If you’re a Notre Dame football fan, you’ve no doubt read dozens of takes over the last 24 hours micro-analyzing the team’s struggles on Saturday night.
I wish I could come to you with some fresh perspective or a new damning stat. I cannot. What stuck with me most on the exceedingly quiet four-hour drive home from Derby City was the same line that so many other articles before this have written.
Notre Dame, in every phase of the game on Saturday, looked unprepared.
The Irish didn't seem ready when Louisville got the ball and drove down the field surgically on their first offensive possession. They didn’t have much in the way of first-half firepower after tying the score at seven. And when the Cardinals began to break the game open in the second half, Notre Dame’s response was a self-destructive spiral that turned the game into a rout.
In most losses, blame is delegated to either the coaching staff or the players. Coaches are blamed when the game plan is subpar. Players are blamed when the plays that are called simply aren’t executed properly.
On Saturday night, it felt uniquely accurate to say both of those statements would be true for the Irish offense. One second quarter failure on third and one feels like the perfect snapshot of this dualism. Notre Dame had reached Louisville territory with the game tied at seven. A first down would set the team up to, at minimum, begin approaching field goal range.
The Irish coaching staff tried to get clever. Instead of a hand-off up the gut to usual short-yardage backs Audric Estime or Gi’Bran Payne, offense coordinator Gerad Parker dialed up a jet sweep, with multiple pulling blockers. The operation failed at every level. Cardinal players swarmed the backfield, and an apparent miscommunication between Hartman and Chris Tyree left the ball on the turf. Louisville recovered the fumble. It was a poor play that was executed equally poorly, creating a chicken-or-the-egg situation with regards to its failure.
After a promising start to the season, such failures have become commonplace for Notre Dame’s offense. Seven weeks into the 2023 campaign it feels like the Irish offense has more questions than answers. These questions aren’t broad hypotheticals such as “who should the team throw to in clutch moments?” The ones Notre Dame currently face are as fundamental as “who are the starting guards?”
Perhaps the biggest issue with the Louisville collapse is how difficult it has become to say with confidence that the Irish know how to respond to these problems. The bizarre first-half sequence of rotating the offensive line mid-quarter smacks of desperation, not deliberation. Throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks is the type of testing you do against the likes of Central Michigan and Tennessee State, not in a prime-time game on the road against a top 25 team.
Seven weeks into the season, we know the following about Notre Dame’s offense: Joe Alt is great. Sam Hartman is also great, but he needs help from his weapons to truly tick. Audric Estime and Jeremiyah Love have the potential to be one of the best one-two punches in the country, but wrinkles still need to be ironed out in game-planning to make the duo work. And, the team’s most productive receiver — by some distance — is tight end Mitchell Evans, who has generated nearly all of his output in the last three weeks.
That’s not an ideal list of positives for a team about to play its eighth consecutive game. The USC game will be an opportunity for Notre Dame to put the season back on track with a statement win. The Trojans' defensive woes make for a good opponent for an offense in need of a spark. But, the Irish won’t be able to capitalize unless they avoid the preparation and execution issues that plagued them against Louisville.
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