Note from the author: inspired by THE BEASTE’s latest contribution and determined to prove to the Grad Assistant that I’ve still got my fastball, I’ve decided to throw on the 4-5 and come out of retirement.
I took the Marshall loss hard. Deleted twitter, put the groupchat on mute, thought about going to church. “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” etc. But I kept coming back to something I wrote when Kelly skipped town:
Well said, Ken. There are very few college programs that are a sure thing any given Saturday, and the Irish weren’t one of them even during Kelly’s golden years. In fact, this past September feels pretty familiar: encouraging performance in an early-season loss against a strong opponent (see GA 2017 and 2019), subsequent let down against a weak team, and a couple of shaky wins led by an undersized quarterback who looks and, as Ken Sr noted during the first half of the Cal game, plays like he belongs in the 812(1) basement.
The best we could hope for this fall was stasis, and we’re still pretty close. The Freeman mandate remains the same: keep the train on the tracks so that you can continue to recruit your zbikowski off, and then in a couple years reap what you have sown. Finish this year with ~9 wins, beat those clowns from Los Angeles in November and we’re on our way. The best is yet to come(2).
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I’d also like to address some comments made recently on these pages. Specifically:
Pride comes before the fall, who knew. Instead of dragging tGAJr, as he’s requested, I’ll defer to Donny Boy (think of the second highlighted portion as my response and, separately, the first as a motto of sorts for this blog).
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(1) I fear that our audience has dwindled to the point where everyone reading will understand this reference.
(2) I think and hope this is the case. To borrow a construct from TB, Freeman is both our guy and a good guy. And I promise no one will ever look colder in South Bend than this.
