombed on Saturday. The head coach decides where the program goes at quarterback, but it’s not clear Freeman has gotten that right once in three seasons.
“We’ve been here before, right? We’ve been here before. Now it’s time to get it fixed,” Freeman said. “We’ve got to get it fixed and get back to playing football the way we know how to play, we’ve played before, and we can, and we will.”
Nothing Freeman said was more telling. Or chilling.
Notre Dame has been here before. Against Marshall and Stanford when the offense bombed. Against Ohio State when the game ended with 10 men on the field as the Buckeyes scored the game-winning touchdown. Against Louisville when Notre Dame was out-coached and blown out. At Clemson when Notre Dame could barely get a first down in the second half. Or even against Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl when Freeman’s defense collapsed.
Freeman is now 20-9 as Notre Dame’s head coach after taking over for Brian Kelly, who went 54-9 in his final five seasons. Little about the end of Kelly’s tenure captured the imagination — the rote victories, the predictable winning against unranked opponents. And yet, the best coaches in this sport are boring that way. They know what’s going to happen on Saturday before it happens, even if they can’t predict exactly how. They have a plan. They have the conviction to stick to it. And they have the kind of resume that makes you believe their plan will work because it’s worked before.
Freeman has none of those things. He’s presided over losses to a MAC opponent and another one in the Sun Belt. He was a Hail Mary away from losing to Cal. He lost to a three-win Stanford.
Freeman is right. Notre Dame has been here before. That experience was supposed to be part of the solution. Maybe it’s just more of the same problem. Shouldn’t Notre Dame be beyond this?
“Absolutely,” Freeman said. “Absolutely.”
It will take Freeman a long time to come back from Saturday. Because defeat cuts deeper than losing the benefit of the doubt. And at this point, those reserves have been exhausted.
For Notre Dame’s season to end as a success, nothing less than a spot in the expanded College Football Playoff would do. The administration has backed Freeman at every step in the past year by hiring Denbrock, extending defensive coordinator Al Golden, investing in NIL to trigger success in the transfer portal, raising money for a new facility and re-upping with NBC to guarantee independence. They say a good athletic director makes sure his head coach has no excuse for not winning. And Notre Dame has done that, even amid the handoff from Swarbrick to Pete Bevacqua.
Now it’s down to the head coach.
“We’ve got to own this,” Freeman said. “Every person in here, every coach has to own it first, and not blame somebody else. That’s the only way to fix. I’m sure everybody outside of here will try to point the finger at some coach, some player, some person. It should be at the head coach. It’s my job.”
(Top photo: Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
