Rakes Report #237: I foresee terrible trouble and I stay here just the same (The Northern Illinois Review)

A lot can change in a week.

~optional musical accompaniment~

1) Near the end of last week’s edition, I wrote “In his first two seasons, Freeman teams weren't overly adept at handling success so I’m very curious to see how these next few weeks go.” The person who sent that was an idiot who sought knowledge when a wiser man would have embraced ignorance, been happy with 1-0 and called it a season.

The degree to which that was just 2022 Stanford all over again is incredible and quite damning for Marcus Freeman, as he’s coached 21 games since that point. Notre Dame going up 14-13 in the second half after a rocky start but being unable to stretch it out, eventually falling 16-14 after a successful bleed-you-out field goal drive (Stanford was 10 plays for 51 yards, Northern Illinois was 11 for 31). The quarterback who was hitting throws the prior week decided to stop doing that and the defense failed in the exact same way. 

Bad stuff, folks. No silver lining. Likely calamitous for this season with aftershocks that can carry into 2025. Not where I expected to be after Week Two and definitely not where I wanted to be. We’ll scoot through this pretty quickly because I imagine most people already deleted this without reading (understandably – I am not judging) and those who made it to paragraph three would prefer not to belabor this too much.

2) Notre Dame scored on its first drive by running Riley Leonard a ton, which was somewhat surprising because the coaches said they were going to limit him on the ground but hey it worked. Then they toned down the Leonard runs (makes sense, save some hits) but his passing was never there after a clean game last week, with receivers having to make adjustments even on completions. On the best throw from Leonard all day it was a clean drop by Jaden Greathouse, which is and was heartbreaking. Beaux Collins and Mitchell Evans came through and Kris Mitchell had a nice grab late to make it interesting, but there wasn’t enough quantity.

The second interception from Leonard was mind-boggling. It’s okay to draw up a shot play in that situation but the guy has to be wide open. Maybe processing-wise with the safety dipping out he technically checked the boxes to be mostly open and it was just that bad of a throw but you can’t do that. Considering they stopped running him when that proved so successful in College Station/on the opening drive and the duck of an interception, was Leonard hurt? He did appear to bang up his non-throwing shoulder at one point. Tough all around and if he can’t run then the depth of this quarterback room could and probably should be explored.

Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price combined for two (2) carries in the fourth quarter. Now, granted, Notre Dame only ran 11 plays and four of them came on the final drive so there weren’t a lot of options but yikes. I am so sad that Love’s incredible highlight hurdle touchdown is now confined to the dustbin with Kyle Rudolph against Michigan and DeShone Kizer against Stanford. It’s as snazzy as dustbins get, but unfortunately still not prominently featured in the decor. Five touches on the day for Price and only 13 snaps – criminal.

The final drive of the first half was such a disaster and ended up being the deciding margin. First: They went so slow, bleeding off an absurd amount of time (there was 1:41 on the clock on the first play's snap and 54 seconds on the third). For some reason neither Love nor Price were on the field, with all the touches on this crucial, critical, trying-not-to-be-trailing-Northern-Illinois-at-the-half drive going to Devyn Ford and a true freshman. I do admit, it was a funny bit that the staff responded to the question “Why is Ford in there?” by giving Aneyas Williams his first career carry on a third-and-seven draw play. The next play was the first but not final blocked field goal of the game.

Mike Denbrock was brought in to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen. To extend a bit of grace, the offensive line was failing to get a push, Leonard was erratic and receivers weren’t getting a ton of separation, but you have to do your best to work around that. To further echo the 2022 Stanford game, good coordinators can have poor results but holy moly this was a poor result after a great one last week.

(Notre Dame was 70th percentile in EPA per rush and 20th in EPA per dropback. So that’s something to think about for the next forever. The Irish also ran a single play-action pass, which is unconscionable. Is that perhaps a Freeman directive and we need to absolve Gerad Parker for last season’s sins?)

(A Denbrock quote from last week, post-A&M/pre-NIU, that is worth noting: “It's frustrating for some maybe to have to see us flinging a screen pass on third-and-13, but in front of 107,000 fans with a lot of new faces up front, what gives our football team the best chance to win? And we were doing such a good job and playing so well defensively, the flow of the game and all those things go into the way I call the game and the way I think about playing the game.”)

3) Are we in a time loop? This is from after that Stanford game:

“Much like after the Marshall game, it feels wrong to blame the defense much when they gave up 16 points but that was a rather uninspiring effort despite the low point total. Notre Dame forced a single three-and-out on Saturday evening, had one pass defensed against 38 Tanner McKee attempts, one sack, two more tackles for loss.”

On Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame allowed 16 points, forced a single three-and-out, had no sacks, three tackles for loss, two pass break-ups and didn’t record a turnover. The continued failures on second-and-long were crushing. Here’s from two weeks ago:

“When Golden defenses have faltered at Notre Dame they generally don’t do so in spectacular fashion but it’s death by a thousand cuts, dribs and drabs and five-yard runs and limited havoc and a chunk play at an inopportune time.”

They made some plays, certainly: The lone three-and-out was timely and got the offense the ball back with good field position and nearly two minutes to go in the first half (was not their fault it was wasted). Jaiden Ausberry had the clutch fourth-down stop among many other sterling plays and they forced a punt midway through the fourth with a one-point lead that should have been enough to seal it.

But dang, you gave up a 44% success rate (good for 63rd percentile) and six yards per play to Northern Illinois, and that’s with their best player missing a big chunk of the game with an injury. How many times did Ethan Hampton seem uncomfortable? That’s a credit to the Northern Illinois staff but a major discredit to Golden and company. I appreciate Xavier Watts attempting the coolest possible interception (he led the team in tackles) and Jordan Clark’s great all-around effort in limited snaps. Joshua Burnham and Boubacar Traore had a couple plays, and there was a great Drayk Bowen sequence, but not enough from the linebackers. Not much from the veteran defensive tackles and R.J. Oben barely played.

4) Special teams disaster class. Two kicks blocked and if not for some fortuitous bounces James Rendell’s tough day would have been even worse. 

Game management disaster class: 

• Notre Dame burned its first timeout of the second half before three minutes had elapsed. The Huskies were facing a third down at the Irish 32 so maybe there was a sense they were totally out of formation and going to give up an easy score but hate that so much. When asked about it in postgame, Freeman said he didn’t remember exactly why it was called. Not ideal.

• In the second quarter down 13-7, Freeman opted to punt from the Northern Illinois 39 on fourth and eight and he certainly didn’t have to do that. 

• Lining up to try a 62-yard field goal with five seconds left -- I don’t know, maybe you’re in no man’s land but that doesn’t seem like a great result, and that’s after the bungling of the final possession of the first half which was truly so bad.

Not sure who all takes blame for this but The Shirt color unsurprisingly looked awful in the stadium. There also was a Lou Holtz-narrated pregame video. In losses this bad all factors must be considered.

5) Unfortunately you cannot overstate what a catastrophe this is for both this season specifically and Freeman’s tenure generally. Notre Dame was in position to earn home field in the first 12-team playoff and really leave their imprint on the season, but instead they lost at home as a four-touchdown favorite and now they probably must win ten straight just to make the bracket. If they do pull that off and lose in the first round, the likely lower seed and tougher opponent will be (justifiably) blamed on this seismic defeat. It’s fine to not constantly have your A-Game as a big favorite (Penn State, Oklahoma, Oregon, LSU and Alabama all were off kilter this weekend in wins, something we’d talk about in Winning Is Hard in happier times) but you can’t lose these.

I think that means we’re in a position where for this season to be framed as anything more than a missed opportunity and disappointment, Notre Dame has to make the quarterfinals. That’s asking a lot, and if they fall short of that, it’s going to be a long offseason and a 2025 where there is all kinds of pressure on Freeman. The only way to remove the stink of something like this is with a deep, deep postseason run and there’s nothing close to a guarantee of that despite plenty of resources going into the program.

But you know what? That’s the macro, with plenty of hypotheticals. In the very tangible micro, Notre Dame plays Purdue on Saturday. This is their first trip to West Lafayette since 2013, it’s on CBS and I imagine the Boilermaker faithful might be pretty amped up to face a wounded Fighting Irish team. There are advantages for them beyond homefield: Hudson Card is a mobile quarterback with blue-chip pedigree who’s played excellently his last few games, head coach Ryan Walters loves to challenge opposing receivers with man coverage (could be a little tricky considering how the passing game looked on Saturday) and there are two games of film on the Irish and not much useful from the Boilers’ walkover of Indiana State in their opener. (They had a bye this week.) I suspect there is also added motivation from the great Giant Drum Imbroglio of 2021.

Things definitely could be doomed and I’m not going to lie and tell you otherwise, but the bottom of the barrel is not a certainty. As bad as Freeman’s teams have handled success, they’ve thrived under the repeated examples of adversity. There is a ton of talent here and with some added playmaking from the defense and further cohesion from the offense they could get there. We’ll see. It’s wild how different things feel versus one week ago but if college football does one thing it teaches you humility. 

I think it’s important to remember that if this idiotic sport is having a deleterious effect on your mental and emotional health it’s totally okay to step away for a bit, even if it will require tactfully removing yourself from both autumn routines and group chats. This is supposed to be fun and there wasn’t much fun about that beyond activating the parts of the brain that thrive on gallows humor. I’ll be here the rest of the way, good or bad, because I’ve been through the fires of 3-9, 4-8 and so many disappointing results and writing this helps me process it all. That is not the sign of a healthy mind but it is certainly the mind I have.

Until next week — when we have the chance to give some back — take care of yourselves and each other.