Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman met with the media shortly after his 10th-ranked Irish fell to No. 25 Louisville, 33-20, on Saturday night at L&N Stadium in Louisville, Ky. Here's everything he had to say. Answers are largely verbatim. Questions are edited for brevity and clarity.
OPENING STATEMENT
“Obviously, just disappointed in the performance. We’ve got to take ownership as a coaching staff, and as the head coach first. Our guys weren’t prepared for whatever reason. We've got to take a deep dive and figure out what it was.
“You can point your finger at any person, any specific unit, but the reality is we better point the finger at ourselves and figure out what were the issues that led to the lack of execution. We, obviously, know we’ve got to take care of the football. We can’t turn the ball over five times and expect to win. But everybody’s going to point the finger at Sam [Hartman]. You’ve got to point the finger at us, at me. We’ve got to protect him. We’ve got to do a better job of protecting our quarterback, and put him in situations to have a higher percentage of success.
“And so, a lot of self-reflection we’re going to have to do — a deep dive into exactly where the shortcomings happened, and we’ve got to get this thing figured out and turned around, because we have USC coming in next weekend. We don’t have a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves. We better get back to work and start preparing for this next, upcoming game. With that, I’ll open it up for questions.”
Q: What went into the decision to rotate the guards and the center in the first half?
Marcus Freeman: “We had made that decision throughout the week. Again, we have to be better at the guard position, and that was something that was evident in the last game. And we said, ‘We’re going to roll some guys in at the guard position. And we’ve got to do a better job of protecting our quarterback.’ And so, we’ll have to go and watch the film to see how each guard did. We didn’t protect the quarterback the way we needed to.”
Q: You were averaging more than 150 yards rushing and never could seem to get the running game going. Then when you started passing, Louisville did a good job of pressuring there?
MF: “Yeah, they did a good job, a really good job. We didn’t run the ball well, and they pressured the quarterback.”
Q: Have you seen them put that much pressure on anybody in their previous games or has anyone put that much pressure on your team?
MF: “No, nobody’s affected our quarterback quite like Louisville did, and so you have to give them credit. And they were stacking the box and saying, ‘We’re going to refuse to let you run the ball.’ And that means we’ve got to make some plays in the passing game. And so, we didn’t, and we’ve got to make sure that we have this not happen again.”
Q: Their offensive line probably blocked better than they have tonight, but Jawhar Jordan, your thoughts about him and what he did for them?
MF: “He’s a good player, good player. We missed a tackle when he scored that long touchdown. Good player.”
Q: The fourth-and-11 decision to go for it in the fourth quarter, could you take us through what led you to that?
MF: “Two-score game. You play the percentages. We’ve either got to get a three-and-out if we punt the ball and hope that we get enough time to have two separate possessions or you try to convert right there and play the percentages. Even if you don’t convert here, you make them go three-and-out and force them to kick the field goal [and it’s still] a two-[score] game. So, that went into my decision.”
Q: Third down wasn’t great for you tonight. A couple of play calls, jet sweeps. What was the thought process there instead of maybe running Audric Estimé up the middle?
MF: “[On the Chris Tyree fumble], it was a play we worked on in practice. We faked the toss and kind of ran a counter. They pressured it, and it wasn’t executed. They pressured it, and we didn’t get the guy blocked. Obviously, that caused a fumble there, but it was a situation where — I can’t remember exactly — but I think we were going to go [on fourth down] if it was within one or two yards. So, that’s probably why we decided to do that play at that moment.”
Q: What were the issues with the run defense tonight, particularly with Jordan?
MF: “I don’t know how long that one run he had was for a touchdown, but I know that contributed to a lot of the yardage. I thought our defense battled for the most part. [They were] put in some bad situations late in the game, but for the most part, I thought they did a pretty good job. The third series of the second half was the long touchdown run, then we get them off the field on third down, and we get the [facemask] penalty. That hurt. You can’t have that, man. You finally get off the field. There was a facemask, I think, on Marist [Liufau], and they drove it. And we missed a tackle in the hole and he scored again. So, we’ve got to clean up every aspect of it — not just the touchdown, but the plays that led to the touchdown.”
Q: What kind of job do you have to do this week to get the guys over this mentally?
MF: “You don’t have much time to feel sorry for yourselves, and that comes from me as a head coach and our leaders. I’m going to really count on our leaders to make sure these guys understand that we’ve got to learn from this game and we’ve got to move forward and get ready for USC. We cannot sit here and mope and feel bad for ourselves. We have to move forward, and so this will be a true test of our leadership, starting with me and our captains.”
Q: What was Thomas Harper’s absence related to and what kind of ripple effect did it have on your sub packages?
MF: “He was out with a concussion. He was in concussion protocol and wasn’t ready to return to play. C-Lew [Clarence Lewis] did a good job of stepping in there, and Cam Hart had some nickel reps. And so, obviously, you don’t want to lose a great player like Thomas Harper, but [we] expect him to be back next week and [there’s] a lot more work to do.”
---------------------------------------------------------------
• Talk with Notre Dame fans on The Insider Lounge.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Podbean or Pocket Casts.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports channel on YouTube.
• Follow us on Twitter: @insideNDsports, @EHansenND, @TJamesND and @cbowles01.
• Like us on Facebook: Inside ND Sports
• Follow us on Instagram: @insideNDsports
