Their record is 4-0 and their ranking is No. 9 in the AP, No. 8 in the USA Today and No. 12 in Sagarin. But really, I’m not sure even the biggest lover of Notre Dame Football can actually tell you how good this 2014 edition of the Fighting Irish is.
The four Notre Dame victories to date are against the Rice Owls, Michigan Wolverines, Purdue Boilermakers and the Syracuse Orangemen. All four of those teams have one dreadfully bad thing going for them- all four have zero wins against power five conference opponents. Let me repeat that if you think you read that wrong. They have zero, zilch, absolutely no wins against any big five conference opponents. Combined. ND won games that the sports betting world expected them to win. The Irish haven’t been tested as an underdog yet.
What appeared to be a solid first month of competition when the 2014 season started has actually looked worse and worse as the season has moved on.
Rice was a 10 win team in 2013 and coming off a Conference USA championship, but the Owls look like they have a chance to be one of the nation’s worst team teams this year after losing to Old Dominion 45 – 42 back on September 20th.
When the Irish beat Michigan on the first Saturday of September, it looked like it was going to be a signature win that Notre Dame could hang their proverbial hat on all season long. But the wheels came off for Michigan football after falling to the Irish. Losses to Utah and Minnesota have all of sudden made the victory over the Wolverines look quite pedestrian. Couple that with Notre Dame’s victories over a bad Syracuse team and an even worse Purdue team, and you have to wonder if this season Irish fans might be hearing that dreaded chant of “overrated” over and over again.
But Brian Kelly and his team have opportunities coming up over the next three weeks to put all those worries to rest, and the first one is this Saturday against a very good Stanford Cardinal team. The Cardinal have one of the nation’s stingiest pass defenses. They have given up just one passing touchdown on the year, and that came last week in a victory over the Washington Huskies.
One of the biggest surprises early on this year for Notre Dame football was the emergence of sophomore receiver William Fuller. He leads the Irish in receiving yards and touchdowns. If he can put together a big game against Stanford, it will help quiet some of the doubters.
But the game everyone has circled for months is the October 18th matchup against Florida State. By the time the Irish make it down to Tallahassee, the Seminoles should have a 22 game win streak on the line. The build-up for this game will be immense if these two storied programs face each other undefeated. When the final seconds click off that game clock, we will all have our questions answered about how good this 2014 Notre Dame team is. Also by that time, we will know if Everett Golson is a true Heisman Trophy candidate or just another over hyped Notre Dame football player media darling.
But let’s not get caught looking too far ahead as danger lies ahead this Saturday in South Bend in the form of Stanford.