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Marcus Freeman Is Armed For Notre Dame Recruiting Success

The style of defense Clark Lea and Marcus Freeman play and the ideologies they invoke to building great ones may differ slightly.

But almost everything else between the former and current Irish defensive coordinators is strikingly similar, most notably, it’s their engaging personalities, recruiting prowess and player development.

In each of Lea’s three seasons on the job (2018-20), Notre Dame finished with a top-15 scoring defense and won 33 of 38 games because of it. Seven Irish defensive players were drafted to the NFL the last two years after Lea’s guidance, with at least three more — and perhaps as many as five — expected to be drafted later this month.

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Notre Dame Fighting Irish football defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman
Freeman is shooting for the stars on the recruiting trail. (Notre Dame Athletics)

Defensive lineman Jerry Tillery was a first-round selection in 2019. Linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah is a lock to be a first-round pick this year.

That’s the defensive momentum Lea built that Freeman is charged with not only maintaining but building on. And Freeman, 35, explained that his task starts with tireless and successful recruiting.

“For us to continue to elevate, and continue to try to be national champions, and be able to close the gap with Alabama,” Freeman said, “we have to continue to acquire some of the best football players in the country.”

Already considered one of the best recruiters in the nation, Freeman finds himself with a deeper pool of bigger fish to pull compared to what he recruited from during his four seasons (2017-20) as defensive coordinator/linebackers coach at Cincinnati.

But make no mistake, through recruit recognition and player development, Freeman did more with less better than any coordinator in country.

While almost exclusively pursuing three-star (or lower) players from midwestern high schools, Freeman still helped Cincinnati assemble the No. 1 recruiting class among the Group of Five programs in each of the last two recruiting cycles.

One of his most notable recruiting “gets” in Freeman’s 2020 class was Jaheim Thomas, a gifted outside linebacker out of Cincinnati Princeton High School who stayed home and chose the Bearcats despite holding offers from Power Five powerhouses LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Notre Dame and others.

And just 10 days after hiring in at Notre Dame, Freeman was instrumental in landing four-star defensive end Tyson Ford out of St. Louis for the 2022 class, with many more top players already harvested and interested.

“We’re going to continue to try to be the most aggressive and hardest working recruiting staff in the country, that’s a goal of mine and that’s a philosophy of mine,” said Freeman, who from 2018-20 produced three straight units that finished top-25 in scoring defense, including top-10 finishes in both 2018 and 2020.

“Let’s, one, outwork everybody in the country, that’s in terms of evaluations, that’s in terms of evaluating relationships.

Armed with two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years, and no longer regionally constrained with his recruiting pursuits, and a been-there done-that legacy to sell — Freeman was a three-year starting linebacker at Ohio State and was selected by the Chicago Bears in the fifth-round of the 2009 NFL Draft — expect Notre Dame’s recruiting momentum to keep growing.

“We have such a unique brand and a program to sell,” Freeman said. “In terms of the things I’ve been telling recruits is that everything you want in any program, it’s all for you, plus more.

“When you’re recruiting to Notre Dame, it’s unique in terms you can get every player in the country to answer your phone call, or every player to return your phone call, because they respect the brand.”

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