Instant Reaction | Louisville 33 Notre Dame 20

Three primetime games in a row is too much. Playing three ranked teams in a row is too much of a grind. Back to back road games at night aren't fair to college players.

Those would be solid excuses if this was a case of Notre Dame running out of gas against an elite opponent.

That wasn’t the case in this game. The Irish didn’t lose because of the tough circumstances. They lost because their operation on offense is poor. Very poor.

Everything from personnel usage to play-calling to lack of adjustments is fairly being called into question. How could it not be when red flags from previous weeks turned into…whatever this was against Louisville.

There are fundamental flaws on that side of the ball and it goes way deeper than skill position talent or individuals on the offensive line playing poorly. Everything has to be examined after this performance.

This wasn’t Duke or Ohio State’s defense doing this to Notre Dame. This was a Louisville defense that was 122nd in explosive pass plays (20+ yards) against heading into this game. Before the meaningless final touchdown drive for Notre Dame, the Irish only had two of them.

They also couldn’t protect their quarterback, couldn’t get anyone open down the field, couldn’t run the football in short yardage, and couldn’t do much of anything.

I think most people who have read my instant reaction posts after games know that I’m critical, but do my best to be fair after Notre Dame losses. I really don’t think it would be fair to suggest that this wasn’t a complete failure by the coaching staff on offense.

- If you’re looking for me to get on the defense about what happened with the defense in the second half, you won’t find that here. For the third straight game they have taken on water while the offense has struggled and the dam broke when they gave up a 45-yard touchdown run to Jawhar Jordan in the third quarter.

There were certainly mistakes that will get highlighted in the rewatch notes, but they were put in a bad spot by their head coach at the end of the first half, gave the offense a gift with a turnover to start the second half, and the offense gave them 49 yards and 2.0 yards per play in the second half until it hit garbage time.

It’s a bit tiring to continue to say the defense deserved better. I can’t imagine how tiring it is for the defense as a whole to feel that way.

Jack Plummer was who we thought he was and it didn’t matter.

- I’ll hit on the big picture stuff with Freeman in a second, but taking a timeout after giving up a sack to make it 3rd and 13 was a mind-boggling decision.

There’s showing confidence in your offense and then there’s doubling down on a losing hand. Sometimes you need to fold and move on to the next one. That was what needed to happen, but he ended up giving Louisville a chance at free points at the end of the half because of his decision.

I don’t understand the decision to go for it on 4th and 11 from your own 35 with nine minutes left either. As much as you don’t want to put it on the defense again by punting, it was a decision that was ignorant of the fact that the offense has had no success converting in those situations over the last two games and there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with how Notre Dame approaches 3rd down and 4th down play-calling.

Notre Dame is 4 for their last 25 on 3rd down (16%). Short yardage, long yardage, any yardage. They can’t scheme up a play or execute one to save their life right now other than hopefully finding Mitchell Evans over the middle of the field.

- I have no issue with Notre Dame looking at other options at guard and center. The starters did not play well at all against Duke and Ohio State. They should evaluate other options.

Choosing to do it in this environment in the way they did it is not setting up Billy Schrauth or Andrew Kristofic to succeed. It’s throwing them in the deep end without a life vest.

If they put them in to start the game, that would have honestly been better than how they handled it.

- When I’m talking about the whole operation on offense, I do mean play-calling, but much more than that.

One thing we know is that the coaching staff seems to be very collaborative. While that seems to work just fine for Al Golden and the defense with things improving greatly from the previous season, it is clearly not working with the offense.

I’m not saying it needs to be more of Gerad Parker taking ownership of everything or even that he needs to hand over complete ownership to someone else on staff. I’m saying that what they are doing now has not produced desired results. (To say the very least!)

As mentioned, 3rd down is a huge problem. Whoever is in charge of that and the preparation for it, that needs to change in some way. Ditto for the play-action passing game where Notre Dame couldn’t be more ineffective at creating anything positive from it outside of the NC State game.

Play-action looks like pass. That’s not how it is supposed to look for a defense.

There is nothing there that is challenging the keys of the defenders in a way that stresses them. If there was, they would at least find some sort of success doing it.

They aren’t making noticeable adjustments. They aren’t solving problems. A lot of that starts with preparation and they don’t have answers ready when the questions get difficult.

It’s way more than not having enough depth or top end talent at receiver. They aren’t scheming up big plays passing or running.

A lot of these are things Greg Flammang and I were talking about before this game. This was an opportunity to do that against a defense that has had issues with assignments in both the run and the pass. They made an average defense look good.

- It’s too simple to point at guys getting beat or Sam Hartman’s turnovers. There are bigger things that need to be fixed if they want to have a shot at beating USC and more things that need to be fixed if they want to become a championship-level offense.

It really comes down to Freeman. No one can say he hasn’t improved from where he started, 11-3 in his last 14 is a heck of a lot better than that 3-3 start, but when things are going in this direction, he’s going to have to make hard decisions.

They are the kind of decisions that can help shape the program and his success or failure as the head coach at Notre Dame.

He chose to go out on a limb by promoting Parker and right now there is a lot of deserved heat on him and on Freeman’s decision. Freeman has to find better ways to change the structure of what Notre Dame is doing on that side of the ball and that may mean getting people to change roles, expanding roles of others, or potentially making bigger changes.

No one likes having to make hard decisions, but that’s the nature of the business. It doesn’t even have to be about firing anyone. It can be about changing processes or rearranging roles to help the entire operation.

Freeman has always talked about not changing who he is as a coach. He has to coach it his way and not pretend to be someone he is not. That is admirable and part of the reason why most Notre Dame fans desperately want him to succeed.

The other side of that coin is that a coach has to be adaptable depending on the circumstance. This is a tough circumstance that is going to get tougher in a week when USC is in town. He needs to lead the way in changing the processes for Notre Dame’s offense that put them in this position.

He might not be the one calling the plays, but it’s ultimately going to come back to him if Notre Dame isn’t able to get this fixed.

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