You never know how good our respective opponents will be when the schedule is made. But you do know that when you schedule two MAC teams and two service academies that you the rest of the schedule will need to be strong in order to have any semblance of a strong slate. Our toughest game may well be our opener.
This is a shit schedule - embarrassing that ND would play four patsies in one season - and that is all on Jack.
EDIT - multiple typos. clearly i'm off today....
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East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green, Rutgers, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, Mich St, Purdue, Penn St, Maryland, Ohio State, Iowa.
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Because in my book, if we make it to the playoff with a HC in his 3rd year of OJT, any lack of success in the playoff could just as easily be because of the HC or not having the roster fully built up yet.
Also, the bottom third of the schedule is what's really poor, but that is the part of the schedule that should provide needed rest and depth building opportunities...the upper two thirds is what should sharpen our playoff teeth: FSU, @A&M, @USC, Louisville, GaT, @Purdue, UVA, and Stanford..is a pretty decent Top 8
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you'll be more focused on the playoff loss than our trajectory going forward?
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An 11-1 regular season puts him at 30. One playoff win bumps him to 31 wins and two playoff wins gets to 32.
What you said is actually flat out stupid, unless you really believe a guy who averaged 9.5 and 3.5 his first two years is just going to drop off and start going 5-7.
With some luck. Maybe we get a surprise but people like you forget it is Notre Dame Football 2024. Eggs will be laid. They are not championship material.
I get the 31-32 games being a positive….but Kelly used to routinely win 10 games per season and get handled in the bowl games by actual good teams
Agree 10-2 would be a disappointment. The bar is pretty damn high this year. Even I have very high hopes.
Just hate being disappointed (again).
He came in with over 20 years of HC experience but in his first 7 years he only had two 10+ win seasons, going: 8-5, 8-5, 12-1, 9-4, 8-5, 10-3, 4-8...not exactly routine.
Then in his 8th year he was literally minutes from falling to 9-4 when a little known Freshman named Ian Book came in and saved his ass with a last minute miracle TD pass to get him to 10-3.
Then in his next three years he had his most successful stretch at ND with Book as his QB, making the playoff two times in three years with 12-1, 11-2, and 10-2 seasons. Then he scraped out an 11-1 in his 12th year against a schedule even weaker than what we play in '24, .
So yes, he had 10+ his last five years and a very special three year stretch from 2018-2020 in the midst of that, but can you really say he did something routinely when it was only routine for less than half the time he was here?
Notre Dame's all time win % is .730 (the reduced % from games forfeited while Kelly was HC) while Kelly has a .738 win % at ND (if you don't remove the forfeited games which becomes .696 if you remove them).
Kelly's win % was .723 prior to the 2021 season, which means he spent the first 11 years of his time at ND with a lower win % than our all time average (lower than the lowered % from his forfeited games that don't count against him). Meanwhile Freeman in his first two years ever doing this HC thing has a .731 win %.
This is not meant to paint Freeman as some Saint, but let's stop over selling what Kelly accomplished on the field at ND. The reality is if you compare him to every HC we ever hired who came in with prior HC experience, he has the second "Lowest" win % of all of them, only higher than Tyrone Willingham.
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My guess is you are counting the OK State bowl game against him, I am not since he took the job weeks before the game.
BK left prior to Freeman being hired but didn't coach in LSU's bowl, so I don't hold the bowl against Freeman.
But we split hairs. I know generally we are in agreement. I just think a little more highly of Kelly than you do.
Should be an incredible season coming up which will help us ignore the political crap going on.
PS. If you Google “Marcus Freeman record at Notre Dame” I haven’t seen one yet that says 19-7/.731….every single one says 19-8/.704
Splitting hairs but reality…obviously 11-1 will take him to 30-9 and a playoff win and say a loss could get him to 31-10 which would put him over .750
I wonder how different we actually view Kelly as a HC (not as a person).
I believe he is an above average HC in the big picture but by far the best HC we had since Holtz (like not even close) though I do think if O'Leary had been given the chance he would have had great success.
I think Kelly is a great program builder though who would probably be a fantastic AD, and he did tremendous things for our program. I also think he was a good recruiter when he put in the effort, but due to being an off and on lazy recruiter and an above average game day coach, he was not going to take us any further than he already had.
I actually want to see him do well at LSU…likely not many on here agree with me….i think he’s starting to get a hotter seat at LSU…I am sure they have very, very high expectations for him
what we need to see this season.
I don't want to see him succeed at LSU though, but that's only because of my view of him as a person.
I don't like it. But it is what it is. That is MF's biggest challenge in re-establishing ND's
credibility as one of the hyper-Elite programs.
Of course in the age the of Portal, NIL and player contracts I don't know what the upper
bound is for the ND program. Maybe even Lou or Rockne would hit the wall of soft
corruption by maintaining ND's standard of academic integrity.
been his problem to this point.
IMO, us beating more highly ranked teams under MF points to his upside while losing to lesser teams points to his inexperience. Having IT as a HC is something you either do or you don't, but experience only comes with time.
I was against the Freeman hire and I'm still against hiring HCs without prior experience in principle. However, there's that lightning strike exception to every rule. I don't think we really know yet if MF is that exception, but the arrow is pointing in the right direction and if he wins 12-14+ in only his third year I'll feel pretty confident that we have The Guy.
So yes, the total number of wins does matter, plus keep playing up against top teams while reducing letdowns vs lesser opponents, and continuing to improve recruiting cycle upon cycle...then you turn the corner as a dominant program and break through into the top tier.
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But this conference realignment might play havoc on the schedule for a few years.
Also, with a 12 team playoff SOS might just come down to last couple of teams in.
I don’t know
Makes this very hard. Most power 5 teams want a home and home. Given our ACC tie in, USC, navy there aren’t many options. We need a strong acc conference. These MAC and other lower tier teams will take the check to come to south bend without a return visit.
This schedule is awful but I think it’s going to be common until the sport changes into super conferences. Then all bets are off. It’s all about the money
The bottom third of this year's schedule is as bad as I have ever remembered.
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opportunities.
Eventually, it will probably be what forces ND into a conference.
But the ability to schedule the great games of a decade ago are not there anymore…..look at Lincoln Riley’s comments if you don’t believe me.
We're supposed to draw something from the comments of a Trojan coach who may not have a job at season's end and has zero influence on USC scheduling.
Such a tired old line, that conference realignment will 'force' ND to join a conference. Wrong 30, 20 and 10 years ago, wrong now.
Conference realignment didn't force us to drop Michigan. That was all on Jack. Let me know when any AD says 'no' to a guaranteed full house and great national TV ratings.
It takes leadership. There's a reason why Game Day's first broadcast this season will be ND.
Or we can just aspire to make the Jack-led, watered down playoff, collect our participation trophy and watch the same teams there in the end.
Michigan's AD had made statements indicating that they planned to drop the ND series the following year. The contract was written such that the timing of the withdrawal by either side would determine where the last games were played. Swarbrick handed UM's AD the notification of withdrawal famously on the field before the game at ND stadium so as to get 2 of the three final games at home (and again, the series was going to be cancelled regardless by them). In replacement, Swarbrick scheduled a home and away with OSU.
Now, to your point: I want enough good teams on the schedule to avoid the questioning of our SoS. This year, Northern Illinois was a replacement game (can't recall who it replaced - sry). The schedule has TA&M, Louisville, FSU, and USC. We now have the same number of tomato cans on the schedule as the other teams that vie for the title.
Aside from cheating, what was the other key component to UM's championship* year? They dropped Arkansas and UCLA from their schedule. Look at Alabama's regular season schedules. Look at Georgia's schedule last year. Tomato cans are part of the formula - keep yourself healthy, work out kinks through the year, get plenty of rest and prep before big games - it minimizes the risk of a week to week slip up. Last year's ND schedule was ridiculously hard with 4 straight night games on national TV against highly ranked opponents....one of them being during midterm week. It wasn't necessarily the teams we played, it was the schedule lay out.
We are becoming more restricted now that teams in the two meg conferences are getting big money already, and they don't want an additional hard game now that their conferences has more dangerous opponents. It doesn't mean that we can't do better than this year's schedule, but I don't think this year's schedule is far off (and it may be perfect depending on how good the teams mentioned above turn out to be).
...and the MAC teams are better than a number of the teams on last year's schedule. FSU could very well be Top 10 when they come to South Bend. Mich played exactly 2 decent teams last year (and really only one very good one).
a series with a team that's in the same conference and should be playing on a rotational basis anyways?
Swap out Miami did army and the schedule wouldn’t be as bad.
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your point.
Those seasons the Irish scheduled AF, Navy, and Army in the same season. ND took a little light hearted ridicule at the time. Irish fans were not thrilled.