I can't see this
The man has lost games he shouldn't have lost his whole life. (On the other hand he has turned into a very underrated big game coach)…Why would we think that automatically stops this year. He's not a good SMALL game coach.
I’m really not the type of guy to defend some of Mario’s 2025 shortcomings, but it took 5 INT’s from Carson Beck to drop that Louisville game we still almost won. Louisville finished 9-4 with wins over two CFP opponents and 3/4 losses by single digits. It was pretty irritating to hear the talking heads at ESPN **** talk our “2 horrible no good very bad losses” at the end of the regular season. Losing is never good, but when talking playoffs, yes you sorta have to nitpick how the teams won/lost if there are a few teams on the bubble. And when your QB plays the worst game of his entire life, I don’t know how much of that loss falls on Mario’s shoulders.
Now onto SMU. Yes, we played like dog**** and should have won by 2-3 scores. Yes, Mario did not have the team prepared for this game. BUT also, I’m not the type of guy who blames officials for losses because I think we shouldn’t put ourselves in a position where a bad call costs us a game (See 2023 GT), but this SMU crew might have been the absolute worst I’ve ever seen. Several game changing calls went against us. Ultimately we lost in OT on the road to a team who was ranked in the preseason and a year removed from a CFP appearance. They also finished the season with 9 wins. In the “is this a good/bad loss” conversation, I don’t consider this the worst or most embarrassing kind.
And what did we do to every other regular season opponent not named Notre Dame? Because I’m pretty sure we beat almost everyone else by 2 scores or more. The 2 losses in 2025 were unfortunate, but not the kind of ACC clunkers we’ve seen in previous years. 2017 Pitt, 2018/2023 Georgia Tech, 2018 Duke, the list goes on and on. 2025 was a huge step in the right direction as far as showing up for every game and taking care of business.
