3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish most to blame laying an egg vs. NIU

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will need to go back to the drawing board after losing a heartbreaker at home to the Northern Illinois Huskies out of the MAC, 16-14. While Thomas Hammock had his alma mater's team fired up to play, we cannot say the same thing for the team Marcus Freeman leads. Through two weeks, the offense has struggled under Mike Denbrock and Riley Leonard has, too.

Notre Dame was a College Football Playoff lock in my mind entering the season. I thought the Irish were going to go undefeated. Although I had my eyes on Northern Illinois to be a team worth monitoring in the MAC, I didn't see this outcome being even remotely possible. While Notre Dame is 1-1 through its first two games, who would have thought their one loss would be to the NIU Huskies?

So what I want to do today is play a little Notre Dame blame game. You may have moved on to NFL Sunday to see the Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys or Indianapolis Colts play this week, but Notre Dame has a lot to get right before they suit up again next Saturday vs. in-state rival Purdue. The good news is I think the Irish's problems are certainly fixable, more so than other teams who lost in Week 2.

Let's start with the consequences of living and dying by the transfer portal regarding quarterbacks.

3. Notre Dame Fighting Irish quarterback Riley Leonard

This is the one part of Notre Dame's offseason I am willing to wear egg on my face. I guess I bought into the Riley Leonard hype machine when I should have known better. He looked so good one year ago on Labor Day vs. Clemson when he was at Duke. That was last year, and he is not the dynamic dual-threat playmaker I thought the Irish were getting in the transfer portal. He isn't a first-round pick.

I look at this team and I wonder if he is truly ready to take on the offensive load and put it on his broad shoulders. He needs to run the ball far more than he is doing. This is because Leonard is looking increasingly erratic with every throw downfield. Notre Dame has more athletes than he had at Duke, but not by a considerable margin. Scheme and preparation will go a long way with this star player.

Ultimately, I am starting to think that Notre Dame signed up for a bill of good with Leonard under center. I thought it was odd that he did not follow his former head coach Mike Elko to Texas A&M. Conner Weigman does nothing for me. What has been really troubling for Leonard is I don't love his body language. He is not moping on the sidelines, but he seems to be very much a huge complainer.

Notre Dame needed on-field leadership from the quarterback position and Leonard failed miserably.

2. Notre Dame Fighting Irish offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock

I understand that Notre Dame was somewhat behind the eight ball when the Irish's former offensive coordinator Gerad Parker left late in the offseason cycle to replace Jon Sumrall at Troy. However, this isn't Mike Denbrock's first rodeo as a Notre Dame offensive coordinator, far from it in fact. He was Jayden Daniels' offensive coordinator the last two years at LSU. What a complete and utter collapse.

Denbrock has been an offensive coordinator at college football's highest level for a decade now. He has served in this role at Cincinnati, LSU and now at Notre Dame twice. While he may have come to South Bend after Riley Leonard announced he was committing to the Fighting Irish, they have had plenty of time to get on the same page. Leonard is not Daniels' talent, but they can do similar things.

Again, why is Leonard not running around and extending plays with his legs? He can really spin it, but I have questions about his accuracy, particularly in gotta-have-it situations. Again, he may not be as athletic as he was before getting hurt at Duke. Then again, he is playing on a team that has been top-six throughout much of the College Football Playoff era. Denbrock should've been able to set him up.

This offensive partnership should have come together much smoothly than what we all have seen.

1. Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman

I hate to say it, but this falls on Marcus Freeman probably more than we want to admit. This is now the third time Notre Dame has come out completely flat against a team it was far better than entering the game of note. All three times, the Irish have fallen. The Northern Illinois loss joins the Marshall debacle and the Stanford defeat. This is no longer a coincidence. This is a nasty trend he must shake.

Freeman may have been promoted from within to replace Brian Kelly as head coach a tad prematurely, but he was certainly a head-coaching candidate on the rise heading into the 2021-22 college football offseason. Just when I thought he had gotten this Mike Tomlin letdown game nonsense out of his system, it reared its ugly. head once again. He has to stop doing this yesterday.

Many of the things that frustrated Notre Dame fans when Kelly was the head coach are still prevalent with Freeman now calling the shots. I don't know if he will ever see him make his quarterback throw the ball 40 times on the road in a hurricane, but we did see Notre Dame lay an egg in unspectacular fashion vs. Northern Illinois. I had nothing but confidence with Notre Dame, and now I have none...

The Irish need to get right vs. Purdue. Otherwise, I could see a situation where Freeman is let go.