Instant Reaction | Michigan 45 Notre Dame 14

ANN ARBOR, Mich - If Miami in 2017 was the bottom for Notre Dame after the Brian Kelly reboot, somehow this 2019 team found a way to dig a bit deeper.

Was this the worst loss of the Brian Kelly era? I don’t know, but it’s in contention. It has to be and not just because of the final score. The entirety of it was pathetic in a way that was as much self-inflicted as it was them getting beat by Michigan.

If I had to pick an outcome before the game, Michigan blowing out the Irish would have been the most unlikely. But it did happen. It happened in a spectacularly ugly fashion for people who follow Notre Dame football. It has to be a tough pill to swallow for a team who thought they were much better than this.

Michigan dominated this game the way Jim Harbaugh was supposed to dominate when he arrived in Ann Arbor. It’s a huge win for him and his program and a devastating loss for Kelly and his.

- Maybe this is just the immediacy of it, but I can’t remember a worse performance by a Notre Dame offense. Tony Jones’ injury didn’t help, but that was a pebble in the boulder of a clunker that the offense produced.

Chip Long is going to receive a ton of heat for this game and he’ll deserve it. To not mention him and Ian Book together would be ignoring the elephant in the room, though.

Already struggling against Power 5 competition, Book had his worst game as starting quarterback. It all came rushing towards the surface like a tsunami of missed reads and indecisiveness. Michigan blitzed, like Don Brown always does, but Book was again seeing ghosts when they weren’t there.

I don’t know where things go from here with him. That seems insane to write after how he performed last season, but he’s nowhere close to the same player. He doesn’t even look like the same player who quarterbacked the Irish against Georgia.

I don’t know why that is. I just know that 2.92 yards per attempt and 100 yards of total offense while he was in the game says a lot about where things stand with him running the offense.

- Everyone will overreact to how Phil Jurkovec moved the team at the end of the game and it’s tough to blame anyone for that. The situation he was put in was the same as a backup goalie getting inserted in the third period when his team was losing 10-1 and the saves really shouldn’t say much, but he wasn’t afraid to throw the ball into tight windows.

He looked pretty good doing it too. The offense only had six first downs when Book was in the game. Even the drive where they scored, the touchdown was more of a gift after a bad pass interference call.

Jurkovec moved the team and that should at least earn him a chance to earn more reps and compete for more chances.

- Cole Kmet had two targets in this game. That’s a real stat.

- So much happened after it that it’s easy to forget that the defense started with a three and out, which was ruined by Jonathan Jones trying to jump on the partially blocked punt by Bo Bauer. That and an inexcusable pass interference on Alohi Gilman gave their offense life when the defense had stopped them for a second time on the first drive.

Would things have been different if those plays didn’t happen? Probably not, but the lack of awareness was mind-boggling.

- The first half run defense was shocking to me. Clark Lea’s defense has never looked that undisciplined with their gaps and assignments. They might give up some plays, but they were handing Michigan huge holes to run through.

- Notre Dame didn’t produce a Havoc play against Michigan until the 27th play the Wolverines ran. I definitely didn’t see that coming.

- The defense actually gave Notre Dame a shot to get back into the game in the third quarter. Three straight three and outs should have given the offense something to work with.

- When you lose this bad, it is okay to talk about legacy with Kelly. He’s now 0-3 at Michigan and his team has looked woefully prepared on the road in too many games. He had a chance to flip the narrative with a win tonight.

Welp. So much for that.

- Where does this leave Notre Dame the rest of the season? I have no idea how they will respond. They are good enough to win out and go 10-2 the rest of the way. Is anyone feeling confident that they are going to do it after tonight, though? It would be impossible to be positive about it at this very moment.

There’s a lot more to dissect with this game than can be covered here. It was a deflating outcome for the Notre Dame program. We’ll find out a lot about the character of the coaches and the players against Virginia Tech.