Let's say we beat Wake and look pretty good in doing it. What does this whole thing look like with some more distance?
We almost beat ND. It was seen as a sign of progress. Because we played hard and stood up to a much better opponent.
We lost to Jax St. Because our staff took a calculated risk in using the game to learn about and improve themselves and to enchance their chances down the road (esp. Wake). That was a miscalculation that normally they would not have paid so dearly for. Except they rolled snake eyes and it bit them. So we freaked out. But was it really the case that we are such a bad team that we couldn't beat an FCS opponent at home? Unlikely since we took ND into overtime but let's see the season play out.
So if we beat Wake, what does the big picture look like? You could argue that it is pretty much what we expected and hoped for (except for a psyche-shattering loss based on toying with an inferior opponent and then not being able to pull it out anyway like normally happens).
We're 1-2 like we hoped we wouldn't be but figured that would be because (a) we weren't good enough to hang with ND and (b) also weren't good enough to beat a decent Wake team. Instead we did beat that Wake team (again this is hypothetical...I don't know what will happen), did hang with ND into OT, and just lost on a fluke to a team we were experimenting with. Arguably that's better than the 1-2 scenario we would have expected. The only real damage was to our fanbase's emotional health. If we go on to beat Louisville then we could start to look at it as we are 2-0 in conference, looked generally improved over last year, hung with, fought hard and almost upset ND and, oh yeah, made a huge blunder in a freaky loss to a team we beat 19 times out of 20.
It's a long season and this rebuild is an even longer story that must unfold. Perhaps we'll laugh at ourselves in a few years.
That's the optimist's view.
Unless we lose to Wake. <gulp>
