EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said he occasionally shows his players clips of their embarrassing Sept. 7 home loss to Northern Illinois — a motivational tactic that appears to be working.
The Irish have now won six straight games, the longest streak under Freeman, including Saturday's 51-14 drubbing of Navy in MetLife Stadium.
«We can't lose the pain,» Freeman said following another critical win that helped repair their hopes for a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff. «That's what I want to make sure our guys understand. I don't want to lose the pain from that game because at times we are motivated by fear. We don't want this to repeat itself. We've got to use that.
»We're going to be grateful for it if we utilize it and we learn from the lessons it's taught us. When you have success sometimes, you forget about that pain of what NIU left in all of our hearts and our guts. There's moments I want to reflect on that and I don't want them to lose it."
If it's possible for a team's turning point to come just two weeks into the season, that might have been it for the Irish. Since the loss to Northern Illinois, Notre Dame has been under pressure to win out and look good doing it, as the only path to the playoff as an independent is through one of seven at-large bids. The rest of the spots are reserved for the five highest-ranked conference champions — a bid Navy was hoping to get but was fumbled away on Saturday.
What began as a highly anticipated matchup between two ranked programs desperately in need of a statement win to boost their respective résumés quickly spiraled into a snoozer.
Previously undefeated Navy, which had been one of the season's feel-good stories along with undefeated rival
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