Notre Dame Football: 5 biggest overreactions from 2017 regular season

Although Notre Dame football had an improved 2017 regular season, that didn’t save fans from overreacting to the finish.

Entering the 2017 season, Notre Dame fans weren’t sure what to expect from the Fighting Irish. Would there be another 4-8 season or 5-7 with the firing of Brian Kelly or would the Irish exceed expectations and make a run at the College Football Playoff?

Surprisingly, the latter took place. Notre Dame defied the odds and began the season 8-1 with a top-five ranking and even looked like a playoff favorite. However, the Irish finished the year just 1-2 and fell out of the race, but still earned a Citrus Bowl bid to play LSU.

That improvement from 2016 hasn’t stopped fans from completely overreacting to the way the season played out, especially the finish.

Here are the five biggest overreactions to Notre Dame’s 2017 regular season.

5. Notre Dame will never make the playoff without a conference

This is somewhat of an overreaction as well as it is the truth. It’s an overreaction because the playoff committee would be silly to leave out an undefeated Notre Dame team from the playoff. Heck, even the one-loss Fighting Irish were in the top-four until the final month of the year.

However, where this becomes true is when you look at one or two-loss teams getting a serious look. Yes, a one-loss Notre Dame team looked like a playoff favorite heading into the final month of play, but how much does that hold up if teams right behind the Irish win their conference titles while they are sitting at home without a league championship to play for?

Notre Dame would likely get left out of the playoff 99 times out of 100 if there was an unbeaten team ahead of it with 3-4 one-loss teams behind the Irish and they all won conference titles. Not having a league title game ruined the Big 12’s chances last year and could do the same for Notre Dame in the future.