Carr's worst ND performance + Ash's too complex D + The emergence of Greathouse? + Kellybrock O

There's really no other way to say it than we got whipped last night. We were lucky to get out of there and still have a chance to win.

A few glaring things:

1. Special teams did its job
2. The Offensive line did its job. We seemed to generally run the ball easily, regardless of the stats.
3. Maybe this was the game Greathouse finally woke up and came back to life? Hopefully??

The Unfortunate:

1. By far, this was CJ Carr's worst game in an Irish uniform. He easily left 11 points on the board. Wildly missed Faison for a TD on the first drive. Wildly missed the TE on another wide open TD. And of course, the fumbled snap. That's 4, 4, 3 = 11 points. In addition, he was uncharacteristically erratic all night long. Almost all of his back corner fades weren't even in the field of play. Often, Carr looked like he was aiming it and not throwing it. Happy feet and shotputting it or short-arming it at times. On the plus side, he avoided a couple of key sacks and did put the last drive together. With any of the above, you hit a late field goal and win. Not bashing Carr, he's just been lackluster in the only big games we've had TxAM, Miami, BYU. He's less "ready" than we perceive.

2. I'm not sold on Ash. Admittedly, never have been. His D's have way too many soft spots in them and good teams have killed us over the middle at will since he arrived. Moore has even looked out of sync and confused a lot this year. That's uncharacteristic. Maybe he was still hurt, but he looked lost more than once last night. Almost every drive, last night, this year, and since the atrocious beginnings last year, the DBs have their heads turned around, can't figure out where to line up, are flailing and waving their arms in confusion pre-snap, and overall just look out of sync on a majority of plays. It's too complex, and we are half as good in zone as we are in man. Ash is a masked VanGorder situation.

Couple these two together and look at the outcomes. We've played four games in the last two years. Texas A&M, Miami, USC (maybe), BYU. Carr wasn't great in any of those (USC, we leaned heavily on Love and Price - the KO return changed the game). Ash was worse against TAMU and Miami, which drew whatever ended up being the outcome of the closed-door meeting that righted the ship for the remainder of the season - against much lesser teams.

3. The Denbrock offense is what we thought it was. A glorified Kelly offense. Pretty plain and suspect of trying to get cute in big games by playing it overly vanilla. There is nothing that sparks emotion in Denbrock's offense in a big game against the big boys. See: TAMU, Miami, BYU. Sure, it won 16 games. Primarily, it works well against the lower half of the ACC and a few MAC teams. Is there even a difference between the two? In the big games, there's not enough there, and we end up playing catch-up at a slower than normal pace. Kelly ball 2.0 hasn't proven the ability to put us ahead and in control. Not without a fullback playing QB, anyway. Case in point: the series of play calls with 9 minutes to go and two gifts from God by BYU. The dumb fake punt and the muffed punt. Red zone and third-down atrocities are a bigger signal than we give credit. They tell us about the ineptness of Denbrock.

Watching plenty of other top-10 matches this season and this top-10 matchup last night has me wondering if ND really has a chance. This team has plenty of talent, but we are confused on D. The O is sluggish, and overall we look much less aggressive than the other top 10 teams. Fortunately, everyone lost yesterday, so it masks the cracks, but they are there.

The motto in 2026 was "Leave No Doubt" with only two games on the schedule I don't think we did it. If we go 0-2 again this year, the only way we get in the playoffs is by others losing. And that's likely a big if.