Taking a step back from Notre Dame’s disastrous 2016 season, it’s rather incredible to see how the expectations have been lowered on almost a weekly basis from this team’s preseason top 10 ranking.
Before Texas: Make the College Football Playoff
After Texas: Win out, hope 11-1 is good enough for the playoff
After Michigan State: Rebound and make a New Year’s Six bowl game
After Duke: Don’t lose again and get to 10 wins
After N.C. State: Salvage the season and trigger those all-important bowl practices
After Stanford: Just get to six wins
After Navy: Hope to get to six wins?
“Our team’s going to fight either way and that would be my initial message, to keep fighting,” senior captain and defensive end Isaac Rochell said. “But I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. Now, it’s a battle of, let’s win out, let’s go to a bowl game, let’s play Notre Dame football. And that’s going to be my message. It’s not going to be an issue as far as fight. I know guys are going to work hard. But just getting a goal and something to look forward to.”
Brian Kelly’s crew headed to Jacksonville with a 27.9 percent chance of finishing 6-6 or better, according to S&P+, but that number slipped to just 6.4 percent after losing, 28-27, to Navy on Saturday. S&P+ still gives Notre Dame a 70 percent chance of beating Army this weekend in San Antonio, but the season’s final two games are shaping up to be Notre Dame’s two toughest of the 2016 season.
For comparison's sake, that 6.4 percent chance is only slightly better than the chances FiveThirtyEight gives Hillary Clinton of winning reliably-red Texas (4.5 percent) in Tuesday's presidential election.
Virginia Tech (60 percent) and USC (77 percent) both have strong probabilities of beating Notre Dame and are far and away the best teams the Irish will play this year. The average S&P+ ranking of Notre Dame’s previous 10 opponents is 53, with the highest ranked one Miami at No. 22 (that was certainly a good win, but Notre Dame’s other victories came against its two lowest-ranked opponents in No. 124 Nevada and No. 80 Syracuse). Virginia Tech ranks 17th in S&P+, while USC is 13th.
Through that lens, 2016 is a massive missed opportunity for a program that seemed to be on the rise after winning 10 games despite an unprecedented rash of injuries in 2015. Last year’s Irish team ranked 8th in S&P+ and would’ve been heavily favored to win 2016’s first 10 games, with a couple of late-season toss-ups against Virginia Tech and USC being the difference between a College Football Playoff bid and another New Year’s Six bowl appearance.
Instead, Notre Dame has six losses — by a combined 29 points — that mean this team will have to pull off two major upsets in back-to-back weeks to just become eligible for a bowl (and don’t count on a 5-7 bowl bid; Notre Dame’s APR score in 2014-2015 was lower than schools like North Texas and Central Florida).
And again: We’re talking about an improbable path just to get to six wins and bowl eligibility, not for anything tangible like a College Football Playoff appearance or a New Year’s Six bowl bid. This has been an awful season for the program, and the numbers suggest it’s only going to get worse over these final three games.