JD PicKell: Is the sky falling at Notre Dame after slow start

As a preseason top-five team, Notre Dame enters Week 4 with a 1-2 record with losses of Ohio State and Marshall – not where the Fighting Irish thought they’d be under first-year head coach Marcus Freeman.

On3’s JD PicKell made the case as to why Irish fans shouldn’t be pressing the panic button already.

“There is no loss of confidence in house at Notre Dame,” PicKell said. “Marcus Freeman presents himself really well at a press conference – we’re not here to take too much stock in a press conference – but he said something that I thought was really insightful when it came to him addressing the media for this week’s game. He said, ‘we’re still confident because we know how talented we are when we keep getting better.’ I’m paraphrasing, of course but that was the gist of it, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

“I don’t think anybody is doubting how talented this Notre Dame team is. It’s why they were ranked so high in the preseason. It’s why we had so much excitement about them in the preseason, it’s why a lot of people have super high expectations because they got a lot of dudes. … Notre Dame is not a finished product. Ohio State, not a finished product just yet. I think teams are always evolving but all that’s to say when they played them the first game of the year, Ohio State was further along developed as a program that Notre Dame is.”

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One thing that fans haven’t necessarily been considering when it comes to Notre Dame’s losing record is they have no experience at the quarterback position this year. Quarterbacks Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne both made their first career starts this season.

“You have two quarterbacks that have never actually been the guy just yet in their career trying to get this ship headed in the right direction,” PicKell said. “You’re telling me you’ve got a first year head coach, and two first-time starting quarterbacks that have tried to lead the charge for Notre Dame thus far. And we’re already making definitive statements about who we believe this Notre Dame team is? We’re already defining their identity? I don’t understand the logic behind that.

“So far, what I see from Notre Dame is essentially what you would have seen from them if Brian Kelly was still the head coach. … It’s not a great look, but as a whole, I don’t think you can be too upset with what you have in house right now because it’s a big deal to have a quarterback be new, it’s a big deal to have a head coach be new. Those things are not going to stay new. The more games get under your belt, in theory, the better those pieces should get.”