Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 21, 2024 31 F ool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. Notre Dame wants it no other way than for the shame to be fully on itself. Just that once. The Fighting Irish don't want to fool anyone again. Not this season, anyway, if they can help it. The foolery, of course, is tied to Notre Dame's 16-14 home loss to Northern Illinois in Week 2. Head coach Marcus Freeman's team did as much as it could to rid the nasty taste left in its mouth from that re- sult with one that couldn't be any more opposite — a 66-7 pounding of Purdue. "It wasn't that we made more mistakes last week than we made this week," Freeman said. "It's the sense of urgency to correct them, the mindset, and ultimately, got to go do it on the game day like we did today." If we've learned anything about these Fighting Irish in the first fourth of the season, though, it's that we cannot trust them to be on top of their game to that degree every week. They left College Station on top of the college football world after a Week 1 win over then- No. 20 Texas A&M only to be the subject of the college football world's biggest and most hysterical joke for the Week 2 home loss to NIU. That brings us to Week 3 and the wid- est margin of defeat ever delivered to the Boilermakers in the history of their formerly passable program. Nobody's ever beat 'em worse than Freeman's guys, a group once again thinking the only team that can take it down is the one in the mirror. "We are who we are," senior quarter- back Riley Leonard said. "We're a great football team. When we prepare nor- mally and don't listen to anything ex- ternal, that's just who we are as a foot- ball team." Be careful there, QB1. You've been down this road before. Freeman admitted to the media on the Monday prior to the Purdue game the Irish got caught up in their own head- lines coming out of the A&M triumph. They were the toast of the town. They avoided anything anyone had to say about them like the plague coming out of the NIU game because everyone was laughing at them and not with them, though, and what happened? Fifty-nine point victory. Coincidence? Probably not. Notre Dame spent seven days wanting nothing more than play a near-perfect football game, focusing more on itself than who it had to do that against, and the byproduct was a near-perfect foot- ball game. Funny how that works. Make no mistake, though; the Irish did know who they were playing and they did know what they wanted to do to that certain intrastate foe. To their delight, mission accomplished. "Don't underestimate your opponent," Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love said. "If your opponent is projected to be not better than you, that should give you more motivation to just domi- nate them even more. Make your team look even better than what peo- ple say. Just play your hardest, that's all I've got to say." Motivation. Not compla- cency. There's a stark differ- ence. Notre Dame had the for- mer and rid itself of the latter. If Leonard and Love are right, if all the Irish have to do is look in that mirror instead of at their social media apps, if all they have to do is prepare for every opponent like they're an Aggies team playing in front of 107,000-plus home fans in a seismic season opener, then that's what they should do week in and week out. Blowout victories are entirely worth un- plugging and the monotony of investing every ounce of heart and soul into a unified, com- plementary game plan. "It's a choice that we all have to make as individuals," Free- man said. "It's my job to make sure that we have a culture that doesn't accept anything less than that. "At the end of the day, it has to be a choice that we all make, no matter who our opponent is, no matter what success or failure we had the previous week, that obviously the performance is a reflection of the preparation and the mindset, physically and mentally. We had the right one today." Let's wrap this up a little differently than the way it started, actually. Ev- erything three of Notre Dame's most central figures said should speak more volumes than some cheesy cliché. If everyone buys back into this Notre Dame football team only for it to lay an- other dud like it did against NIU, then shame on the Irish. It's not the fans' fault for wanting to believe, and it's the job of the team to walk the walk after talking the talk. There's always the option of not fooling anyone again. That's best for all involved. ✦ Head coach Marcus Freeman's team earned back benefit of the doubt with a dominating win at Purdue, but can't afford another dud like the one against Northern Illinois in Week 2. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER Time For The Irish To Walk The Walk Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA