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Oh yeah, because I can smell dinner. Okay. Dinner's a cooking. Dinner's a cooking. The wife has been busy today, choppin' and makin' side. Smells good, Sean. So I am absolutely ready for wrapping fire. I had myself a nice cold meatloaf sandwich when I got back from Cleveland. One of my favorites. Really? My well-made some meatloaf for the weekend. Cold meatloaf sandwich. Meatloaf! Very tasty. Ma! We need the meatloaf. Meatloaf! Want it now? That's great. Fill in the blank. The word that best describes Notre Dame football right now is blank. Trouble. Aaron, trouble. They gotta make some decisions here, and they don't have it. Look, here's the other thing. Those decisions don't have to be made so that we know that they're being made in the moment, but I need to see the outcome. You know what I mean? They don't have to share with the media some of the stuff they're doing behind the scenes. It's none of our dang business, right? But I need to see a lot of difference when they run out of whatever they run out of it Purdue at Ross AIDS Stadium. I don't think it's a tunnel, but they come out the horseshoe part there. But the point being, I need to see something completely different on Saturday. So they're in trouble right now. It's a good thing Notre Dame doesn't have a big dumb drum that they have to come out of a tunnel with so they, you know, Purdue would ban it. But you'll see that big drum. Maybe they'll like ban the leopard band or something. Wouldn't that be something? They should do something like that, just to do it. My word for Notre Dame is questionable. You know, Marcus Freeman, like challenge everything, you know, basically a form of question every way. And it's just all questionable right now. Again, how they were going to handle this kind of thing, how they were going to perform week to week against a schedule that everyone has been saying since before the season ever started since last year when we started looking at the schedule that this was a completely winnable schedule and easy schedule, all this different stuff. How are they going to handle it? And all it took was one week to find out, not good at all. And so everything is in question right now, Marcus Freeman, again, Marcus Freeman is in question. Yeah. Riley, what is in question? The offense is in question. The defense is even a question again. Yeah. Defense only gave up 16 points, but are you making winning plays? Right. So somebody mentioned the 2012 team and how they basically won with defense and in a running team basically on offense. But the difference and it's, you know, when I think of 2012, certain things come to mind, right, goal line stand against Stanford, you know, things like that. That defense made plays when it mattered, whether the offense was scoring points or not or enough, they made plays in crunch time. This defense had an opportunity to make plays at crunch time and they didn't do it, right? I realized that more is asked of the defense when the offense isn't holding up its end of things, but still you had five minutes and 24 seconds to make a couple of plays and you weren't able to make one able to do it. And I get the time of possession. I think was 10 minutes or so in favor of Northern Illinois, I get all of that and they're on the field a lot. But part of that is the defense's fault because they couldn't get off the field earlier in the game when they look, there's no excuse for being tired in week two. I'm sorry. There's no excuse for being tired. It wasn't hot out, right? It was a beautiful day to be honest with you. Yeah. There's no excuse. Low 60s. Yeah. You were getting blown off the ball, all game, not just at the end when you've been on the field longer that that's a tired excuse to me. Well, the offense is putting them back on the field and they don't have any time to rest. Well, you know who can get themselves off the field, the defense and they didn't do it. So plenty of blame to go around, but do not compare this defense right now based on what I saw on Saturday with, sorry, I'm sorry nerd for life. He says they are zero blame 16 points to zero yards. They gave up a hundred and ninety rushing yards at five yards a pop. There's a reason Northern Illinois won the game and it was because they gave up a hundred and ninety rushing yards. They were pushed around seriously, the interior of the defensive line was pushed around the entire game and that that that is a that was a huge factor in why they lost. You can talk about points all you want, stats are for losers, like you got to make them say whatever you want to make winning plays when it's time to make winning plays. I'm sorry, yes, correct. Third downs, Northern Illinois converted six third downs, Notre Dame converted three fourth downs, Northern Illinois one for two and a very crucial fourth down conversion at that. Sorry. And you know how many you want to have yards a game that Northern Illinois gave up on the ground last year? You can say that nerd for life, but they also lost the game by points. Yeah. Northern Illinois gave up a hundred and seventy eight yards a game last year on the ground. I mean, I'm sorry, they gained a hundred and seventy eight yards on the ground. They gained more yards on the ground against Notre Dame's vaunted defense than they did on average in the Mac last year. So there's your stat right there, man. Like, that's not okay. That's not okay. Tommy, great point. You don't get points if you can't get yards. And that's how they got, that's how Northern Illinois got whatever points they were able to get because they were able to get it's not all about points. The defense looked like frickin keystone cups. They look like Keystone cop. They they made more explosive plays as well. Marcus Freeman started off the press conference talking about that Northern Illinois, a Mac team made more explosive plays than Texas A&M made against Notre Dame last week, including they look like Keystone cops on that pass play. Now a flukey play, but it's a touchdown like so you can talk about yards and whatever all you want. If Notre Dame makes a play on that, we are having a different conversation, but they didn't make a play on the ball in that situation and it turned into a touchdown. Yeah, just honestly, Daniel says it perfectly and I agree with this wholeheartedly, third down wasn't where the defense lost it. It was second down. How do you stop a running offense? You put them in third and long and Notre Dame just couldn't do it even when everyone knew what was coming. This is so spot on because they actually Notre Dame was really good on first down, Sean. They were in second and long a lot Northern Illinois that is their offense was in second and long a lot and they converted or got it to third and short almost every single time and then had no problem converting third and short because they were blowing Notre Dame off the line. That's the problem. That's the problem. That's why they eight clock and so you people can say 16 points all they want. That doesn't matter to me. They had a chance to win the game and they didn't do it. That's it. The game was on the line and they didn't make enough plays now to the offense now. There's plenty of blame to go around, but don't tell me the defense gets no blame in this. Right. You have to play off that. It's complimentary football. You have to play on both sides of the ball to what's going on on the other side of the ball. Yeah, you're asking your defense to make more plays, but look, they just weren't making consistent plays. You know, again, I talked about this earlier in the show. You can say, well 190 rushing yards. It's 190 rushing yards and it's five yards a carry and Ontario Brown again, like when the defense had to tackle him and make it second down in eight or whatever it happened to be, he's getting five, you know, four, five extra yards after the first contact and all of a sudden it's third and two, you know, like, like they had to play better. Right. You can, you can, you can keep shouting 16 points. It's not going to make a difference. I'm sorry. It's like yelling at a wall. This picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over five million active members. Prize picks is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. 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Williams and Ford each had to carry a piece, but here's Marcus Freeman talking about the, I guess, strategy, the approach to why those guys weren't maybe out there more. I mean, when you have back to back three and outs and then you, I think the one interception drive we had four plays, that's going to affect the amount of carries that we can give our running backs. And so, you know, we got to be more efficient on first down and more efficient on first and second down, really, so we can create more plays, right? That's part of that, you know, time of possession. They did a good job of, even though they, we held them in the field goals, like they did a good job of moving the chains and we got to do a better job of that because three and outs or four plays in interception, it limits your opportunities for anybody to drop back or to run the ball for any offensive play. Again, I know nobody wants to hear anything Marcus Freeman has to say right now, but he was talking about how they moved the chains. They kept the chains. I mean, they kept the ball away from Notre Dame. I'm going to get to the second one specifically here in a minute, but fifteen carries combined for Jeremiah Love and Jadarion Price. How do they not have combined for 30 carries? Right. In a game like this, where I leaned over to you, I believe, after they scored that second touchdown, I was like, okay, Notre Dame is finally offensively leaning on Northern Illinois. They're running the ball, you know, they're doing things that are that they should be doing. They're eating clock. They're running the ball. They're leaning on Northern Illinois. This is good stuff. This is what they need to be doing. And then they didn't play those guys anymore. And it's like, you guys aren't watching the same game we're watching, like you finally had success on offense, and then you just go away from it, and it made no sense whatsoever. I agree. And, you know, if you're having that much problem running the ball, I realize again, Northern Illinois is giving you a stacked box, you know, box looks and all that different kind of stuff. But Notre Dame, it felt like when they really wanted to, especially that there were a couple runs up the middle behind those three big, you know, beefy guys that were pretty successful, right? It seemed like nerd for life. Thank you for the super chat. He says, I still go back to the play call on the bomb that was intercepted. No, the situation, your quarterback has not thrown well all game, run it, move the clock, or make them burn time out. The game is with Ohio State on the screen. And this was part of what I wanted to talk to you about, Vince, the decision to throw rather than run on second and one, and we're going to get, you know, more into the analytics guy here in a minute as well. I realize second and one, that is a, that is a down in distance that typically you want to throw the ball on second one, because if it's incomplete, like you said, if it's incomplete, clock stops. Okay, that's not great, but you still come back and it's third and one. And from where you are and where the game is, you probably, you know, you, you, you probably have two plays to get a first down if you decide, but the decision to throw instead of pass on second one, in that case, Vince, was blank. Was fine. I don't really have a problem with the decision to throw. I really don't because he literally had a guy standing right in front of him that was wide open with the bloody around him almost could have reached out like, I, I, I really have no problem with the, with the call. I really don't because, and he had three different guys open. He had a guy right in front of him. He had a guy right behind him and he had a guy over on the right side and he decided to throw to the post. Now that was the wrong read. You throw to the, if you throw to that post, the, the safety was dropping to the post. It was basically the post was double covered, right? And he left the guy that was on the deep dig wide open. To me, that's who you throw at you. You throw it to the deep dig because it's, I mean, again, wide open. So, and you probably would have gained 20 yards on that play. If not a little bit more, you break one tackle and you never know what happens. So I really don't have a problem with the play call. I would have called a pass in that position. I would have because it's second in one. You take a shot and you come back and you run it. I know you and I are not going to agree on this and now I totally understand where you're coming from and that's totally fine, but I have zero problems throwing the ball in that moment. See, and no, you're absolutely right. Like they had guys wide open, but just like for the rest of the game, Leonard, for whatever reason was not seeing guys who were open, the biggest problem that I have with not just running is again what we just talked about, the fact that Jeremiah Love and Janarian Price combined for 15 carries, the fact that you're like they're giving both Devin Ford and Anneas Williams when the game is on the line, you know, they're giving them a carry here and there and asking them to pick up, you know, first downs in these different situations. Why aren't you just giving the ball to your best playmaker, Jeremiah Love, and basically telling him, help us win the game, win the game for us, get us a first down, keep the clock moving because look, the evidence that you have is the 11 plays in five minutes and 24 seconds that Northern Illinois used on the possession that followed the interception and I mean, obviously knowing the results, excuse how you fuck all Notre Dame wanted to do in that case. One they wanted to score if you get a field goal out of that, you're up by four points. The only touchdown Northern Illinois had scored in that game was on that flooky pass play. You're telling me that Northern Illinois, if you take at least three minutes or four minutes off the clock in that situation, which you help accomplish by just running the football with one of your two studs in the backfield, your goal is to use as much clock as possible and ultimately score and I just don't believe that Northern Illinois was going to have any chance to go down and score another touchdown if Notre Dame had just been able to kick another field goal and go up by four points and use some clock in the process doing it. And that's the approach that I would have taken is run the football because nothing else has gone right today, run the football with Jeremiah Love and or Jadarion Price, get a couple first downs, use as much time as possible, kick a winning field goal. So they started that drive at with seven minutes and 49 seconds to go in the game, right? That's a did anything they did that entire day think make you think that they could hold on to the ball that long. Notre Dame? Yeah. They had never taken that approach though, like if you go back and look what they tried to, you know, again, those two guys had 15 carries between them. Like what? I agree. And when they started that drive, they didn't have either one of those guys in the game. That's, that's malpractice to you had. They started that drive with Devin Ford in the backfield. I do believe. And then they brought in Aneas Williams. I don't think those two were on the field at all during that drive and maybe I'm wrong. I don't have a video in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that that's the case. And that's a huge problem to me as well. But be that as it may in the, you know, again, you know, second in one is a passing down. I get that, but for the game situation, I don't think that that's what, what dictated, especially the way Riley Leonard did or didn't throw the ball during, like you had a body of work up to that point that said Riley Leonard is struggling. That's fair. It's second in one. Let's take a lay up here. Get us an easy first down and give us four more downs and keep matriculating this thing down the field. Let's do a little hank strength. Let's matriculate, baby. Hey, I'm not saying I disagree with that. I understand where you're coming from. It's just not what I would have done. I got you. That's all. Thank you. I get it and you're making great points and the chat loves you for it. And that's awesome. It's cool. It's first time today. First time today. I'm good with it, man. I live my life in hatred, apparently. So it's all everybody hates me. It's all good. Okay. So speaking of that final, well, I guess we weren't talking about the final drive, but Notre Dame did get the ball back at the end after Northern Illinois kicked their go ahead field goal. But there was some confusion, apparently, on TV about the amount of timeouts that Notre Dame did or didn't have at the end of the game. And Marcus Freeman addressed that today. We didn't have a timeout. We used one timeout on defense early in the second half. We had two timeouts left on that last drive. We used it after first down. He used it after third down. I don't know what the TV said, but Jason Merritt informed of that. That's why a lot of fans are like, why aren't these when they're coming out? Oh, yeah. I didn't watch TV copies. Sorry about that. I knew how many timeouts we had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So apparently Jason Garrett said that Notre Dame had a timeout. And I do remember, you know, like during the game when it was actually happening, thinking that Notre Dame had called it, like they were out of timeouts for that final drive. And I remember looking up at the scoreboard and they have, you know, like a dot for each of the timeouts that you have. There were no dots up there on the scoreboard. I went back and looked at the play by play. And sure enough, it's designated where Notre Dame had called all those timeouts. So they did not end the game with a timeout in their pocket. Good enough. Oh, yeah. I mean, the explanation was perfect. I didn't watch TV copy. Well, why the heck would you? Right. You're the head coach. No problem about whatsoever. You and whatever. He knew how many timeouts there were. Those screaming at the television because I was traveling home during the fourth quarter. And so I was paying attention, but not necessarily like how many timeouts were being used. And I'm looking at the TV and it says right on there, Notre Dame had a timeout. And I'm like, why are you not throwing the ball again? You know, to try to get a few more yard lining up for a 62 yard field goal was a freaking joke. Like that was a joke. You didn't end better off just chucking it down the field and see what happens. Well, and even, you know, like I was thinking of, you know, again, and like everyone's going to have their own kind of how they're going to handle this, but even the decision to clock it so you lose it down and a little bit of time in that instance, you know, like why not just have a play called and run to the line and run another play right away rather than clocking it. I didn't completely get that either. I realize you don't have a lot of time, but the clock, you know, when you're under two minutes, it's old, it's old time college football rules. The clock stops automatically, right? So I didn't completely understand why they did that either, but fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. So what about the skinny guy in the white shirt on the sideline that Freeman kept talking to during the Northern Illinois game? That was director of analytics, Anthony, Tresch. Tresch has been great. He did it the first game too, so absolutely, absolutely been down there both games. So he has the book that kind of just, we talk about what to go, hey, when we want to go for it in certain situations on fourth down, I like to use that as a reference, you know, in terms of, hey, when to call timeout, it's just something that I'm able to kind of just ask him, hey, what's the book saying right now? When should we be thinking about it? As far as on defense, we wanted to, we were hoping on that last drive is to get him in a third and long situation and try to force him to throw the ball so that it can be an obviously an incomplete pass and get the clock stopped, but, you know, it converted a second and long to make it third and short. And so I wanted to save that timeout for third down, just because I wanted to say, okay, fourth down, no matter what, no matter if they're going to go for it or they're going to kick it, let's take a minute to kind of get a plan together. What we want to do on this fourth down play and, you know, that's how it was, but it trussed down a great job. All right, so there were some conspiracy theorists who were, you know, people were posting the video and you've got this guy with pages of stuff that Marcus Freeman keeps looking back and talking to and they thought that they had their own Connor stallions and he was stealing signs and all this stuff, but what do you, so this is the director of analytics. What do you think about the analytics guy and Marcus Freeman's pocket on the sideline there? The only problem I have with it is they should just put his butt up in the booth. That's what I'm going to head, but why is he just on a headset? Because people are making way too much of the fact that he was turning around and talking to this guy. He's also talking to everybody in his headset. It just so happens you can see the guy that he's talking to who does not have a headset on. Right. He's just tired by the way because he's supposed to help make a difference apparently. Yes. And Brandon Sand, do you see any other coach in the country with an analytics guy on his hip? No, but I guarantee you there's an analytics coach in his ear and every coach in the country, except maybe like Mac Brown because he's older and I probably doesn't believe in that stuff. You know what I mean? But like, yes, analytics coaches are a real thing and they do give advice in game. It's just, I don't think it was a great idea to have him standing next to you. You can get the same advice from up in the booth. I'm sure there's a seat for him. That's the only problem I had with that situation. People are blowing this up like it'd be way more than it is. It's like in Moneyball, when they leave the meeting in Cleveland and then Peter Brand, Jonah Hill is sitting out, you know, at his in the office area there and Brad Pitt comes out and he's like, "Who are you?" Right. I'm nobody. Well, you were somebody in there because they kept looking at you and it's like to say, you know, "Who is this guy? What is he doing? What's the analytics guy? He's the data guy." Right. Exactly. Exactly. Now, the fact that he's standing there with pages of stuff, you know, again, is it the best look? I agree with what you're saying. Just put him in a press box. It's a bad look. He had said on him and nobody has to know who Marcus Freeman is. Right. Because, look, Marcus Freeman takes advice from all of his coaches in the moment, in the games and stuff like that. So it just so happened, that guy was standing next to him. So it is a bad look. I get it. But it's just different. It's just... And, you know, I, again, like to answer the question about why is the analytics guy making these decisions, he's not making these decisions. No. The data is literally making these decisions. Right. And Marcus Freeman is saying, "What does the book say in whatever instance it happens to be?" You know, when to call a title, you know, all those different things. I do find it interesting and Brian and I were talking about this because you had left with that two-minute timeout, should Notre Dame have taken a timeout when Northern Illinois still had the ball on top of the timeout, like before the two-minute timeout. Because then you call the timeout with like 210, 211, whatever it was. Forces that are on a play. Today you've stopped. They run a play. You're going to get an automatic stoppage at the two-minute timeout. You're putting yourself, I think, in a better situation, if you take that timeout before the... I don't know why we got to call it the two-minute timeout. Why we can't just call it the two-minute warning, but, you know, that's something new that coaches are going to have to be deciding and, you know, have like, I guess their analytics guys get involved in that as well. Maybe it changes a little bit since you did only have two timeouts remaining at that point instead of the one, I don't know. But that felt like a point where you probably should have taken that and that probably gives you a good 10, 15 seconds extra at the end. If you take that timeout before the two-minute timeout instead of waiting until afterwards. Yeah, I completely agree. I thought this was funny from USMA '87, Freeman mistakenly thought the defense could stop Northern Illinois. It did not happen. Didn't happen. It did not happen. I mean, he showed a lot of faith in him. Obviously, last week, like we talked about, the decisions to go for it on fourth and short a couple of different times. He showed a lot of faith in the defense and he's had a lot of faith in the defense. And look, I don't want to get like caught up in this. Giving up 16 points is respectable. Like 100%. That should have been enough for you to win. I don't disagree with that. You still have to make certain game plays as the game flow dictates. And that's the exact point. 16 points given up should be enough to win a game against Northern Illinois. Correct. Nobody is going to disagree with that because it's absolutely 100% true. But in the moment at that point in the game, you were winning the game. You should have stopped him like that. That's the point. I don't care what the score was. The score could have been 75 to 74. You were in the lead by a point. That's all that matters. You were winning by a point. You needed to stop them. That's it. The big picture, yes, you should be able to score more than 16 points. I get it and I agree with that. But in the moment, the defense had a chance to win that game and they couldn't do it. That's the point. Yeah. Andrew wants to know if we heard the quote by Jason Garrett. I'm not sure what he's referring to. Do you? I don't because I didn't listen to any of the commentary. So I honestly do not. I was in Cleveland all day yesterday with the game. So I haven't had a chance to-- Right. The only thing that I've seen of the game broadcast is where I got that soundbite of Freeman and that question because I got home today and press conference and getting the show ready and writing and all that kind of good stuff. I was busy suspending kids all day, so I was a little busy. Yeah. So if you've got the paraphrase, like what Jason Garrett said or whatever, give me the gist of what he said. But otherwise, I have not heard that. Brent wants to know if Notre Dame doesn't make the playoffs, does Freeman lose his job? No. He won't. Now, hold on a second. I think it's a really good question. If it's just as simple as he just doesn't make the playoff, they win 10 games and he misses the playoff or whatever, no, he is not going to get fired. If they go 500 or something like that, chances are pretty good. I'll just say that, or he'll be on the hot seat for sure going into next season or however you want to play. Yeah. Like if they're 10 and 2, you got to give me more context. And they missed it. Yeah. Right. What does this season ultimately look like? Right. Right. If it's a 7 or 8 win team, then I think he goes to hot seat territory. And look, you do have to factor in that there's a new athletic director here who didn't hire Marcus Freeman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That matters. That like, regardless of like, I don't, I don't think that people of Aqua has any, you know, there's no reason that he dislikes him, but he didn't hire him. So there's, there's no emotional attachment there to, you know, I hired this guy. This needs to work all this different kind of stuff. Like, you know, in an, you know, in an NIL world and fundraising and everything else. I think a big factor is going to be how, how enthused, not just fan base, but the people who are right in the big checks, you know, like how, how much they're in, you know, in, in favor of the head coach being around, I think that that's going to go a long way. I think, you know, he's on the hot seat right now. I mean, but how the next few weeks and the rest of the season goes depends on whether that seat gets hotter or whether it gets colder. I mean, bottom line, right? I mean, that's how it works. And do we see, you know, like, Miami, Ohio is coming up here in two weeks. You can't forget about Purdue, obviously, at this point, you can't forget about anybody. Miami, Ohio is the reigning Mac champ. Yeah, they're better than NIU. A 500 Mac team just beat Notre Dame and the, the team that won the Mac last year is coming to town in a couple of weeks. What's that going to look like? Because I think that's a lot more in question now than it was a week ago. And look, Purdue has a better roster than NIU. I think Miami of Ohio is a better team. I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff to happen and that's only the next three games. There's a lot of better rosters than NIU on this schedule. So Notre Dame is going to have to figure it out. DK, thank you for the super chat. Vince, tee it up. Says, have Vince read this quote, there's absolutely no way Notre Dame runs the table from here on out, unquote, because he thinks whatever I say, the opposite's going to happen. So, right, that's fine. They want, they want video good making a concrete statement. I know. Hey, here we are. Here we are. I like how you put it, quote, unquote, you know, it was up on the screen. So, look, nobody would want, nobody wants Notre Dame to run the table more than I do. Because, you know, at the end of the day, Sean, you and I are fans. We want them to win every game. Sure. It's also good for us from a professional standpoint. Yes. We want them to win every single game. Yes. There's no doubt about it. I want to take a trip to the National Championship game. I want to go to playoff games. Like there is no doubt that I want this team to continue to win, but they won't win if they play like they did on Saturday. That's it? That's where we are. Light it. Hey, Irish Breakdown listeners. It's Urban Meyer. This fall, the game changes. Join me. Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and broadcaster Rob Stone as we bring you a new perspective on football and culture every week. We will be joined by the biggest name in sports and talk about everything inside and outside of the lines. Let us guide you through a new era of college football. Watch triple option on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Hey, Irish Breakdown listeners. It's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor Jay Ferrar, where we'll be talking all things sports, but also so much more. We'll give you the behind the scenes stories from my days as the quarterback on an iconic college football team to Jerry's days as a star on an iconic TV series. So subscribe to Throwbacks on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. I wish for life from 99 if we lost to two Mac teams in a season that would turn them out to losing to two service academies in the same scene, which has happened before. And again, I think that that's the path that this is going to have to spiral to for Freeman to be in some serious jeopardy by season's end. Whether or not that does or doesn't happen, I don't know. And David Jones is Freeman transparent enough and have the integrity to make the challenge everything include himself. I feel like he has before. And I feel like that's why after Marshall and again, after Stanford in the same season, they were able to keep the ship right and they beat three ranked teams and played a close game against the fourth ranked team in the country, USC at the end of that season. But isn't that what isn't that what is most frustrating when it comes to Marcus Freeman? Like there are some super highs and there's some super lows and it's just like it's like a freaking roller coaster. And that's unfortunately why you have to ask the question, is he the guy for this? Right? Yeah, I agree. And that's that I completely agree with that. Yeah. I mean, that's that's fair too. Please give me and again, because it's year three, that's why you have to ask that question at this point. Yeah. And let me ask you this. Do you buy or sell the Northern Illinois loss being worse than the martial loss? It's so much worse because Northern Illinois is not as good of a team. And because this is year three, right? Yep. Now, don't forget, Marshall didn't turn out to be that much. Well, and you're and that's what'll make this even sting even worse is like now, everybody just like Marshall, remember that you're it's like, Oh, here's your dark horse playoff candidate. Marshall ended up losing a few games and, you know, what's Northern Illinois get to do with this? Are they going to fall flat themselves and go turn around off their emotional high and go lose a couple of games too? I mean, Marshall was nine and four, they were nine and four, it's not terrible, but that's not a playoff team. Still, you'll ask four games after beating Notre Dame. Yeah. They beat Notre Dame in the very next week. They lost an overtime to Bowling Green. Yes. And then the week after that, they lost to Troy. So, and then the other two losses were coastal Carolina and the Louisiana raging cages. So those are your four losses for Marshall last year. Look, I don't think NIU is all that great. I think they're a top half and Mac team, right? But this worst, this loss is still way worse because of the hype and I mean, Notre Dame was the number five ranked team in the country, first of all, when this took place. They just came off the big win on the road to Texas A&M. And then now, of course, everybody's like, "Well, I'll go to Texas A&M." Okay. Well, Texas A&M turned around and beat a crack in last week. Exactly. And so, then you come back and you lay an egg at home. This is a huge, this is a huge, this is the biggest loss of his career and it's not close. Only to be closely followed by if they lose to Miami or Ohio. At that point, I'm okay with making a coaching change. I really would be. Yeah. Jeff says, "We should go back to shows from Freeman's first year in the losses to Marshall and Stanford. It's like Groundhog Day, year three." Oh, we were upset because you still shouldn't lose to those teams, believe me, not lose to those teams. And it's a problem. Again, because it's here and that's what I'm saying, we weren't vague on that. It is a bigger problem because it's year three now. He's supposed to be past this. He has completely used up all his free passes. Oh, yeah. No doubt. I think we've kind of asked that over the last, has he used up the free passes at this point? Yeah. Well, I don't know. He's completely lost him. When you've got so many people now in the fan base just saying, "Get rid of him. It's time." You know, again, the greater weight is going to be carried by donors who write the big checks. There's a reason Jimbo Fisher was out, you know, I mean, they paid him a lot of money not to coach their team. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I completely agree with that. He should be past this right now. But he's not. And that's... And I thought last year was evidence that he was past this based on the scores of teams like NIU on the schedule last year. Because he took care of everybody. He blew them out. Yeah. I mean, blew them out wasn't close in any of those games, you know? So I thought we were past this as well. And I think somebody may have mentioned that in the chat earlier on. Thanks for another super chat nerd for life. He says, "Do you think Freeman knows how to fix it?" His press conference makes me think, "No, plus what's up with our points." Look, okay. Let me... Wait, we did have the punt question queued up. So we've been sitting on it. Yes, we have. Nerd. So... Look, does he know how to fix it? I don't know the answer to that. I really don't. Now, his past tells me that he will be introspective and he will try to fix it. And he will do things to make that happen. I don't know if it's going to happen. But the past tells me that he will do that. We have seen it in numerous different occasions, okay? So that's number one. The punts? That's why I said that he would be the only one, and when talking about James Rendell, he would be the only one that gets the, you know, never seen real bullets or whatever analogy you want to use. And it looks that way. I wasn't at the practice where the media was able to watch him punt. So I don't know what it looks like. What it looked like. I'm told that it looked great. And I said at the time, well, I still want to see it because I haven't seen it yet, right? And so far, because he didn't punt in any of the other practices that we went to. Not one of them. And it was very frustrating for me as a special teams guy. I've seen two games right now, and I haven't seen one of these 5.0 hang, you know, and there were opportunities in the game on Saturday where that would have come in handy. Like when Notre Dame was backed up, they could have used one of those boomers, right? And he's line driving in them and literally out kicking the coverage. That's where that phrase comes from, right? He's kicking it so far on a line and he, and the ball is getting to the returner before the defense can get in there too quickly. Yeah. Boom, you need to get some height on the, on the football. What we saw in camp were these massive, like almost straight up near punts that, that carried the distance and came down inside the 15 consistently and even inside the 10 consistently. And we're hard to catch like we've done. We haven't seen that at all through and seen that at all completely show. He's been kicking it end over end and those balls are super easy to catch. Yeah, super easy because of the way that it hits in the wind and all of that. Easy to catch. So yeah, I haven't seen that yet. And so I don't know what's up with the punter and that's one of the reasons why I said all three phases of the game failed on Saturday, you know, and two block kicks, two block extra I mean, excuse me, two block field goals, one, I don't, one, like it didn't even happen, in my opinion, because you're lining up for a 62 yard field goal. That's, that's messed up. The other one was a longer field goal. You still can't get that blocked, whether that's on the line to keep the arms down, whether that's on the kicker for not kicking a line drive, you can't do it. Yeah, Irish for life 99 doing it in practice, doing it game day, you're right. You're right. Two completely different things. And that's that's totally agree. The problem is they are two different things and he, I think Vincent and I were, we were talking about this earlier in the show. He just, he looks like a guy who's never punted in a real game before, let alone in a game with the level of skill, he's never even punted in a high school game, you know, maybe he's played some level of that. I don't know exactly what they play over there, just, you know, all, you know, school, you know, like a literally a punting school that he's going through with, with none of that. But if that's the case, then yeah, it's like, you're not getting real snaps when you do that. You're not, you can take as much time as you want to get the ball off, which is something like I, you know, like I said, you guys all know this, like I went to all kinds of camps with my kid over the summer and over the past year and there are some kids that can really boom the ball, but they catch it, they kind of look at it and they, and then they finally get the ball off and it looks beautiful. But like I would look at somebody, I'd be like, that's never going to work in a game, but coaches are enamored with that kind of stuff. And I hope Marty Biagie being a special teams guy himself, like he was an actual kicker, isn't enamored by that kind of thing, but maybe he was, you know, maybe he was enamored by the fact that he could just boom it in practice like that. But I just haven't seen it in a game yet. We'll see what happens, but not good so far. Tom says he'd bet his mortgage, there's a better punter on the team right now. I don't know who that'd be. There's two punters on the team right now. And they both skew the age of this entire roster. Yeah. So. And the other guy, what kicks we've seen of him, I was not impressed. No, so you got a 26 year old, you got a 30 year old, those are the two punters on the team. Just saying. Yep. Joseph might as well go give a scholar soccer player, not as easy as you think. You kick a soccer ball completely different than you kick a football. So there's that Brent wants to know if Jesse and I are looking forward to watching Brock Purdy in the 49. I don't even know if I get the game tonight, because I still don't get the ESPN channels. This whole direct TV thing going on. So you got the Fubo login, right? Oh, good call. It's on there. I didn't think about that. Yeah. Hopefully the credit. You don't have it. Yeah, if not, send me the login information. Good call. Because I was asking you and Brian about that, and I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's going to do it. Whew. Covered a lot of ground today. Yes. We did. Yes, we did. Talking about this game, pretty much non-stop since it ended. I bet you did. But there's been a lot to talk about. So I did it. I will enjoy my night off though tomorrow. I can promise you that. Yeah, again, you know, like I get everyone's frustration and I don't think that we came off as, you know, like Baghdad Bob and, you know, just blindly defending anyone. I think that there are a lot of questions that have to be asked and Marcus Freeman and his staff and his players have a lot to figure out this week before they do go on the road against at least what should be a solid opponent defensively, you know, as a decent run team last year. Like to figure out. I'd figure out. Thank you very much, Brent. Good to hear from you. I was actually, it's funny, Brent. Yeah. You brought him up. I brought you up earlier today. Vince, now we're talking. I'm like, I don't think I've seen Brent for a while. So good to see you, Brent. Bernie wants us to share the Fubo password and you disagreed with me too much, Bernie. I can't give it to you because of that. So I'm just kidding. I think I would get in trouble by the boss man if I handed that out to everybody. But and it might shut down and I wouldn't be able to use it. Like if everybody's looking in, that might be a problem for my personal viewing. And at the end of the day, it's all about me. So of course, all right, hit that like button. We appreciate you being here. It's, hopefully, maybe we've, you know, either raised your blood pressure, eased a little bit of your pain. I don't know. But we will see a lot of games to be played. A lot of games. Ten games to go. It's coach speak, but it is literally one game at a time as far as my opinion on this team right now. Yeah. And literally, that's, that's the way we got it before we get out of here. We've got an NIU fan praise for your fans and program had a great time at the game in a beautiful stadium. Good luck the rest of the way. Easy to be cordial when you win, but you guys earned it. So I have no problem with that, man. Thanks for joining us. That's right. Now, I will say, you know, as a fan of a road team this weekend, they were fairly polite in Cleveland. You know, they, they, they have a little bit more polite. Nobody likes cowboy fans, man. Oh, let's Jesse, Jesse was trying to mix it up a little bit with the sports. He was guy. Like, it was a party in the back Cleveland guy out there yesterday and they were kind of going back and forth a little bit. Surprise. Surprise. Jesse likes to talk a little bit. Yeah. Shocking the game. We've got a little sauce in him. So I wouldn't have to worry tomorrow if Brent wants to be here for that. So, oh, it's fantastic. All right. No. Thanks again. And we will talk to you tomorrow on Ivy Nation Sports Talk. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
