Can the Irish make it to .500?

With five games remaining on Notre Dame's  schedule the Irish need to win four of them to be a .500 team and become bowl eligible.  This is possible but after seeing how the first seven games of the season have gone not probable.  Here is a quick look at Notre Dame's remaining opponents ranks on the best to worse chances of winning.

Army (4-3).  The Black Knights have a nice win early against Temple but also have a losses to Buffalo and North Texas.
Navy (5-1). With the exception of  their win over Fordham before yesterdays win over Memphis the Midshipmen don't have a victory over seven points.  Navy could also be at the top of this list as the toughest tem they the Irish still have to play.
Virginia Tech (5-2).  Even with an odd 31-17 loss to Syracuse the Hokies are playing well with wins over Miami and a ranked North Carolina team.

Miami (4-3).  The Hurricane's losses have come against good teams and their wins have come against cupcakes, but this is a talented team.

USC (4-3).  This is not your father's rivalry matchup.   After opening the season by being lambasted by Alabama and going 1-3 the Trojans have seemed to righted the ship.

More or less these are interchangeable.  It would be interesting and a bit exciting (which might be a good thing) if Notre Dame's game against the Trojans was the deciding factor if the Irish become bowl eligible.

The bye week and deep sigh

Ok, we are at the bye week and I think it is safe to say we are not where we thought the Irish would be at this point of the season.  When I looked at the schedule at the beginning of the year I thought we would need it to rest, recover and rejuvenate for second half of the season a run at the college playoffs not a break to stop the bleeding.

Here are a couple of things to put the first half of the season into perspective.  When the Irish play Navy in a few weeks Notre Dame will be unranked and Navy will probably "still" be in the top 25 and they are ahead of only a 1-6 UMass team among Independents.  We were supposed to have a dominate offensive line and two if not three high level running backs the running game is ranked 29th in the country.  We knew the defense might be a bit off, especially with a new line backing corps and a depleted defensive secondary but to be ranked 68th nationally in points allowed, accompanied by being 68th for points scored? 

If you had not watched a game and were to only look as some specific player stats a 2-5 record word surprise you.  Kizer; 1775 yards with 14 passing TD's and7 rushing scores and a 147.4 rating, Josh Adams; 4.7 yards for a total of 416 rushing yards, Equanimeous St. Brown averaging 19.7 yards a catch / 95.2 a game for 611 yards and 6 touchdowns.

Food for thought:  Overall for the season points for the Irish are 202 and opposition is 177.  Opposing teams have scored a total of 75 points off of Irish turnovers, Notre Dame overall has more offesnive yards than their opponents 2590 to 2503.  The Notre Dame defense only has 3 sack on the season whereas the Irish have been sacked 15 times so for this season.  Out of 6 games played Maki Zaire has appeared in 4 of them.  Notre Dame has fumbled 11 times losing 6 of them.

The bottom line is that there is a lot of room for improvement and a lot of work for Kelly and crew to do in the second of the 2016 football season.