The Irish Are 3-6 And They Certainly Deserve It

The pick-your-own-adventure, how-the-hell-did-Notre-Dame-lose-this-week game has hit a new low today, as the Irish found a way to lose to Navy, 28-27.

This loss was hilarious in many ways:

• Notre Dame lost to F-ing Navy, which has an insanely limited pool of recruits and forces players to adhere to weight limits far below Football Bowl Subdivision standards.
• Navy hadn't beaten Notre Dame since 2010 and is 13-76-1 against the Irish all-time.
• Notre Dame scored on all but one of its drives and still lost.
• Notre Dame's final, one-point-deficit score was held down by Navy for seven-and-a-half minutes.
• Related: Notre Dame only had six total drives!
• Notre Dame is now 3-6

It's almost impossible to explain how the Irish are this bad this season. They came into the year as a College Football Playoff contender, just a year removed from making a New Year's Six bowl. In fact, they might have made the Playoff last year were it not for a rash of injuries on defense.

The Irish have a ton of weapons on offense, including future first round NFL Draft pick DeShone Kizer at quarterback, and the defense, while young compared to last year, still has top-tier talent. Yet, somehow, Notre Dame has lost to six mediocre-to-bad teams (Michigan State, Texas, Duke, NC State, Stanford, and now Navy). And given the track record, the losses are likely to keep piling up, with arguably the two best teams the Irish will see—Virginia Tech and USC—still to come.

At this point, it's hard to envision how Notre Dame can possibly turn this around under coach Brian Kelly. He's already fired his defensive coordinator this year, and there will likely be major staff turnover at the end of the season if he isn't fired. But there aren't a lot of indicators of success in the future. The offense already has a few elite players, and it still isn't performing consistently. The defense has four-and-five-star talent, but nothing about it screams "this group will be a monster in a couple years." It's just … bad.

Maybe Kelly won't be fired, and maybe he'll get a chance to redeem himself with a new set of assistant coaches, but new coaches take time to settle in, as well, and Kelly will already have a short leash after what is almost assured to be a bowl-less season. This season looks like, if not the end, then the beginning of the end of the Kelly era.

Next week, Notre Dame gets a chance to turn things around against Army, an opponent worse than Navy, who they should theoretically dominate. But "theoretically" doesn't cut it for the Irish right now—if there were ever a year for the Irish to lose to the Knights, this would be it. Things can, somehow, get worse in South Bend.

(Editor's Note: This article was written in the parking lot of a Kum & Go parking lot in West Branch, Iowa.)