SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Maybe Marcus Freeman saw what was happening right in front of him, maybe he didn’t. And it doesn’t really matter what Notre Dame’s head coach witnessed in the aftermath of Notre Dame’s 31-24 victory over Louisville that felt like too much to process in the moment anyway.
Dozens of Notre Dame’s players — Aneyas Williams, Jeremiyah Love and Christian Gray to name a few — jawed with the Louisville players retreating toward the visitors tunnel. Williams charged at the Louisville roster before coming back to the herd. Gray flashed an upside-down L with his hand, basically an off-brand Horns down. Love did a backflip before gesturing toward the Cardinals, many of them talking right back.
“Didn’t see it,” Freeman said. “I just ran to shake Coach’s hand. I’m sure they’re competitors, everybody is competitors. I’m sure they talk a little mess to each other between both sides of the ball. Nothing I was aware of.”
Loving this win#GoIrish ☘️ pic.twitter.com/5I30dFdybj
— The Fighting Irish (@FightingIrish) September 29, 2024
It doesn’t matter what Freeman saw after the game because of what he’d watched the three-plus hours prior. Notre Dame earned the right to give it back to Louisville, the byproduct of Saturday afternoon and last season when the Cardinals blew the Irish off the field during the fourth quarter. Notre Dame probably felt like Louisville had this coming, which is different than saying the Irish would be capable enough to give it, especially after fumbling away the opening kickoff.
In case you haven’t noticed, Notre Dame’s season has hardly been a model of efficiency. Saturday was the third home game of the season and the first when the Irish weren’t lustily booed. This was Riley Leonard’s fifth game as starting quarterback and his first with multiple touchdown passes — connections with Jaden Greathouse and Love — meaning the Duke transfer is up to three. And Notre Dame’s defense was ripped apart by injury, losing Gray, Benjamin Morrison, Josh Burnham, Jack Kiser and Boubacar Traore for stretches, but still ended the game with a stop. It’s not clear if it will get Traore back at all this year but the others should be back in the lineup after the bye.
Too much flicker, not enough flame.
Too much noise, not enough signal.
And yet, maybe for the first time all year, Notre Dame showed what it might be into October and beyond. If the Texas A&M game was a rock fight, beating Louisville let Notre Dame flex, even if just for a second. The Irish showed the muscles we thought would be committed to memory by now.
The Leonard who ran Notre Dame’s offense to start the game with three straight touchdown drives didn’t manage plays, he commanded the team. He threw on the run. He took deep shots. He was more than a willing runner on the ground. He was everything — even for a quarter — that Notre Dame thought it was getting out of the transfer portal last winter. This was the Leonard that Freeman imagined in the College Football Playoff, even if he didn’t exactly admit as much.
“That’s the offense I want to see,” Freeman said. “That’s a perfect drive on offense. It’s not just about Riley. We ran the ball well, too. Thought our whole entire offense did (a) really, really good job on the first drive.”
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After four games of hoping Leonard could do this, Notre Dame finally got to see it. An ultra-efficient Leonard may have just been a quarter-long glimpse, but it was at least something Freeman can show offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock and demand to see more. To date, Leonard has been limited to handing off in College Station, running wild in West Lafayette and getting booed in Notre Dame Stadium. This was better than all that. This was reason for hope in a season that was draining the program’s supply, even if Notre Dame went dormant on offense between the first and fourth quarters.
Still, the success Notre Dame found against Louisville was more than handing off to Love, to Jadarian Price, and hoping they break two or three tackles en route to the end zone. Against the Cardinals, the Irish had to get creative on the call sheet more than hoping for a spark of athleticism brilliance. Denbrock schemes receivers open. He broke type with Leonard’s 34-yard completion to Jayden Harrison, going long in a spot where Notre Dame had put four games of going short on tape. And Denbrock dialed up the perfect screen for the win, that 32-yard throwback.
Leonard ➡️ Love#GoIrish☘️ pic.twitter.com/IiM8z1WaEm
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) September 28, 2024
“No better feeling as a quarterback than when your coach just calls a play and you know it’s going to work,” Leonard said. “We called a couple there. Shout out to the coaches there. Those are easy plays to execute and we did it.”
Notre Dame is still a work in progress. And it’s made less progression than anyone expected through the season’s first month. And yet, Notre Dame won’t face a more difficult opponent between now and the finale at USC. The Irish have two bye weeks, two service academies and no true roadblocks between now and then.
Despite how disorientating that loss to Northern Illinois was for Freeman and everyone else, it doesn’t need to turn Notre Dame’s path to the postseason to ash. The Irish aren’t what we thought they were last spring, last summer or even heading home from Texas A&M. The Irish no longer look like a program capable of not just making the CFP, but making some noise when it gets there. Maybe that perspective changes during the coming two months. Or maybe Notre Dame is a scratch-and-claw team that overestimated its ability against Northern Illinois but knows how to play within itself now.
It’s hard to know what to make of the Irish right now. But what they showed Saturday felt like the moment Notre Dame showed who it could really be for the long term. That starts with Leonard. It doesn’t stop there, though. The quarterback, who said he subbed out after getting the wind knocked out of him, admitted he needs to get healthy during the bye week. Still, he’s now more a quarterback with athleticism than an athlete trying to play quarterback.
Maybe this all feels like grasping at straws considering Notre Dame’s offense continues to rank among the sport’s worst at the same time as Alabama and Georgia were up and down the field almost at will. Still, there are finally green shoots of a playbook with Leonard at the controls and Denbrock on the call sheet. It took longer than anyone wanted or Notre Dame needed. But it feels like it might finally be here.
(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
