As the clock struck 11:00 p.m. eastern time Saturday night, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman was probably still trudging to the Irish locker room to deliver his postgame sermon. In a similar fashion, I began the melancholic trudge to the bedroom with one particular thought bouncing around my head:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Notre Dame has four new position coaches on offense. They have two new defensive coaches, a new special teams coordinator and a new head coach. And yet, if you had been in a coma for the past 10 months and your first act after waking up was looking at this game’s play-by-play, you’d probably think Brian Kelly was still the Irish head coach.