SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Marcus Freeman said what just about every Notre Dame fan was thinking.
"We've been here before, right?," the third-year Fighting Irish coach said postgame Saturday inside Notre Dame Stadium. "We've been here before.
"Now, it's time to get it fixed."
Where is "here"? Arguably a rock bottom plunge like never before, but not unprecedented.
For the third time in Freeman's 29 games as head coach, the Irish lost a home game to an opponent that expert oddsmakers had instilled as at least a two-touchdown underdog.
Northern Illinois kicked a short field goal inside the game's final minutes to win this contest, 16-14.
It continued a troubling trend that the Irish have now seen three times: In 2022, they lost at home to Charles Huff's Marshall squad; David Shaw's final Stanford squad likewise toppled Notre Dame that season beneath the open arms of 'Touchdown Jesus' in an identical 16-14 final.
But the Huskies' win on this day was no fluke; they outplayed the Irish in every facet, churning through their defense for nearly 400 yards and holding possession for almost 35 minutes.
Conversely, the NIU defense stymied Notre Dame's Riley Leonard-led offense for just 286 yards and held them scoreless for a 30-minute stretch of game clock, 110 actual minutes.
"Everybody's going to try to point a finger at somebody, some side of the ball, one play, one person," Freeman said. "It's the entire program that underachieved today.
"The entire program has to own it and improve from it."
Asked how Freeman intended to own it, he gave a lengthy answered perhaps best summed up with one word: everything.
"I think you go back and evaluate everything. You go back and you evaluate, okay, how did we practice? You go back and look and say, okay, was our game plans good enough to give us a chance to win? Like all those different areas.
"It's not just the physical part of practice, but it's looking at, okay, what did the opponent do in the game that we were prepared for and weren't prepared for? If we were prepared for them, did we execute or didn't we execute? If we weren't prepared for it, why? Hey, is this something that a team is trying to attack us because of some area we showed in a previous game?
"All of those different things are ways to evaluate. You have to debrief. You have to evaluate every single thing that you did in the previous week. If it was practice structure, then I'm going to evaluate and say , okay, what do we have to do to make sure we have better output?
"That's the only way you can do it. As you move forward into the week, as you move into the game, you say, okay, I feel good about preparation. Preparation is done. Now it's about performance. The performance is a reflection of preparation. The performance isn't where we wanted it to be. Let's go back and evaluate the preparation A to Z.
"Preparation is so much more than practice. It's obviously the game plans and the choices that we make as players too, coaches and players. All these choices that only sometimes we, as individuals, know. Hey, did I do everything in my power this week to prepare the way I needed to? That's a long look that each individual in this program has to make in the mirror too."
Meanwhile, NIU head coach Thomas Hammock notched the third win against a Power Conference and power FBS program for the third time since Sept. 4, 2021, when the Huskies won at Georgia Tech.
They beat Boston College last year and notched the program's biggest-ever win in punishing the Irish.
"I'm so proud of the kids, the coaches; just everybody," Hammock, who also noted the Transfer Portal but praised the NIU football family, told NBC. "They believed, they believed, and we came here and got it done."