Notre Dame Football: Bye Week Severely Hurts Fighting Irish's Momentum

On the heels of four consecutive wins, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish seem ready to live up to their preseason billing as a top 25 team, but a bye week could very well kill the obvious momentum they have built up over the past month.

Since opening the season with losses to South Florida and Michigan, the Irish have been a completely different team.

Not only have they won four straight contests, but three of them have been in very convincing fashion.

Notre Dame has also cleaned up what had been their biggest problem at the start of the season, that being turnovers.

Over the past two games, not only have the Irish won the turnover battle, but they haven't turned the ball over themselves at all.

Quarterback Tommy Rees has been at his best as he has been able to make plays while protecting the ball at the same time, and the backfield combination of Cierre Wood and Jonas Gray has run roughshod over the competition.

With all that said, the Irish are undoubtedly playing their best football of the season.

When a team gets on this type of roll, you have to believe that they're chomping at the bit to play their next game.

Unfortunately for Notre Dame, it will have to wait a week before a major clash against the USC Trojans.

The argument can certainly be made that the week off will be good for the Irish and head coach Brian Kelly, especially in terms of game planning to stop quarterback Matt Barkley and USC's explosive passing attack.

But right now, Notre Dame is currently at its best.

Between now and Nov. 26 when the Irish take on No. 7 Stanford, USC is the biggest game on Notre Dame's schedule. If the Irish can get by USC, then it is very much conceivable that they could run the table and enter their game against Stanford with just two losses.

Notre Dame fans have got to hope that the bye week won't allow complacency to set in and that the Irish offense won't fall back into bad habits.

With that in mind, Kelly will have to stress ball security above all other things when team practices resume.

I would never suggest that the bye week will solely cause the Irish to lose to USC, but I do believe that the game will be much closer because of it.

Momentum is a tricky thing, so if the Trojans are able to beat California on Thursday, they will have a decided advantage in the momentum department when the teams meet next week.