Will Marcus Freeman's 2024 Notre Dame Team Finally Break the Cycle of Above-Average?

Marcus Freeman's 2024 Notre Dame team faces high expectations. Can it break free from the "above-average" narrative this season?

Nov 9, 2024; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman reacts after a Fighting Irish touchdown against the Florida State Seminoles in the third quarter at Notre Dame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Cashore-Imagn Images / Matt Cashore-Imagn Images

Notre Dame has disappointed on the big stage for far too long

Notre Dame has not won a major bowl game since New Year's Day, 1994. Let that sink in. Mighty Notre Dame. With all of its glory and fame, has not won a major bowl game since I was 10 years old.

Since then? It has been a horror show full of big bowl blowouts that end seasons in national embarrassment or lower-level bowl wins that nobody respects that don't move the needle.

Year after year, decade after decade, the longer this goes on and more evidence gets added to the ledger on the negative side of this history, the weight of these combined failures adds up. The fans feel it, and the program wears it. This may lead you to ask, what's the way out of this cycle of bad?

Here's a look at how the CFP bracket would look with the latest rankings 👀🏆

Which two teams would meet in the final? pic.twitter.com/jFVXw4yWY5

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 20, 2024

Notre Dame glory awaits the next team & coach to crack the code

The only way out of this 30-year trend of failure when it matters most, is for a special Notre Dame coach and team to overcome it. There is no other path or solution. Why can't the team that breaks this spell be the 2024 Irish?

Notre Dame is riding an eight-game winning streak, plays elite defense weekly, and has a young energetic coach that the team has clearly bought into. Sure, there are offensive concerns with this team, but every team has imperfections this year.

There's no reason at all that Notre Dame cannot win its remaining two regular season games, a home playoff game, and go on from there.

The Northern Illinois game changed this team, this coach, and this fanbase. Maybe for the better. This team could be the one everybody has been waiting for. And once that glass ceiling is broken, the sky is the limit of what this program is capable of. After many false alarms, will it truly be different this time?

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