Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman held a press conference Monday at Notre Dame Stadium, previewing Saturday's home game between his CFP 20th-ranked Irish (7-3) and 4-6 Wake Forest (3:30 p.m. EST; NBC). Here's everything he had to say. Answers are largely verbatim. Question are edited for brevity and clarity.
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OPENING STATEMENT
“You look back to the meeting last Monday. And as I told the team, the result of Clemson is cause and effect. We have to own that. There’s no luck. But there’s reasons for why things happened. I wanted them to understand that it’s a team game. It’s easy to put blame on one person, one side of the ball. But as you look at the No. 1 evaluator of team, it’s starting field position. Clemson’s starting field position was the minus-41. Notre Dame’s starting field position was the minus-23. There’s a lot of things that factor into that, but that is a description of how your team played. We’re already at a disadvantage in terms of scoring points when you lose the battle of field position by so many yards.
There’s obvious reasons that the result was the result versus Clemson. But then there’s ones that aren’t so obvious that we have to make sure that we dive deep into. As I told the team, it’s easy to blame it on two plays, three plays — if we don’t throw an interception or if we don’t muff a punt — but that does nothing for us as a team. It maybe makes yourself feel better as an individual, but it doesn’t help us improve.
“So, I’ve challenged myself and the entire coaching staff and the players to really look at all of ourselves as individuals and how we can improve. That’s the challenge is how do we get better. To continue to work and attack a process is going to help us as indivuduals improve and help our team improve.
“The reality is is that doesn’t guarantee you a win. Our players will tell you we did that the week before. It doesn’t guarantee you a win. There are things in the game you have to perform and execute to make sure you get the results you want. But that does guarantee you’ll get better. As I told many players that I’ve met with this week, that doesn’t guarantee you’re going to start. Because you do the things we say to improve. But it does guarantee you’ll get better. And that’s our challenge is to continuously get better.
“We have an opportunity this upcoming week to send these 31 seniors that will play their final game in Notre Dame Stadium out the right way. That’s going to be our motivation. To perform on Saturday, give our chance in preparation to perform the way we want on Saturday versus what we know is going to be a motivated Wake Forest team. I’ve met Coach [Dave] Clawson a couple times. This team will be ready to go. They’re going to come in here knowing that they have to win this game to try to be bowl eligible. We understand the challenge. We understand the opportunity for us to send these seniors out the right way and to continue to finish this season off the right way.
“A couple injury updates from the game: Rocco Spindler had a knee injury, so he’ll get surgery this week. He’ll be out for the season. Luke Talich got injured in practice and broke collarbone, so he had to get surgery. He’ll be out for the rest of the year. And the Zeke Correll is still in concussion protocol. Right now, we’ll say questionable for Saturday.”
Q: What’s the plan at right guard behind Rocco Spindler? If Zeke Correll’s not ready to go, what do you plan to do at center? Is Andrew Kristofic OK?
MF: “What we would do right know is you’ll see how we finished the game with Billy Schrauth coming in at the right guard position. Ashton Craig did a really good job filling in at the center position. I was really impressed with what he did. Now, Andrew played well. He still has a high ankle sprain. He didn’t practice much last week. If we played today, it would be Ashton Craig and Billy Schrauth. We’ll see how Zeke progresses this week and then Andrew Kristofic, how he progresses.”
Q: What were the coaching points for Sam Hartman from the Clemson game? Were they things that have troubled him this season? Were they things that you hadn’t seen from him to date?
MF: “It’s an accumulation of things. The thing you love about Sam is that he takes ownership of everything. He’s not passing blame. But as the head coach, you look and you watch and evaluate. It’s an accumulation of we have to protect better. We have to protect Sam Hartman better. We have to be precise in exact route details that we have. Sam has to make better decisions as he’ll be the first to tell you. It’s not just one thing. Obviously, that’s a talented defense we went against. They did a good job. But we expect to be better, and we expect to perform better running and passing the ball. That’s what we’ve been working at.”
Q: Is Deion Colzie available? Are you thinking about redshirting him?
MF: “When he’s available to play, right now the mindset is he’ll play. But he’s not ready after his knee surgery to perform at the level we need him to. So that’s still to be determined.”
Q: Is Jayden Thomas OK?
MF: “His hamstring. He came back a couple weeks ago and kind of reaggravated it a little bit. He wasn’t at a level to perform what we need him to do. He’s coming back this week. We’ll see as we go through practice if he’ll be able to do all the things we need him to do at the wide receiver position.”
Q: What did you try to prioritize during the bye week? Was one of those things making a decision a portal quarterback for next year?
MF: “Yeah. We will look to add a fourth quarterback on scholarship. Who that is is still to be determined. How we get to that fourth scholarship quarterback is still to be determined. We’ll look in the portal when the portal opens. We’ll look at different ways to fill that fourth quarterback scholarship. But, yeah, we do want to be in a position to have four quarterbacks on scholarship.”
“Each phase of our team focused on different things [during the bye week]. Offensively, I challenged the ability to — we have to find ways to get the ball into the hands of our playmakers. We have to continue to be creative in how we do that. We also in the pass game have to be able to take some of the easy throws that defenses give us and not always look for that home run or the contested ball. Let’s take what defenses are giving us.
“I thought we established the run game really well early in the game, but they made some adjustments and we have to be able to really block different stunts, different pressures and movements by the defense and still have success. Like sustain our blocks longer. We have to be able to do that offensively. They know it. We can’t be status quo. We have to have better performance on Saturday. We know that. They all want that. It’s one thing to want something. It’s another to do it. We have to put the work in to get the performance we want.
“Defensively, a continuous emphasis on tackling. We have to continue to tackle, tackle at a high level. We play a lot of man coverage. I told them, the leverage in man coverage is details that we have to continuously work at. But as you look at Wake Forest, they present a different challenge for us. Defensively, they spend a lot of time this past week of really doing scout work against some of the unique things you’ll see versus a Wake Forest offense.
“Special teams, the emphasis this week, was on our punt game. It starts with the punt and the hang time. We have to improve that. Then we have to improve our coverage. We have to be better in our coverage lanes of punt coverage. Honestly, punt return decision-making and the fundamentals of that. As I told [Chris] Tyree, who I have the utmost confidence in, but there was something that happened on that punt that was the cause of the result of muffing. We have to make sure that we make sure that we attack that in practice so that it doesn’t happen in the future.”
Q: Is there a chance you get Matt Salerno in the next couple weeks?
MF: “Yep. There’s a chance we get him back here. I don’t know exactly when. He’s been doing a little bit more in practice, doing some individual drills. This week, we’ll increase it a little bit more to truly get him game ready. We’ll see how long that takes. I have a confidence we’ll get him back before the year’s over.”
Q: What could the defense have done to change the field position against Clemson?
MF: “The easy answer is to go three-and-out and to not let Clemson move the ball. Our defense played really good. But they have to own that, Hey, if we get three-and-out, they’re not punting the ball and downing it inside of our own 10. All three phases have a part of the field-position battle.”
Q: Have you been able to pinpoint why you haven’t been able to consistently play complementary football?
MF: “It’s looking at every phase and then where the lack of execution comes in each phase. That’s what you get when you talk about complementary football. All three phases are executing at a high level. There’s not just one part of each phase that’s creating an issue of not playing complementary football. It’s challenging every individual, every phase of football we have to say, ‘OK, we want to perform our full potential. We want to dominate every single play that we’re out there.’ What we need to do to make sure we’re doing that on all three phases.”
Q: What’s your take on the change of rules on photoshoots for recruits? Where do you draw the line? What does it mean to some of these kids that have these photoshoots?
MF: “We want to make sure that we maximize the experience for young people when they visit our campus. For a lot of those guys, they love photoshoots. They love to do the photo- and video-shoots. We want them to have the greatest experience when they come to our campus. But we also understand the labor and the demands on your program and those people that work for you that it takes to continuously do photoshoots over and over and over and over. There’s no easy answer. There are people above me that make those decisions on what you’re allowed to do on recruiting visits.
"To second that, I had a conversation and reiterated to our staff that our only obligation is to talk about Notre Dame football. It’s not question what any other football program is doing. It’s not to say what another program should do or shouldn’t do. It’s about what Notre Dame football does. We want to really maximize the experience young people have when they come to Notre Dame within the rules that are set. But in no way are we going to critique another program and what they decide to do.”
Q: You previously talked about the need to take more shots down the field. Now you’ve highlighted the need to take what the defense gives. Did you see something specific against Clemson that makes you feel that way?
MF: “The lack of execution. We want to be aggressive. We want to push the ball downfield at times. But what we can’t have is three-and-outs. We can’t have a lack of execution and success. If we’re able to push the ball downfield and complete or not complete it but then continuously establish drives and move the ball, then I’m OK with it. But when we’re not moving the ball or truly changing the field position of getting the points on the board that we need, then it’s my job to come in and say, ‘What do we have to do to be efficient on offense? What do we have to do to make sure that we are moving the ball at a consistent basis on the offensive side of the ball?’”
Q: As you look at Steve Angeli and Kenny Minchey, have you seen enough of them this year? Or do you need to see more the next few weeks?
MF: “No. I have a lot of confidence in both of them. Steve Angeli’s done a great job. Even both bye weeks and that time he had versus Pitt, he’s performed at a high level. As I told Steve and Kenny, who’s done a really good job in practice, we owe it to this program to try to put four quarterbacks on scholarship. That’s the number we have allotted for. We have three right now. But we’ve had, since I’ve become a head coach and before it, the number being four. If somebody transfers, then all of a sudden you’re down to three. But we want to try to always have four guys on scholarship. That has nothing to do with my beliefs in Steve Angeli and Kenny Minchey. Both of those guys are extremely talented, and I can see being the leader of our program as we move forward.”
Q: How do you approach this week with Sam Hartman as he faces his old team? Do you bring it up?
MF: “We spent a little bit of time with him last week trying to look at different ways to coach the scout team and try to reciprocate a look that we think we’ll see from Wake Forest, in terms of their offense. Sam is truly just all in on making sure that we have success on the offensive side of the ball. I have to be smart and our defensive coaches have to be smart in terms of what we ask, how much time we ask of Sam. Hey, what do you see here? What do you think? What are they doing here? Our coaches do a great job evaluating offenses and really game-planning. They’ll have a great plan. Obviously, you have a guy that’s been in this system in the building that we can ask questions to. It's no different than Javontae Jean-Baptiste when he was here and we played Ohio State. Hey, anything you see, anything personnel-wise? But at the end of the day, Sam has to be ready for their defense and making sure that our offense is playing at a high level. We have to make sure that we’re ready to go.”
Q: Last year, the NCAA allowed a fifth game for eligibility reasons in determining potential redshirt years. Do you have any clue if that’ll pass again, because you have several players at that threshold?
MF: “Yeah, right now the rule is if you play four regular-season games [or fewer], you could still redshirt and still play in a bowl game. That's still the rule as far as my knowledge.”
Q: Were there any “to redshirt or not to redshirt” decisions made this week on anyone?
MF: “Nothing this week. We’ve made previous decisions on a few guys, but nothing came up this week that was like, ‘This is [his] fourth game. Do we continue to play him or not?’ Some of those younger guys we made decisions on early in the year to redshirt them or not. Cooper Flanagan we decided early in the year not to redshirt him. There was a conversation we had with some of those other guys, like Boubacar [Traore] and Jaiden Ausberry. Those guys, when they got to their fourth game, we kind of held them off.”
Q: Coming out of a bye week, are there any other younger players going into the homestretch that you're saying, “Do we need to see more of him? Do we need to get him more touches?”
MF: “I think, as you look offensively, especially with those wideouts, how do we continue to develop those three freshmen? [How do we] get the ball in their hands — and not just have them out there? We’ve got to find ways. There's a reason why they're out there playing — [Jordan] Faison, JG [Jaden Greathouse] and Rico [Flores], like we’ve got to find ways to put them in positions or ask them to do things that we can get the ball in their hands and let them have some success.
“The same thing with the O-line. As we move forward, now you have Billy [Schrauth] in there. Ashton. Craig played some last week. As I said earlier, that was really good to see him out there. But defensively, no, I don't think anybody defensively we've talked about in that situation, but I really want to see those wideouts continue to excel, continue to improve these next two weeks.”
Q: What are the mechanics of your staff evaluating who may or may not end up in the transfer portal from other rosters? How early do you see who might be out there? And your staff has changed a little bit, so how are the portal evaluations prioritized or executed in terms of staffing and whose responsibility is it?
MF: “We're always aware of the portal. We're unique in terms of the guys we can truly get from the portal to Notre Dame. And so, you're always aware of those guys that could be graduates, and the guys that are first-year guys. And so, our recruiting and scouting staff is always evaluating guys. ‘Hey, this guy might be a guy that enters the portal and [is] looking for another opportunity. If it happens, how much interest would we have?’ But it's really hard until they actually get to the portal. We can't wait until somebody gets into the portal to have an evaluation on him. But we’ve got to make sure that this guy actually does get into the portal and then we say, ‘OK, here's our evaluation on that guy that we’ve been looking at.’ We then say, ‘Let's go get him or not.’”
Q: Earlier in the year, against NC State, Gerad Parker did a really good job of counterpunching against that defense and finding solutions. Has that been sort of a struggle for him over the last couple of weeks, certainly at Clemson? Is that something you’d like to see improve? Is that something that you can collaborate on a little bit? I’m just curious about that part of in-game adjustments from him and where he needs to grow?
MF: “I think if it was just one play call or something like that, I'm sure he would do it. It's how we continue to have a game plan that we feel can be effective and make those small adjustments. The answer isn't always plays. And that's what I'm pushing both sides of the ball to understand, is that the answer isn't always to come up with another play, but it's the details within those plays that we've got to make sure we make work. The performance is the point — we have to be better. We have to make sure first half, second half, the adjustments, like we’re efficient. We're moving the ball. We're changing the field position, and we're scoring points. How to get that done?
“It's not just a simple answer. It's within the scheme of what we're doing, within the scheme of what our guys know how to do, why aren’t we having success? That's the first [thing] —why are we in this position? Why didn't we have success on these plays? And then what do we have to do to make sure we're successful? And it's not as simple as calling just a different play. I promise you it's not like Madden — you know, you call a better play, and you're more efficient. But it's, within our game plan, how do we make sure our guys are executing no matter what the look is you're seeing defensively, that we can have success?
“That might be simplifying. That might be maybe changing formations but doing the same type of thing, so you can confuse a defense. But our guys [need to] understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, how they're doing it. So, it's not just a simple answer, of calling a different game, but more so like, ‘Let's figure out why we're not having success on every single play. And then what do we have to do?’ It might be throw it out? It might be to make a small adjustment within the front. But what do we have to do to make sure we're more efficient on Saturdays?”
Q: Audric Estimé’s efficiency dipped throughout the Clemson game, and he only got three carries in the second half. Why do you think the efficiency went down? And then, when it got to a point that you guys weren't using him, why did that happen?
MF: “The first series [of the second half] he got one carry and then we had a TD. The second series we wanted to get J-Love {Jeremiyah Love] in there and do some different things. There was a series with Jadarian [Price] that we wanted to get in there. The biggest thing is we weren't having success on first down. And so, if you're not having success on first down, you're in a position where you're probably going to have to throw the ball on second down. And if you're not getting a first down, you can't sustain that drive.
“And so, it's more so the lack of efficiency on first down when you're going three-and-out or four-and-out that really, to me, contributes to that. J-Love, we're going to give him a series. He’s a talented football player. We’ve got to get the ball in his hands. Jadarian, we wanted to get him a series. Audric was in there maybe five series in the second half, and we did give him the ball. But it was the lack of efficiency on first down or second down that led to us, ‘OK, we’ve got to throw the ball here to try to get a first down.’ And we weren't doing that.”
Q: What do you see on those first-down plays that was the reason why you guys weren’t successful?
MF: “I think it's, again, they did a good job of changing what they were doing against our base run plays. We’ve got to block it better. We’ve got to make sure that we have the answers when they're doing some twist stunts or they're bringing an extra man in a box that we’re going to run that play. Then we have to be efficient in blocking and executing it. And so, it was just a good defense. And they were doing a good job and adjusted really well to some of our run schemes. And, again, we did try some other things in the run game, just were not executing where we needed to. And it's, again, not just the play call, not just Audric. There are a lot of different reasons for what happened.”
Q: Can you put into layman's terms what makes Wake Forest’s mesh offense so unique and difficult to defend?
MF: “How do you defend it? ’Backers are used to attacking. When you get the slow mesh, you get a run action, but they’re going to read you. And the minute you just attack downhill, there's open areas behind you. And so, you almost have to untrain your ‘backers to be so aggressive downhill. And then they're really good at it. They have a system that has answers. And so, if you do this, they do this. If you do this, they do that. And so, it's not the triple option, but it's similar in terms of the system that they run — they have answers for what you do defensively. And so, it's a great challenge for our defense. Then we’ve got to make sure we change up the looks that we give them defensively. But at the same point, I don't want to play on our heels. I want to be aggressive in what we do, and that's what we've done all year.”
Q: Congratulations on son Vinny being named all-conference. As a parent who is also involved in recruiting, how difficult or how much easier is it to see your son going through that process? And what are the things you're looking for as he goes through that?
MF: “I don't think I've really been involved with anything football-wise in terms of recruiting. He's getting recruited in wrestling a little bit. I don't know much about wrestling recruiting. I do know some coaches and college wrestling professionals. I ask questions: Is there something I should be doing? As a father, if you don't help your son, then who will?
“And so, what I tell him Is this the reality is you just keep getting better and you focus on improvement. Let other people help you out in recruiting. You need to do a lot better in football. But in wrestling, you keep trying to find a way to become a great wrestler, improve and then let the recruiting take care of itself. And then let me and others — his coaches do things that can help him in recruiting. But any young person — stop, don't focus on recruiting. Focus on getting better, and you have people around you that can help you in recruiting. But your job is to focus on improvement, and the better player you are, the more we can do to help you in recruiting.”
Q: The fan base wants more play action. What kind of progress has Sam Hartman made in that regard? And is it possible that everyone underestimated the size of that transition to this offense from what he was so used to?
MF: “If we could guarantee running play-action passes were going to get us first downs and yardage, we would. That's what we all have to understand. If there was a quick fix and easy answer — just do this, and you’re going to win and get first downs — we all would do it. That's why this game of football is so frustrating, because you try to do things that you believe are going to help you have success, and they don't always guarantee to have success. And so, the biggest thing I think with Sam is that he's still in the first year of a completely different system. And the problem is you have so much success early that it's like, ‘Oh man, he's just mastered this system. We're good to go. He makes every perfect read, and those type of things.’ And then you play some really good defenses, and we haven’t performed as well.
“The challenge is always figure out why. What do we have to do to make sure that we can help him make the right decisions? And sometimes it takes negative things to happen to say, ‘OK, we can't just do that. We can't just take the one-on-one every time. Maybe we do have to take this free-access throw that they're given us to have success.’ We want to win the 50-50 balls. We haven't won them right now. So, how do we continuously find ways to help Sam in his decision-making, because Sam's going to do exactly what you tell him to do? How do we find ways to help him make decisions that will help our offense continuously have success? Because I've never been around a person that works as hard as him in terms of trying to make sure he understands what we want from him but also what the defenses present. I mean, it's not a lack of work ethic.
“And we’ve got to do things, as coaches and players around him, to help him have success, because he is a talented, talented individual. It's hard, because he's only going to have 12-13 games in this new system, but that's not always going to be a reflection of how good of a player Sam Hartman is. There's a reason why he had so much success at Wake Forest, because you're in that same system for five years. There's no guessing at what your wideouts are going to do. And part of the game of quarterback is understanding that the wideout has a couple of decisions to make within the coverage, within the leverage.
“And so, when it's a new system, new wideouts, maybe they're not always on the exact same page. And so, that's our job, as coaches, to eliminate the choices. If we can't be on the same page, let’s eliminate the options and say, ‘Here's one option. Do this.’ That doesn't always mean we're going to have a whole bunch of success throwing the ball down the field and just throwing for touchdowns, but it does help us in terms of creating efficiency as we move the ball forward.”
Q: You mentioned you’d like to see Chris Tyree use his COVID year and come back? Are there any other players who you’d like to call out publicly to do the same and/or who maybe have made a decision to do so?
MF: “This is what we did. We had meetings with a lot of those guys. Our job is to just give them the facts. I don't ever want them to say, ‘Well, you just want us to come back for yourself or Notre Dame.’ No, we just give you facts. Here's what we got from NFL grades. Here's our vision if you do decide to come back, what we will do next year. Let's get back to these last two games. Let's get back and focus on Wake Forest. And then after Wake Forest, we’ve got to focus on Stanford. We'll revisit this after the Stanford game, but during the bye week we did have meetings to just present information that we had, so they can make a well-educated decision after the season.
“I don't have any answer for you yet. Hopefully, post-Stanford we will. But as I told those guys, they should go out for Senior Day, because no decisions had been made on their parts. So, they don't know if this is their last game or not, you should run out there on Senior Day. But that doesn't mean they don't have the option to come back next year. For 31 of those guys, they will be running out there for Senior Day.”
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