On Tuesday night, the much-anticipated first College Football Playoff top 25 was revealed. Coming off of its second bye week of the season, Notre Dame slotted in at No. 10 in the rankings, meaning it would have a spot in the 12-team field had the season ended today. The Irish would go on the road to face No. 7 Tennessee in late December for their first-round matchup. Judging the resumes of the teams below them, even with four weeks of football remaining, not including conference championship weekend, the Irish should control their own destiny. The Athletic’s playoff projections have Notre Dame at an 88% chance of making the playoff with a 65% chance of hosting after the rest of the field shakes out.
While this will require some help from teams like Indiana and BYU, who both remain undefeated, the outlook of the season gets brighter by the week. Had you told an Irish fan back in September that they would be four wins away from the playoff after the catastrophic loss to Northern Illinois, they would not have believed you. In retrospect, trading the Texas A&M win albeit for a nightmare loss a week later appears to be the better of the two outcomes with the No. 14-ranked Aggies currently tied with Georgia atop the SEC. Looking at the remaining schedule, hopes get even higher. The Irish come out of the bye at home against a 1-8 Florida State team in utter disarray before their final home game against Virginia. Their final stretch will be a test, with No. 25-ranked and undefeated Army in Yankee Stadium and rival USC in the Coliseum to close out the year. That said, the Irish enter both contests as clear favorites and will get a week off while the rest of the country dukes it out on championship weekend.
Heading into a tough test against Louisville back in Week Five, Marcus Freeman’s team was staring at the prospect of a season that began with playoffs written all over it ending before October. A loss in that game, and the conversations would have gotten very challenging as the track record of crushing losses mounted. But as he has throughout his entire tenure, Freeman got the necessary response from his team in the face of adversity. Now on a six-game winning streak, the bigger question begins to resurface for the third-year head coach: can this team handle success?
Much of Notre Dame’s offseason was framed in the context of what would be a potentially season-defining matchup in College Station for the season opener. While a Week One loss is never a death sentence, one-upping an SEC team was a massive opportunity at a statement in the context of a weak schedule that offered very few, if any, others. Going into one of the most hostile environments in college football with a true freshman starting at left tackle, the Irish left with a program win, the best of the Freeman era. I described the win back in September as a culmination of Freeman’s development as a coach thus far. He placed his team in the proper headspace amidst all the noise and managed the game perfectly, balancing a conservative game plan with aggressive decisions when they were called for. His team did not make mistakes, and in the end both physically and mentally outlasted the Aggies in their building. Only one week later, it felt like all that hard work had been undone in the span of a few hours. He had fallen victim to the fatal flaw of success yet again, overlooking and unforgivably losing to NIU, who became the first MAC team to ever defeat an opponent ranked in the top five of the AP Poll.
With a now established history of these kinds of losses, doubt lingers in the minds of Irish fans as to whether or not this team can do what it is capable of and take care of business down the stretch. However, there have been signs that it can, the biggest being the evolution of the offense. Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock and the coaching staff felt compelled to call a specific style of game against Texas A&M, one that eliminated as many mistakes as possible. This approach proved wise as Notre Dame went almost mistake-free all game while benefitting from a pair of Aggie turnovers en route to the 23-13 victory. Propped up by a stellar defensive display, the offense did just enough, putting together a late go-ahead touchdown drive and a field-goal drive to ice the game. The expectation was for the offense, particularly quarterback Riley Leonard and the passing attack, to be unlocked in the weeks ahead.
However, while Denbrock seemingly called a game against NIU that reflected his vision for the offense, the group and especially Leonard were not yet prepared to execute. The senior transfer from Duke threw for an underwhelming 163 yards on 20 of 32 passing with two interceptions, the second of which was a woefully underthrown downfield shot that set up a game-winning field goal for the Huskies. It was a playcall that encapsulated how far behind this offense was from where it needed to be — and where Irish fans thought it would be with the addition of Leonard. But while it was not pretty in the following two home wins against Miami (Ohio) and Louisville, there were flashes of the group’s potential and its ceiling which was raised by Leonard’s elite rushing ability. Even during his roughest stretch as a passer in the early season where he threw only a single touchdown in the opening four games, he was the team’s leading rusher, totaling 322 yards and six touchdowns on the ground. Coming out of the first bye against Stanford, he put together his best passing performance to date, throwing for 229 yards and three touchdowns without a single interception.
He has since shown signs of improvement every single week, from the timing of his reads to the layering of his throws downfield. The wide receiver corps have established a stronger connection with their captain as the offense has found more balance and the young, inexperienced offensive line has improved in pass protection. The success of the group continues to hinge on the immense threat of the run game as sophomore star Jeremiyah Love continues to blossom into one of the most exciting backs in the country. No. 4 has a touchdown in every single game this season and has a pairing of vision and explosiveness that adds a fundamental dimension to the offense. All the while, arguably Notre Dame’s best offensive player, senior tight end Mitchell Evans, has yet to be fully unlocked after easing back from the ACL tear that sidelined him for the 2023-2024 season. This is all to say that the arrow is pointing up for the offense, and that could change the picture for this team.
There’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said about an Irish defense that, despite several key injuries, continues to play at a national championship level. Some of the casualties, especially graduate student vyper Jordan Botelho and junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison, may prove more costly in higher leverage games, but Al Golden’s group should have more than enough to finish the job in the regular season. With the offense improving and the defense dominating, this Irish team has been doing more than winning in recent weeks. They have been blowing teams off the field in the kind of routine fashion that a team of their caliber should against this caliber of competition. That said, the brand of boring winning that Irish fans became accustomed to under Brian Kelly has not been a given in the first couple of years under Freeman. This year, that could be changing. The spotlight once again returns to the third-year head coach. Can Marcus Freeman make the leap that so many Notre Dame coaches of the past have in that magical third season? Can he get this team to the level everyone believed it could reach before the year and after the first win? Only time will tell.
