Irish facing existential crisis
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – When your mantra is “graduating champions,” even 10-win seasons can seem hollow.
That’s the challenge facing Notre Dame this week as it tries to shake off the 45-14 drubbing at Michigan that didn’t just end all hopes of a return trip to the College Football Playoff. It also left Brian Kelly’s football program facing an existential crisis as it prepares to face unranked Virginia Tech on Saturday afternoon at Notre Dame Stadium.
“There’s so much more at stake here,” Kelly said during his weekly news conference. “This is so much more about who you are as a person and who we are as individuals. Playoffs, bowl games all kind of get put aside after weeks like that.”
Dropped from No. 9 to No. 16 in the Amway Coaches Poll after its worst loss since a 41-8 beatdown at Miami in November
2017, the Fighting Irish (5-2) now project to play either Texas or Kansas State in the Camping World Bowl on Dec. 28.
That’s quite a comedown from the stated goal of returning to the national semifinals after last year’s 30-3 Cotton Bowl loss to Clemson. It’s also quite a distance from the New Year’s Six slate, where Notre Dame had been looking at a Cotton Bowl or Orange Bowl check if it
could have maintained its one-loss trajectory.
As a result, now assured of a 31st consecutive season without a national championship, the Irish will spend the week practicing introspection as much as formations.
Having seven team captains should prove helpful. Kelly met Monday with his captains, as he always does, but a spate of further meetings should follow, both coach-player and coach-coach.
That’s how much of a ripple effect the Wolverines caused by scoring 28 straight points after Notre Dame pulled within 17-7 with 5:27 left in the third quarter. As the margin grew, a rainmarred loss to a traditional opponent turned into something entirely different.
Instead of Jim Harbaugh improving to 2-10 against top-10 teams, there was more talk about Kelly’s program suffering its 11th straight road loss to a top-20 team. The average margin of defeat in those past five tests has been 21.2 points; overall it has been 14.2 points.
That streak began in 2013 at Michigan Stadium, so Saturday’s loss, both “devastating” and “embarrassing” in the on-air estimation of ABC analyst Kirk Herbstreit, offered a painful bookend.
“We really start to focus on who you are as a person and what’s your why?” Kelly said. “Why are you doing this? That’s so much more important after a week like we had.”
Kelly, signed to a six-year contract
extension through 2021, hasn’t heard much squawking about his job status since reassessing and recalibrating every aspect of his program after a 4-8 disaster in 2016.
A 10-3 season followed, despite that turnover-fueled embarrassment at Miami, and 2018’s 12-game run of perfection gave Kelly his third Home Depot National Coach of the Year Award in a
decade. The Irish have won 27 of their past 33 games.
Another strong recruiting class is already lined up for 2020, with 247 Sports ranking Notre Dame eighth overall, thanks to commitments from seven four-star recruits and two five-stars: Virginia running back Chris Tyree and St. Louis wide receiver Jordan Johnson.
The grumbling could increase if Kelly, who turned 58 last week, is unable to snap Notre Dame out of its post-Michigan doldrums. He reminded reporters on Monday that the Hokies, in November 2016, were the last Atlantic Coast Conference team to come into Notre Dame Stadium and win.
Duke also beat the Irish at home that season, and Louisville, in 2014, was the only other ACC team to successfully raid The House That Rockne Built during Kelly’s 10-season tenure.
Four of Notre Dame’s remaining opponents will be coming off bye weeks, starting with the 5-2 Hokies. Even Stanford, which opened 1-3, has returned to .500 and recently got senior quarterback K.J. Costello back from a thumb injury.
Then again, if Notre Dame can reclaim its much-discussed “physicality” and run the table, it will have three straight 10-win seasons for the first time since the Lou Holtz era (1991-93) and just the second time in school history.
“The word that brings everybody together is: Are you accountable or not accountable?” Kelly said. “Are we accountable as coaches and are we accountable as players? If everybody is accountable, then you get up, you get going again. I’m very confident our guys are accountable guys.”
Nor, Kelly said, is he concerned about outside distractions overtaking his program.
“They know they have to avoid the noise,” he said. “They won’t be defined by one game.
“They can be remembered by winning the month of November. They win the month of November, the noise will change. All will be happy.”