SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Howard Cross III was the last player to leave the field. By that point, his head coach had long since disappeared into the tunnel after Notre Dame suffered a sobering 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois that may end this season before it even begins. The All-American defensive tackle held his helmet behind his back and stared blankly ahead. There was nothing to cheer, nothing to salute as Cross walked toward the locker room to a chorus of boos.

Marcus Freeman tried to explain how his most talented team could lose as a four-touchdown favorite at Notre Dame Stadium, the most devastating home loss since losing to Northwestern in the 1995 opener. He couldn’t. Riley Leonard tried to make sense of his second-half interception that he never should have thrown. He was a little more successful. And then came Cross, who had more experience at Notre Dame than its head coach, athletic director, president or virtually anyone else.

Cross listed losses to Marshall in 2022 and Cincinnati in 2021. He even went back to Toledo in 2021, the last time Notre Dame flew too close to the sun against a MAC program. Cross has been there and been through it all. None of that makes it any easier to be back here. Because Notre Dame should be done with moments like these.

“Yeah, it sucks. We know that. All of our fans know that. We know that. All of our coaches, from top to bottom, know that,” Cross said. “You’re going to hear it all week: ‘We suck.’ Well, use that then. Because with all due respect, seven days we’re back on the field. Are we going to say, ‘Okay, damn it, I guess it’s over.’ Or are we just going to keep going?

“I think that’s what we’re going to do. Just keep going.”

GO DEEPER

Notre Dame suffers surprise loss to NIU: How could it all go so wrong for Irish?

What else can Notre Dame do? For all the good Freeman has done in two-plus seasons at Notre Dame, what happened Saturday threatens to undo much, if not all, of it.

That invalidates last weekend’s win at Texas A&M, which felt like a proof of concept for Freeman and Leonard. Instead, Leonard, while leading by one point in the fourth quarter, was trying to complete a pass he hadn’t hit yet at Notre Dame when he was intercepted on a terribly thrown deep shot when a run up the middle would have sufficed. Eleven plays later, NIU kicked the winning field goal.

Notre Dame’s maturity was evident in College Station, as Offensive Coordinator Mike Denbrock viewed the game as had with a new quarterback and a young offensive line? Wasted on that undisciplined pass that didn’t need to be thrown. The concentrated defensive effort that prevented Texas A&M from making the big play? Wasted on a group of young linebackers fooled by Northern Illinois’ game plan and pushed around by a Huskies offensive line that was supposed to be pushed back.

However, the biggest problem facing Notre Dame’s football program right now is the head coach.

Notre Dame has a 20-9 record since Marcus Freeman took over as coach. (Matt Cashore / USA Today)

By promoting Freeman, former athletic director Jack Swarbrick was betting that he could help a new head coach succeed in a place where new head coaches have failed time and time again. There are too many pitfalls. You learn too much on the job. Because once you internalize those lessons, it’s often too late.

It’s easy to pick apart Freeman’s postgame press conference, because what could he really say? He said preparation needed to be better, then said Notre Dame practiced well during the week. He said Notre Dame needed to punch in practice, but then ignored the fact that the Irish played a sluggish first half. He questioned the game plan, but the head coach has final say on what gets called and when. He’s a linebacker by trade, but no position was played worse. He praises Notre Dame as a program defined by the offensive line and defensive line, but both positions struggled Saturday. The head coach decides where the program goes at quarterback, but it’s not clear that Freeman has got that right once in three seasons.

“We’ve been through this before, haven’t we? We’ve been through this before. Now it’s time to fix this,” Freeman said. “We’ve got to fix this and get back to playing football the way we know how to play, the way we’ve played it before, and the way we can and will play.”

Nothing Freeman said was more insightful. Or more frightening.

Notre Dame has seen it before. Against Marshall and Stanford, when the offense failed. Against Ohio State, when the game ended with only 10 men on the field and the Buckeyes scored the winning touchdown. Against Louisville, when Notre Dame was outnumbered and lost. At Clemson, when Notre Dame barely managed a first down in the second half. Or even against Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl, when Freeman’s defense collapsed.

Freeman now has a 20-9 record as Notre Dame’s head coach after replacing Brian Kelly, who had a 54-9 record over his final five seasons. The end of Kelly’s tenure was less than imaginative — the routine wins, the predictable victories over unranked opponents. And yet the best coaches in this sport are boring in that regard. They know what’s going to happen Saturday before it happens, even if they can’t predict exactly how. They have a plan. They’re committed to sticking with it. And they have the kind of resume that makes you believe their plan will work because it’s worked before.

Freeman has none of that. He has weathered losses to a MAC opponent and another in the Sun Belt. He was moments away from losing to Cal. He lost to Stanford, which had three wins.

Freeman is right. Notre Dame has been here before. That experience should be part of the solution. Maybe it’s just another problem of the same type. Shouldn’t Notre Dame be beyond that?

“Absolutely,” said Freeman. “Absolutely.”

It will take a long time for Freeman to recover from Saturday, because defeat hurts more than the loss of confidence. And at this point, those reserves are exhausted.

For Notre Dame to finish a successful season, nothing short of a spot in the expanded College Football Playoff is enough. The administration has supported Freeman every step of the way over the past year, hiring Denbrock, extending defensive coordinator Al Golden’s contract, investing in NIL to spur success in the transfer portal, raising money for a new facility and extending the contract with NBC to guarantee independence. They say a good athletic director makes sure his head coach has no excuse not to win. And Notre Dame has done that, even during the handoff of Swarbrick to Pete Bevacqua.

Now it’s up to the head coach.

“We have to take this to heart,” Freeman said. “Everyone here, every coach has to take this to heart first and not blame somebody else. That’s the only way to solve the problem. I’m sure everyone out here is going to try to point the finger at a coach, a player, a person. It should be the head coach. That’s my job.”

(Top photo: Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)