Riley Leonard, Marcus Freeman under fire after abysmal Notre Dame football loss

Welp. The excitement over this Notre Dame football season lasted exactly one week. The same goes for the excitement over Riley Leonard at quarterback.

That’s not to say there weren’t concerns over the Duke transfer in the Fighting Irish’s first game of the season. However, those concerns were mostly poo-pooed away by the fact that it was against Texas A&M and in front of more than 100,000. 

There was also a ton of Marcus Freeman love after the Week 1 win. People talked about how he seemed to connect with his team more than any coach in the country. It’s safe to say any love he got last week is about to be wiped out.

A Notre Dame football coach who some thought should be on the hotseat after some bad losses to Louisville and Ohio State last year. If he wasn’t before, losing a game they had no business losing (it was Northern Illinois’ biggest win ever) will get him there.

Notre Dame football coach and quarterback on the hotseat

While Freeman might get more of the blowback over the next week, the anger is being aimed squarely at Leonard for now. Keep in mind that Leonard doesn’t have a touchdown pass as a member of the Fighting Irish. 

He doesn’t have a 200-yard game through the air yet either. Both of those things are far more glaring when you consider the entire point of bringing in Leonard over Steve Angeli or CJ Carr or Kenny Minchey is that he was considered a veteran presence who could make the tough throws.

He hasn’t looked like a veteran. He’s showed happy feet. He’s missed wide open receivers. He’s underthrown guys badly, like he did on his second interception of the game against Northern Illinois.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this loss. We’ll look at that more over the next week. But for today, it’s hard not tow wonder if Riley Leonard is going to be the guy who takes the Notre Dame football team to the playoffs, or whether Freeman and company might look elsewhere.