Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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6 OCT. 19, 2024 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY TYLER HORKA T he list of unbeaten teams in the Week 7 Associated Press Poll was short. Nine of them. That's it. It ought to have had No. 11 Notre Dame feeling a lot better about its position. Undefeated teams are dropping like flies. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman didn't get to tune into the Week 6 carnage that saw five of the top 11 teams in the AP Top 25 suffer a loss, but he was aware of it. Freeman, whose squad previ- ously suffered a loss to unranked Northern Illinois as the No. 5 team in the country, knows as much as anyone about the calamitous chaos that can occur at any time. "As you go back and look at what happened with us against Northern Illinois, there were very similar rea- sonings behind the outcomes," Free- man said. "We have to understand, as a program, as a head coach, our players — hey, these are the areas that really factor into the result of a loss." Easier said than done. One week after Alabama notched the best victory of any team in the sport this season, a 41-34 thriller over Georgia that pushed the Crimson Tide to No. 1 in the AP Top 25, it recorded one of its worst losses of all time with a 40-35 defeat at Vanderbilt. The Commodores had never beaten a No. 1 team before. They lost to Georgia State in Week 3, then clipped the Crim- son Tide three weeks later. Freeman said in September anybody can beat anybody in college football. Irish fans still salty about NIU mocked him for it. Probably the same people mocking Bama, too. Their opinions don't matter as much as Freeman's. Plus, he was right. As a result, all of a sudden the 4-1 Irish were tied with 5-0 Iowa State at No. 11 in the AP Poll, four spots behind the Tide. That set of rankings is not what deter- mines the 12-team College Football Play- off field, but read between the lines. If the media thinks Notre Dame is the 11th- best team in the country, and the Irish are sitting at No. 12 in the Coaches Poll, then ND is knocking on the CFP door. Yep, even with that loss to NIU. The Irish aren't breaking it down yet, though. If the Week 7 AP Poll was used to determine the playoff participants, No. 17 Boise State would have been boosted into the top 12 as the highest- ranked Group of Five projected cham- pion. Notre Dame would have been on the outside looking in. There are two months to settle the score, though. And if there is even one more Saturday like the first one in Octo- ber, let alone two or three or four like it, then Notre Dame will be just fine. That is, if the Irish aren't a part of the chaos. They can't be Alabama or Tennes- see, Missouri or Michigan. They can't be USC. Not again. They have to keep taking care of business while everyone around them crashes and burns. Freeman studied all of those programs' Week 6 losses. The root causes of them, why they weren't able to hold serve against lesser foes, etc. The idea was to find out what happened and avoid making the same miscues. "Use that to attack practice, use that to prepare the right way so that on Saturday we don't let one of those things happen," he said. Freeman is guarding against an- other face-plant the rest of the season. Notre Dame already had its slip-up. The Irish's Vanderbilt mo- ment came against a Mid-Ameri- can Conference opponent it surely should have beaten. Alabama was a 22.5-point road favorite. Notre Dame was a 28-point home favor- ite. Bad, bad, bad losses. But ulti- mately not detrimental to either loser, as long as they end up being each team's only loss of the regular season. Alabama would get into the CFP at 11-1. Notre Dame would get in at 11-1. You can confidently assure each side of that right now in mid-Oc- tober, just as you could before the sea- son started. Could Notre Dame get in at 10-2? It looks like more of a possibility now than it did Oct. 1. In the final pre-bowl CFP rankings of the 2023 season, No. 7 through No. 12 in the poll were two-loss teams. Four of the five didn't play in a conference championship game, which the Irish obviously will not do either. Week 6 reminded us that, yes, win- ning is hard. And if you end up with double digits in the win column in the 12-team playoff era, you're always go- ing to be in the conversation for a seat at the table — even if your schedule isn't burning any barns down on paper. "I think there is going to be a lot of parity moving forward, and it feels good," Notre Dame defensive coordina- tor Al Golden said. "It should be like that. All the games should be challenges. All the games should have a threat." ✦ UNDER THE DOME RIGHT THERE An upset-filled Week 6 in college football has Notre Dame back in the national conversation Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said in September any- one can beat anyone in college football. He was right about that, based on what happened in Week 6. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER