Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 26, 2024 29 F or the first time in the M a rc u s Fre e m a n e ra , Notre Dame is 6-1. Bet- ter yet, the Irish feel like a 6-1 team. They've won five games in a row with an average mar- gin of victory of 30.2 points during that streak. Sure, the schedule has been weak. But there is nothing Freeman and Co. can do about it. All they can do is go out and put a whooping on their opposition, and that's exactly what they're doing. They did it again in 31-13 fashion against Georgia Tech at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Would have been 31-7 if not for a late Yellow Jackets touchdown for pride's sake. Freeman took pride in the 31 consecutive points his team scored to put the game away. There wasn't any let- ting up. "I don't look at the finish line," Freeman said. "I don't look at that. The minute I feel like we got the game in the bag, then your players [do too]. We just stay in the moment. Stay in the mo- ment. The minute you start thinking that way, you got to remind yourself, 'Get back in the moment.'" On a day when the No. 1 team in the country lost by 15 points at home and fell to that same record next to Notre Dame's name, and the team that beat 'em improved to that same exact record, too, the Irish got on a plane headed from Atlanta to South Bend thinking one thing. Or maybe not. Scratch that. Free- man wouldn't let his guys think that one thing. But plenty of people are definitely thinking it about them. One-loss Notre Dame is right in the thick of the national picture in this col- lege football season. That sentence could be untrue as soon as a week from now after the Irish face undefeated Navy (6-0) at MetLife Stadium. The Midshipmen are for real and possess the power to ruin every- thing Notre Dame has worked to get back in the month and a half since los- ing to Northern Illinois. But if the Irish notch another ranked win, lean even further into foreign, un- explored territory as far as the overall record goes and go into bye week No. 2 with a clear path to 11-1 right in front of them with games against Florida State (1-6), Virginia (4-3), Army (7-0) and USC (3-4). Obviously, the other service academy is the biggest impediment to Notre Dame pulling off its first 11-win regular season since 2021, Freeman's first season with the program. But ex- ercise the same thought process we just did for the Navy game — imagine a world in which Notre Dame does go to a neutral-site venue, with more athletic, more highly touted players than the op- ponent and does what it needs to do to get on the plane with a comfortable vic- tory secured? At that point, assuming the Irish hold serve at home against the Semi- noles and Cavaliers, they'd be one win over a Trojans team that currently has a losing re- cord away from doing what hardly anyone thought possi- ble in mid-September — run- ning the table and emphati- cally punching a ticket to the College Football Playoff. Hardly anyone does not mean everyone. That's be- cause the belief in the room hardly ever wavered. Notre Da m e , f ro m Fre e m a n o n down, always knew it had a talented, special team. What it needed to prove to itself and everyone else was that it could show up in that way week in and week out. It has, for the most part, in five straight games. All it has to do is do it in five more. Then the Irish would be playing mean- ingful December football for sure. Freeman said he recently showed his team a video of a girl running a track and field hurdles race. She got slowed up by the sec- ond obstacle. She got back in the race, though, and ended up winning it. Notre Dame got knocked down by its second obstacle this season. Liter- ally. The Northern Illinois loss was the Irish's second game of the year. Now the Irish are back in the race and competing with a purpose. Who knows, they just might end up winning it. "That's life; you're going to hit some hurdles," Freeman said. "You gotta get up and spring through the finish line." To be clear, Freeman isn't looking at the finish line. He said so himself. It's not in sight yet anyway. But Notre Dame is certainly getting closer to it, and the Irish are not out of the running either. ✦ The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have won five straight games and are 6-1 for the first time during the three-year Marcus Freeman era. PHOTO BY MATT RUDOLPH The Irish Are Five Wins Away From Something Special 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