Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Notre Dame football: That was the dumbest game ever

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Notre Dame lost to North Carolina State this Saturday by a score of 10-3. And there was just one thing to learn from it: Brian Kelly blew it.

For about 99.9 percent of football games, you can discern something about the larger state of either team. Something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be huge. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to change the course of the program. But there’s almost always something to extrapolate.

This Saturday’s game between Notre Dame and North Carolina State came close to being one of those precious few contests with no discernible lessons. The pouring rain and terrible conditions caused by Hurricane Matthew made any attempts to pass, catch, snap, run, cut or kick a risky proposition. Mistakes were made, but mistakes were to be expected. Win or lose, neither team could really afford to take the thing too seriously.

But as the minutes ticked by and Brian Kelly’s offense continued to pass, pass, pass, demanding the impossible from DeShone Kizer and his unit, one huge lesson came into focus: Brian Kelly blew it. He flat-out blew it. The Irish had the talent and the grit and the opportunities. They played through the same muck and rain the Wolfpack did. They lost because of Brian Kelly’s decision-making.

Kelly has yet to give his postgame press conference, but I feel fairly confident he’ll blame the loss on poor execution: four failed snaps from Sam Mustipher, fumbles galore, a wobbly pick from Kizer, failure to stop NC State’s run game, the works.

Don’t be fooled. All of those issues can be explained by the weather. There’s a reason Mustipher hasn’t had an issue all year before today. There’s a reason Josh Adams and DeShone Kizer only had one fumble apiece before today. There’s a reason Equanimeous St. Brown and his receiving cohorts have been largely lauded for their play through five weeks.

But the rain can’t explain why Kelly decided to go for it on fourth-and-12 when he could’ve asked Justin Yoon, who had hit a 40-yard field goal on the previous drive, to kick a 41-yarder. The rain can’t explain why Kelly decided to pass the ball 26 times in a hurricane. The rain can’t explain why Kelly gave the ball to Adams and Dexter Williams, two hugely talented tailbacks, just 20 times. The rain can’t explain why Kelly, on the climatic drive of the game, passed and passed and passed, instead of giving the ball to the guys who are trained to run it and not cough it up.

DeShone Kizer is a great player. But he is not superhuman. He cannot control the weather. He cannot control how wet the ball gets and how slippery it then becomes. He could not win Saturday all by himself. No quarterback in college football could. But Brian Kelly didn’t think so. He asked Kizer to be a whole different level of great, an unattainable level. And Kizer failed, as he was set up to do.

Brian Kelly blew it, and the result was the team’s worst offensive performance under his command. He can blame anyone he wants, but everyone else should blame him.