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Notre Dame football: How the 2021 team parallels 2016 squad

By Daniel Morrison

AUSTIN, TX - SEPTEMBER 04: Jacorey Warrick #11 of the Texas Longhorns runs with the ball during the second half against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on September 4, 2016 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
AUSTIN, TX - SEPTEMBER 04: Jacorey Warrick #11 of the Texas Longhorns runs with the ball during the second half against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on September 4, 2016 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /
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LOS ANGELES, CA – NOVEMBER 26: DeShone Kizer #14 of Notre Dame Football warms up before the game against the USC Trojans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on November 26, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Once/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA – NOVEMBER 26: DeShone Kizer #14 of Notre Dame Football warms up before the game against the USC Trojans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on November 26, 2016 in Los Angeles, CA. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Once/Getty Images) /

The 2021 Notre Dame Football team has a lot of question marks heading into the season, and in some ways, parallels the dreaded 2016 Irish squad.

Let’s remember the horror story that was the 2016 season for the Notre Dame Football program. It started in Texas, home of Leatherface and other completely normal and definitely not fictional figures from the genre.

The Irish were ranked 10th, and the Longhorns were unranked and quarterbacked by a freshman in Shane Buechele who was going to lose the job next season. Texas was coming off a 5-7 season, while Notre Dame was coming off a trip to the Fiesta Bowl.

Texas would go on to beat Notre Dame football to start the 2016 season, in double overtime.

The horror that was Brian Kelly’s worst season had begun under cries that Texas was, in fact, back. They weren’t, of course. Texas would go 5-7, which was better than Notre Dame’s 4-8 mark on the year.

It was a season so bad that Brian Kelly had to clean house at the coordinator positions and completely reevaluate how he was running the program. As we all know now, this may have been the best thing that ever happened to Notre Dame football under Brian Kelly.

By forcing him to do things differently, Kelly modernized the program and has a 43-8 record in the four seasons since then, with two trips to the College Football Playoff.

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