Notre Dame Football: How Do the Irish Salvage This Season?

4-3.

Notre Dame fans around the country have been staring at that record for the past few days, trying to make sense of how their beloved Irish got to this point.

How could this have happened?

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. This wasn’t what they were promised.

This was supposed to be the season of resurgence. This was supposed to be the season that the savior, Brian Kelly, brought this team back to the spotlight.

But now, after an embarrassing performance under the lights against USC last weekend, here the Irish sit at 4-3, mediocre yet again.

There are many questions still looming about this 2011 edition of the Irish, and the answers better come quickly, because judging by last year’s humbling 35-17 beat down, Navy’s not going to be messing around today.

It starts with Brian Kelly’s motivation and leadership abilities and then trickles down from there.

Kelly has to figure out how to reach his team and get them to step up in the face of adversity, instead of crumbling and making killer mistakes.

He’s got to preach playing hard and playing smart, two things that were severely lacking in each of the team’s three losses.

If you watched the USC game, you saw a lot of lazy routes, lazy blocks and bad decisions all around.

Given the type of schedule that they have, the Irish still have the opportunity to save this season and make a respectable second half run, but it’s going to take commitment and effort.

This team has talent, but those talented players need to bring it on every down if they want to win games against formidable competition.

Notre Dame can save this season, but there’s going to have to be a drastic change in attitude if this team wants to turn things around.

We'll find out a lot about this team's true character in today's game against Navy.