Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM FEBRUARY 2026 21 turns out. And freshman kickoff man Erik Schmidt missed a 35-yard field goal. The Irish also missed on a two-point conversion attempt while trying to chase the points they lost with the Bur- nette misfire. Schmidt ultimately did make the final extra point of the game. Between a recurring and chronic hip/ groin injury that caused Burnette to miss half the season, Schmidt's inexpe- rience and Diomede's inconsistencies, Notre Dame converted just 5 field goals all season and only tried 9 of them. Its opposition collectively was 17 of 20. So, it could be argued there were times that Notre Dame's shaky kick- ing game funneled Freeman into a deci- sion to try a fourth-down conversion at times rather than a field goal try, when the latter made more strategic sense. Notre Dame's struggles on fourth down, and fourth-and-short in par- ticular, figured to catch up to the Irish in the College Football Playoff if they didn't find a solution. But the playoff berth never came. The opportunity to build in a more re- liable safety net in 2026, via the transfer portal, should not be ignored. 9. EARLY GROWING PAINS There are scheduling lessons and training camp reformatting opportuni- ties that can help future Notre Dame teams avoid losing control of their des- tiny so early in the season. But a 0-2 start, no matter what con- text follows, means you're counting on help from other teams to salvage play- off consideration and a College Football Playoff committee that may or may not split hairs fairly on Selection Sunday to make the playoff field, even with a 10- game win streak in which every victory was by double digits. And the average margin of victory was 30 points. CJ Carr easing into the elite quarter- back option he turned out to be — No. 5 at the end of the regular season in pass efficiency, with a school-record rating of 168.1 — actually evolved more quickly than expected. It was the early offensive line strug- gles and the defensive regression in the first two and a half games that made each subsequent regular-season game a playoff-elimination scenario and ul- timately enough for the CFP committee to drop the Irish two rankings spots in a six-day span three months later, and out of the 2025 12-team bracket. But what could Freeman and his coaching staff have done to identify those problems earlier and at least made some progress fixing them in August rather than after having them exposed in games? That needs to be part of Free- man's next evolution as a head coach. Because scheduling the high-octane games early is becoming largely un- avoidable. The Irish get a more-man- ageable Wisconsin/Rice combo to start 2026, but in 2028 there are early games with Texas and Arkansas, in 2029 Texas and Alabama, in 2030 Indiana and Ala- bama, in 2031 Clemson and Indiana, in 2032 Florida on the road, and in 2033 Michigan on the road. Constructing a team that can handle early challenges and testing that team to deal with that kind of early-season gristle isn't a luxury. It's a necessity. 8. FRAYING OF THE ACC RELATIONSHIP In concept, Notre Dame's original five- game-a-year commitment to the ACC beginning in 2014 felt a little bit like a T- ball team. Everybody gets an at-bat and everybody gets a snack. And so, the op- portunities to play Notre Dame in those five-game windows being divided equally seemed to work for both sides — at first. But Notre Dame followed a 4-8 divot in 2016 with a powerful renaissance of nine straight seasons with double-dig- its wins and three playoff appearances. In that time, from 2017 to the present, the Irish have played 50 regular-season games against the ACC and have gone 46-4 in them. Meanwhile, the ACC slowly eroded into a league with questionable quality depth, and in 2025 was shaky at the top. A five-loss Duke team won the league title. Formerly perennial power Clemson lost its sixth game of the season Dec. 27 in the Pinstripe Bowl. Florida State went 4-7 after toppling Alabama in its opener. The additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU two seasons have added travel miles for league members but have they added value? Notre Dame has already started the push to change the equitable scheduling policy to angle for more games against the league's traditional powers. That in- cludes an upcoming 12-year standalone series with Clemson, beginning in 2027. But there has to be more of that if Notre Dame is going to be able to beef up its November competition. Meanwhile, the ACC's social media trolling of Notre Dame in November when it came to the Miami-Notre Dame playoff-worthiness debate did "perma- nent damage," according to Irish director of athletics Pete Bevacqua, but it might have also provided a needed nudge for the Irish to explore whether there might be other, better options and a viable legal trap door out of the ACC. Even if the Irish stay, the door is open and the urgency has been established for a redefined working arrangement, moving forward. 7. A LOST VICTORY STREAK FOR THE AGES Notre Dame's 10-game win streak included five victories over ACC foes, by the way. But that it didn't result in a playoff berth erodes some of its oth- erwise historical significance, much in the way the 2005 Bush Push Game over time did when it didn't end up being the moment Fighting Irish football came back onto college football's map for good, as it felt in the moment. And while the competition during the 2025 streak wasn't collectively overly impressive, the improvement Notre Dame made during the streak was, par- ticularly on the defensive side of the ball. How Notre Dame handled the adver- sity of losing its first two games, how it found itself during the streak, and how it re-established the Irish as a top-10 team in every poll but the CFP commit- tee's still matters in building something sustainable for 2026 and beyond. 6. A WIN OVER SOUTHERN CAL AND A LOSS OF TRADITION It's been called a "pause" by both sides, the interruption of a storied cross- country series that started in 1926 and had only previously "paused" because of a World War or a worldwide pandemic. The soon-to-be missing games until at least 2030 — if not for perpetuity — will be attributed to cowardice by much of the Irish fan base and unavoidable logistical snags by the Southern Cal camp. Wher- ever the truth lies between those two ex- tremes, the Trojans' four wins in the last 15 meetings and a 2-12 mark in its last 14 trips into the Eastern and Central time