Notre Dame football falls apart in loss to Louisville

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A fan in the first row of L&N Stadium heckled Notre Dame quarterback Sam Hartman just under an hour until kickoff Saturday. Then heckled him some more, and some more. He wouldn’t stop going at the 24-year-old graduate student signal-caller, even if he didn’t get so much as a glance in return.

Turns out, the hollering man with an adult beverage in one hand and his other cupped around his lips to create a mini megaphone foreboded what was to come for all of the Irish. The Cardinals wouldn’t stop going at ‘em all night in a 33-20 Louisville victory, and Notre Dame simply didn’t respond.

“I’m disappointed in the performance,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. “We got to take ownership as a coaching staff first.”

The somewhat soothsaying Louisville (6-0) supporter insistently claimed Hartman would throw two interceptions. He was wrong. He should have given his home-team Cards more credit.

Hartman tossed three.

He finished 22-of-38 for 254 yards with 2 touchdowns in addition to the 3 INTs. He was sacked five times, Notre Dame went 3-for-13 on third down and the Irish only rushed for 3.5 yards per carry adjusting for sack yardage lost. Hartman wasn’t good, but who was for the Irish (5-2) on offense?

“Everybody is going to be pointing the finger at Sam; you better point the finger at us — me,” Freeman said.

Hartman threw a ball up for grabs intended for freshman wideout Rico Flores Jr., who caught a pair of passes on Notre Dame’s first two snaps of the game, on the fourth play from scrimmage. He overshot the toss, and it was intercepted by a corner in man coverage.

That marked Hartman’s first INT of the season. He had gone 148 pass attempts without one.

Louisville promptly marched 70 yards in 12 plays. The Cards capped the drive off with a nine-yard touchdown from quarterback Jack Plummer to wide receiver Jamari Thrash. The Cardinals were forced to punt on their next four possessions, but Notre Dame had to punt on its next two as well.

The Fighting Irish finally got on the board when freshman walk-on wide receiver Jordan Faison blew by his defender on a slot post and Hartman found him for a 36-yard touchdown midway through the second quarter. There wasn’t enough of that for the Blue and Gold. Notre Dame’s next touchdown came with 1:35 left in the game.

Too little, too late.

Hartman’s second INT came with Notre Dame trailing 27-13 with half the fourth quarter remaining. Hartman tried to telegraph a pass to junior tight end Mitchell Evans. Louisville’s Devin Neal stepped right in front of it for an easy INT. The Cardinals tacked on another field goal to make it a three-score game, 30-13, with 5:02 left.

Faison made his first career catch two plays prior to his TD to move the chains on third and eight. A walk-on WR on a lacrosse scholarship making his debut and getting action right away says everything you need to know about the Notre Dame wide receiver corps; it’s not dependable. It’s not productive. None of the Irish’s scholarship wide receivers struck fear into the Cardinals’ defense, and it showed.

That was only part of the problem.

Esteemed junior running back Audric Estimé was bottled up for his worst stat line of the season; 10 carries for 20 yards. He was outshined by Louisville tailback Jawhar Jordan who went for 143 yards and 2 touchdowns on 21 attempts. He scored on sprints of 45 and 21 yards.

Estimé, meanwhile, wasn’t trusted in short yardage situations; the Irish instead elected to use the width of the field on multiple end arounds. They didn’t work.

“We got on our heels a little bit with our confidence level,” Notre Dame junior left tackle Joe Alt said.

Notre Dame rotated and shuffled offensive linemen out of their usual spots for the first time outside of garbage time in the first half. Graduate student Andrew Kristofic and sophomore Billy Schrauth were featured in the rotation. That didn’t work either. It truly felt like the entire offensive operation was scuffling and in shambles throughout the night, and a game-long 4.5 yards per play average was indicative of that.

Play calling. Execution. It was all bad. The Irish are out of the running for a College Football Playoff spot as a result. With the way they played Saturday, though, they were never going to be deserving of one anyway.

“Our guys weren’t prepared for whatever reason,” Freeman said. “We got to take a deep dive and figure out what it was.”