Notre Dame Football A Season in Review: The Freeman Era

          Welp, this was a wild year for the Irish to say the least. To be honest with you, I didn't know what was going to happen week to week, whether we played the #1 team in the country of the worst football team ever assembled. I genuinely at no point knew what was going to happen or where this season was going to go and how it was going to end, all in all? Not to mad about Marcus Freeman's first season.
          Let's start with the bad, Notre Dame lost 4 games this year and some were not pretty...not pretty at all. We start the season against Ohio State, at the Shoe....not the easiest game for the start of the Freeman Era. Tyler Buchner started at QB and looked pretty capable going 10/18 for 177 yards, the Irish ran the ball well at times and the defense played well in the 21-10 loss to OSU, so yeah we lost wee one but fuck Ohio State is real effin good so, we should be Marshall next week.....right? RIGHT?!?......FALSE! We in fact did not beat Marshall, we lost to Marshall and to very blunt we looked awful. Buchner had 2 awful picks and got hurt for the rest of the year, Drew Pyne came in after the Buchner injury and looked just as bad. Yeah sure Pyne threw a TD but shit if Michael Mayer was my tight end I probably could too. So yeah, we start off the season 0-2 and I will be honest, I'm mildly proud of myself because Yeah, My hand was hovering over the Panic Button HARD but I never hit it. Before I jump into the rest of the schedule chronologically, let me first touch on our only other losses this year. After hitting a bump in the road we get better, then we hit a big speed bump when Stanford comes to town, now this to me was the worst loss off the year. Is Stanford better than Marshall? Probably but we had every single fucking chance to win the Stanford game and offensively we were just bad, real fuckin bad. Pyne was 13/27 for 155 yards.....13/27 for 155 yards, against a terrible Stanford defense. Diggs and Estime were running at over 5 yards a clip but we still kept passing the ball, why? No idea, but if memory serves me correctly this was during Estime's 3 game fumble streak so we may have steered away from the run game then. We lost 16-14 and we just had no fight at all, Pyne looked awful and I thought this was it, really I didn't know if we would win another game all year. Last loss of the season, which was actually our last game of the regular season was to USC. All I am gonna say from this game is Drew Pyne played maybe the best game of his career 23/26 for 313 yards and 3 TD's, unfortunately Drew threw 1 pick and that pick was absolutely back breaking for our comeback, gave USC a short field and they punched it in. Also. despite being a giant douchebag Caleb Williams is just real real real fucking good,
          OK, finally we can get to the good, gooder and goodest parts of the season. After starting 0-2 we pick up a dub against Cal at home, yup we battled from behind most of the game, it wasn't pretty, we looked average at best, but Coach Freeman got the proverbial monkey off his back and got his first win. Next we go into UNC who's undefeated at the time and I don't care what the score line says (45-32) we kicked their ass I mean kicked their ass. We ran up and down the field on them with Estime and Diggs, Pyne was flawless throwing or 289 and 3 TD's, this was the first real sign of life for me from Coach Freeman and the boys. BYU was next, the Cougars were ranked in the top 20 I believe and this was a good opportunity for the Irish to show something here and for me they did. Estime, Diggs and Tyree again put on a clinic and ran up and down the BYU defense just absolutely gashing them, Mayer did his thing per usual with 11 catches, 118 yards and 2 TD'S. Drew Pyne also put in a solid performance to get the Irish the dub and move them to 3-2, this is where my concerns stared with the Irish closing out games though, BYU was hanging in, hanging in and almost stole it from the Irish. Then after the loss to Stanford were back home against UNLV, a game I attended. When I say I've never been more pissed at a 44-21 win in my life I truly mean it. Logan Diggs was an absolute work horse carrying it 28 times for 130 yards, Isaiah Foskey was the man though, huge on defense and adding 2 blocked punts which you'll soon see became a theme for the Irish this year. But as far as the game goes it was just blah, you'd think a 44-21 game you'd see huge plays, big chunk yards and nope, none of that at all. Mayer was Mayer again with 6 catches for 115 yards and a TD all while making one of the best catches of the season for ND. Then we walk in to play Syracuse, who's riding high off the strength of a big performance against Clemson the week prior, Cuse hung in with Clemson the entire game eventually falling to at the time the #3 ranked team in the country. I had an opportunity to go to this game with it being just an hour away from my house but I said "nah, if I spend the money to go to this game and they get their asses kicked I'm gonna be super pissed". By the end of this I wasn't pissed. I wasn't pissed at all. Frist play off the game was a pick 6 by Brandon Joseph, easy money. Again the Irish dominated with Diggs and Estime, 208 rush yards combined for these two including 3 TD's. Like I said before the Irish did it again, blocking a punt to set up and easy TD for the Irish to put the game away. At this point the Irish have blocked 5 punts on the year. We move on to #3 Clemson and holy boner city, population me. Notre Dame absolutely decimated Clemson. The defense was tremendous, the corners shut down and edge the wideouts had, the front 7 were relentless and I hate Dabo. Different game same story, Diggs and Estime combine for 218 yards rushing, Pyne didn't have to do much but he didn't need to....he just didn't make a mistake. This game was the emergence of Freshman corner Benjamin Morrison who was all over the place including 2 picks, one being a pick 6 that sure up the game essentially for the Irish. I would be remissed if I didn't mention the BALLS on Coach Freeman, knowing that we ran all over Clemson all game, then calling a pop pass to Mayer to absolutely shit all over Clemson's chest. Then Navy, what the fuck happened here? Notre Dame was up 35-13 at the halg absolutely dominating Navy. The second half comes we couldn't do diddly dick, we get outscored 19-0, we had about 7 total yards and almost lose but escaple with the 35-32 win. Then we absolutely destroy Boston College 44-0, the game was never in doubt and freshman sensation Benjamin Morrison had a 3 INT day. The three headed monster of Estime, Diggs and Tyree ran for 243 and just murdered BC it was an absolute blood bath. Then we come to maybe the game of the year, the Gator Bowl against the Gamecocks. What a game this was, we had the return of Day 1 starter Tyler Buchner after Drew Pyne had recently announced his decision to enter the transfer portal. This was a fun and holy shit frustrating game. Buchner looked ok, he had 5 total TD's but at the same time threw 3 terrible interceptions and 2 were taken to the house. Again the running game was tremendous and adding Buchner to the mix was great to see. The Irish win an absolute thriller 45-38 and give Marcus Freeman his bowl win as a head coach.


FINAL THOUGHTS:
          I think the Irish are in good hands with coach Freeman. The recent transfer of Wake Forrest QB is absolutely huge. Some key losses may hurt the Irish but good teams don't re-build, the re-load. I don't think It's crazy to say, especially given the new 12 team format that will come into play next college football season that the Irish have a very realistic shot at the CFB playoffs.