Instant Reaction | Marshall 26 Notre Dame 21

It doesn’t get much uglier than that.

Notre Dame got out-played and out-coached by a team that had no business beating them on paper.

Games aren’t won on paper, though. They are won with preparation and execution. They are won with toughness and grit. They are won by skill and talent.

Notre Dame wasn’t prepared for this game. Marshall averaged 6.2 yards per play to Notre Dame’s 2.3 in the first quarter. They didn’t execute in this game and there are many instances that can be pointed to. They weren’t the tougher or grittier team. Marshall out-rushed them 219 to 130. They may have had more talent, but they sure didn’t look like it for most of today.

The Marcus Freeman era has started with a thud. This was the worst home loss for the Irish since South Florida in 2011

. - There is almost too much to write about the offense to fit into an instant reaction, but the whole operation has to be questioned after a game like this.

Maybe there were no good solutions against Ohio State. There should have been against Marshall.

It took too long to realize that Notre Dame had to lean into using Tyler Buchner in the run game. It took way too long to realize that Notre Dame wasn’t winning inside and needed to take advantage of the perimeter with players like Lorenzo Styles, Michael Mayer, and Chris Tyree.

Tommy Rees didn’t call a good game and of course one could say that the lack of execution from the players made it harder for him. But he’s the guy who is mainly responsible for that lack of execution as well. He has to know what his players are capable of and what they are not.

He has to know what’s not working and adjust to that on the fly. 4.7 yards per play in this type of matchup is embarrassing. That’s on Rees and the entire staff and it won’t get any easier next week against Cal.

- It is a scary reality that Notre Dame has to try and look for plays from Braden Lenzy as a boundary receiver. He’s not going to win a 50/50 ball. They don’t have a Claypool, a Boykin, or an EQ there and this offense has to find other ways to win on the boundary because Lenzy isn’t going to be the answer.

- Notre Dame goes for it on 4th and short and Audric Estime is fighting like heck to get the ball over the line despite being hit in the backfield. Joe Alt is standing there watching him fight. He didn’t once move to try and push his teammate over the pile.

I know that is singling out one player on one play and that might not be fair because of all the mistakes in the game on offense, but that one play is a microcosm of what was missing from the team as a whole today.

- My initial thought after this game is that Notre Dame’s offense isn’t going to have much success at all this season unless they use the base of what they did with Buchner last year and build out from that. I thought that was more of what we would see from them this year, but through two games that has not been the case.

Buchner’s numbers were obviously not good and he’s not someone who is equipped to win from the pocket on 3rd and long right now. Maybe that will be different later on, but he’s a guy who has played very few game snaps at quarterback in his life and to ask him to be that guy isn’t going to work out very well for the Irish.

He missed some throws that could have changed the outcome of the game. I’m not disputing that. He also could be put in more situations to succeed if the game was called differently and he had help from a running game that was anemic.

- The first touchdown Marshall scored was a run right over where Jayson Ademilola was lined up and he got pancaked. The lack of impact from him and Isaiah Foskey has been jarring to start the season.

This can’t be an Al Washington thing where a new coach completely screwed them up. They didn’t forget how to play with a new coach. They simply have to be better and the defensive line as a whole must be better.

- The first half Havoc Rate was putrid. 5.2% is horrible. Things got better in the second half (18.1%), but even that number isn’t what it should be.

- Notre Dame has a chance to get off the field with Marshall pinned on 3rd and long. Ramon Henderson thinks the ball is being run and goes off his responsibility of covering the tight end in man coverage. That tight end is the guy who gets the ball and Marshall gets a first down. That was a massive play in the game that started the go-ahead drive for Marshall. Throw in several missed tackles and things kept piling on from there.

- Well, that honeymoon sucked. It started out sunny, but then rained every day and on the way home we lost our luggage.

Yep, things haven’t gone as planned for Freeman. He got some heat for his first two games as defensive coordinator, but that was nothing compared to what he must be feeling now. Most of the people who praised him are going to be ripping him and that comes with the territory of being the head guy at Notre Dame and losing a game like this.

Brian Kelly knows all about it. He lost games like this early. His start was less than ideal in just about every way imaginable. He eventually dug himself out of that hole, but it took a while and in some ways, people never forgot it because he never did quite enough to make them forget it.

Freeman has to get this team on track against Cal. He can’t let them spiral out after a loss like this. Not just for now, but for the future.

Plenty of coaches have had disastrous starts and rebounded from it, but there’s more of them who never reached previous expectations.

All he can do is to work to dig his way out of it. It means holding everyone accountable in order to get the players up to the level they should be. It means figuring out quickly how much he needs to insert himself into the equation when it comes to staff and the job they’re doing.

Ty Willingham started out 8-0 at Notre Dame and that was a mirage. Nick Saban lost to Louisiana-Monroe in game 11 of his first season at Alabama and that has turned into a trivia question more so than something that predicted anything about his future success.

What this loss means for Freeman at Notre Dame isn’t known yet. How the team plays next week and the rest of season is going to say a lot about Freeman’s ability to lead a program, though. He’s got himself into a pickle now. He can’t recruit his way out of it. He has to win or lose with the team he’s got.

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