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You DO NOT want a "murderer's row" to establish your greatness during the regular season any longer. That is simply not optimal.

The regular season schedule needs to maximize your chances for the playoffs and, ideally, your team health when (if) you get there.

The perfect schedule gets you in (ideally with a bye while it is at 12 participants) and has your team arrive there as healthy as possible. (It is hard to predict the fortunes of all 12 opponents in advance.)

You do not want to limp in having survived a war of attrition.

If the Irish get in, their schedule this year was just fine. (Sorry, but it achieved the goal.)

If the Irish do not get in...the schedule was slightly too weak on the back end to recover from the sin of opening with 2 losses (which should not have happened)...but it was damned close.

The sweet spot would have had one more top ranked opponent in November this year...but conference powers will NOT want to play the Irish outside of their conference schedule (or maybe local rivalry) later in the year generally. USC used to help provide that every other year...and Stanford did, at least on occasion,...though those days seem less likely now. (The SEC typically schedules FCS and cupcakes prior to their "rivalry games".)

(To that end I was at least happy to see Miami slated for November next year. I was very concerned they were trying to push it towards a Week 0 game.)