Notre Dame-USC: Is Saturday’s game Marcus Freeman’s most important to date?
Notre Dame isn’t where they thought they’d be seven games into the 2023 season.
Despite having a star quarterback transfer in and it being the second year of Marcus Freeman as a head coach, the Irish are 5-2 after an embarrassing loss at Louisville last weekend.
College Football Playoff and national championship dreams are dashed.
With USC and Clemson awaiting, the chances of a New Year’s Six bowl game appear rather small.
With an unbeaten USC team coming to town Saturday, is this a potential turning point game for Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame?
Let’s examine just how big this game is for the Irish and Freeman, even if it doesn’t carry title implications for them.
Losing a Rivalry
When self-evaluating their own team, Notre Dame fans and observers will always compare the Irish to what their biggest rivals are doing.
USC is the biggest of those rivals and Notre Dame is in jeopardy of doing something to the Trojans that they haven’t done in 14 years:
Losing twice in a row to them.
Say what you want about him and the USC coaches he went up against, but Brian Kelly went 8-3 as Notre Dame’s head coach against the Trojans. Freeman starting 0-2 after falling last year would indicate more than just a slight shift in power in the rivalry.
Program Needs a Burst
Notre Dame was one play and literally inches away from recording one of their biggest wins in decades when they fell to Ohio State in late September.
A few short weeks later we see a team that needed to pull a rabbit out of their hat to win at Duke before getting boat-raced at Louisville last week.
Because of their struggles defensively, much of the nation might not see USC as a realistic national title contender this year. That’s fine and all but they’re still Notre Dame’s biggest rival, come in undefeated, and have the reigning Heisman Trophy winner starting at quarterback.
It wouldn’t be as big of win as the Ohio State came could have been but it’d certainly be significant.
Sign of Things to Come?
It might not mean a national championship or College Football Playoff appearance this year but a win over USC would at least indicate a sign of things to come for Freeman and Notre Dame.
On the contrary, a second loss in a row to the Trojans and falling to 5-3 in a year that was supposed to see a real threat made to make the College Football Playoff, would also be taken as a sign of things to come for Notre Dame and Freeman.
And not in a good way.
Much Left to Play For
Things haven’t gone according to plan for Notre Dame but that doesn’t mean that 2023 is simply a wash. This season marks 30 years since the Irish last won a major bowl game, doing so by beating Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl to conclude the 1993 season.
In order to win a major bowl game you have to get to one. In order to get to one, Notre Dame has to win Saturday night against their biggest rival.
Getting to a major bowl game would also mean Notre Dame likely won 10 regular season games which would be a nice improvement compared to last year’s eight. It’d also show the signs of a team that improved as the year went on, something that clearly hasn’t been the case through the first half of October.
Lose and then what?
A loss to USC would mean a 5-3 record entering the off week and likely a fall from the top 25 rankings.
Perhaps a slight step back would be fair to be expected the first couple of years under Freeman, but entering the final 1/3 of the second season without even being in the top-25 would be a hard pill to swallow.
Then you’re looking at a year where you hope to beat what will likely be an unranked Clemson team as your highlight?
Not great.
And then you enter 2024 with another new quarterback, plenty of the same questions, and little reason to think anything else will be much different.
So please just get it done and put some of these worries to at least a little bit of rest on Saturday.
