Northern Illinois 16 Notre Dame 14 all right let's crack some Knuckles Ty let's crack that neck let's really diing deep into this this should be like a an intellectual shiatsu situation with your Notre Dame fandom listen we've done this show forever we know how this works when Notre Dame loses Oregon could lose by the time all of said and done but yeah suffice to say when Notre Dame loses there is an influx of sadists who show up at the door and download this show and want to hear my pain so you're going to get it well today it's I'm going to the floor is yours Ty of course but I must say the context coming into this game was just like hey join a conference you beat your one team and now you got nobody left on the schedule before not sorry it was just such specific the red carpet was laid out like in an impeccable way now and all week leading up to this game not leading up to this game but I would say following the A&M game yeah you saw it I saw it if you went on social media if you follow anybody on College in college football Twitter wherever everyone was talking about the graphic that ESPN put up on one of its shows and across its socials giving Notre Dame something like a 22% chance to finish the season 12-0 they were they were the most probable college football team period to finish 12 and0 talk about Trot and a black cat out there yeah so this game today started off as a hangover morphed quickly into a clunk ER and then ended up as perhaps the biggest shocker that we were going to see all college football season long Northern Illinois won this game again 16 to 14 I was high on NIU in the preseason you know this yeah and I believe my preview at the time was if they get a quarterback they they could challenge for the Mac uh they've got a defense they've got Playmakers they get a quarterback maybe they can make things interesting in the Mac outside of Miami Ohio and Toledo what I did not say is that they would beat Notre freaking Dame this one I did not expect so I give a lot of credit to Tom hammock I want to give it credit where it's due if you watched any of the postgame stuff the dude was crying it clearly meant a lot to him they talked on the broadcast about how it was his dream job etc etc I'm I'm happy for him as a podcast host and somebody who tries to maybe detach from that situation yeah but Dan yeah walk me through it come on there is no way no way a team with Notre Dame's Talent a team with Notre Dame's pedigree a team of Notre Dame's caliber should go into this game against Northern Illinois and come out having been that outplayed you're not paying Mike Dem brck a bunch of money for that output right they're paying Mike Dem Brock a ton of money dud yeah they're paying a ton of money for this football progr program just in general sure and Notre Dame got worked in the trenches Notre Dame got out gained by a 100 yards there was no urgency on offense Riley Leonard never looked comfortable it wasn't exactly a good commercial for the Manning Passing Academy now was it no no not at all I'd like to know what the game plan was that's where I'm at with this CU I've watched the postgame pressers and I've read the postgame writeups and I've obviously been out there in the Twitter sphere however quietly because I'm not I'm not waiting into those murky Waters after what I watched earlier today but somebody's got to tell somebody what the damn game plan was because to my untrained eye it didn't look like there was much of one or there was one and then when it didn't work they didn't have something else reminded me a lot of Jared Parker was he calling the plays did he hack the radio it felt a lot like they were unable to adapt to what was going on around them and that was really frustrating I got to a point in the fourth quarter where I'm thinking is this a marshall Redux from 2022 it felt it had all the same Vibes of that game where it's there for Notre Dame you know they should be able to win this game you know they've got the players by the way that team wasn't as good as this team and yet they still could not get over the hump and so that's bothersome Dan that is really bothersome and the thing that I kept coming back to as I'm reading all of this stuff out there on the interwebs is look you get a new coach as Notre Dame did now two seasons ago this is a year three under Marcus Freeman let me just jump in Oran just scored a touchdown and D an extra point that's fun it's fun to watch same page here we're on the same page this is we're bathing in the disappointment jacuzzi continue anytime you get a new coach it's a journey and I don't care if you're Alabama starting over with kayin dor or if you're uh Nevada with Jeff Cho all right everybody's got their own different Journey but along the way you you you and fans know this you have these press conferences that you watch and these and these beat writers that you read and the coaches often talk about the things they learn along the way especially if it's a newer coach we learn that lesson we need to be better as coaches right it's on us we take responsibility Brian Kelly never said that that's not his thing but Marcus Freeman said it a million times over and what bothers me the most more than anything yeah is it happened again the same stuff when it happens over and over and over again that's what drives me crazy I can deal with a loss even if it's to Northern Illinois yeah but lose in a different way please don't again get to this point where it feels like you're stuck in the mud and install or going in reverse and you can't adjust and it feels like it's there and nobody has any urgency or any plan to get him out of the muck and that was the rub on Marcus Freeman coming into this season yeah maybe not specifically that but people questioned rightly what is this guy learning as an ingame coach is he getting better ingame we know they're recruiting is Gang Busters we know the assistant hires have been Elite great he's done a good job on that front but what about in-game when when the rubber meets the road on game day what happens this is what happens 1614 so they have no one to blame but themselves for this it's incredibly frustrating it's been hours now after this damn game I'm still losing my mind over it because I cannot believe it happened yeah and now I got to deal with all of the feedback that has come in I'm spitting here I'm going crazy on the Reverb line on the text line which I did finally disable the notifications by the way oh congrats thank you I figured out how to do it but the emails the tweets all that stuff has been pouring in and now it's going to be this this caca of folks who love to pile on Notre Dame I get it and we're going to now have this full season long conversation about what it's going to take to get Notre Dame into a playoff is it possible without being in that conference as you mentioned earlier you talking about this year I'm talking about this year yeah how can you even Broach that conversation I'm I'm not broaching it I'm saying this is where the conversation will go now for the remainder of the Year CU inevitably they're going to beat somebody by like 72 points and it's like well no didn't look pretty good this week everyone around them's losing and it's 12 teams and they could still I'm going to have to deal with this all year now and I just uh I'm not looking forward to that conversation because they lost to NIU and I for my money you lose to a team like that that should be a disqualifier I agree yet I'm GNA have to deal with this conversation all year and as a fan I'd almost rather just be over with and let's move on and don't make me deal with that conversation I'd love for him to be in the playoff but I I can't even think about it right now Drew Pine would never have let this happen never