Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman held a press conference Monday at Notre Dame Stadium, previewing Saturday night's 2023 road game between his 11th-ranked Irish (4-1) and No. 17 and 4-0 Duke (7:30 EDT; ABC). Here's everything he had to say. Answers are largely verbatim. Question are edited for brevity and clarity.
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OPENING STATEMENT
“First, I want to make sure we start off by thanking the fans, the students, and everybody involved with Saturday. It was a special atmosphere, and a lot of work put into it that, I think, everybody that was involved with the game truly felt. And I want to make sure that I thank everybody that was a part of that.
“Obviously, the outcome wasn't what we wanted. And great teams find a way to execute when it matters the most. That's what great teams do, and we didn’t. We needed to execute at the end of the game, and we didn't. And Ohio State did. And we have to learn from the critical mistakes we made in that game, as a football program, and use it to help us improve as we move forward. We made too many mistakes that ended up costing us a victory versus a great opponent, like Ohio State. I mean, they were a great team, and we had chances to win that game. And they executed, and we didn't when it mattered the most.
“And so, a credit to them and their coaching staff, but this game didn't come down to just one play. There are multiple plays all over the game that we have to learn from, we have to be better. You think of the fourth-and-1 situations on offense. We’ve got to convert, because we're going to continue to go for those. The percentages of success, that is a mindset that I have, and we have to be able to execute. And then, in turn, we haven't been able to make our field goals. We can’t miss field goals. And that's another important way that we have to make sure that we execute when we can.
“Can’t give up a 60-yard touchdown run. We’ve got to continue to tackle in the open field at a higher rate. The lack of execution on both sides of the ball, really, with four minutes left to go in the game, that's to me what really finalized that game. As you think about it defensively, take that last drive, they converted on third-and-10, fourth-and-7, third-and-18, and then the last two plays we have 10 guys on the field. And so, we need to just address that. The reality is, when did you find out it was too late? By the time we realized there were 10 guys on the field, you don't have time to get somebody from the sideline when the ball is on the 1-yard line on the far hash.
“To be able to — you have to touch somebody on offense to get them to stop the play. And so, by the time we realized that, to run somebody out there, you would have gotten a penalty, but they would have declined it and still scored a touchdown. And so, as we talked as a staff yesterday, obviously we can't let that happen. We know that. We can't let 10 guys go on the field and not see it. We came up with a call, a signal to be able to say, ‘Hey, you have to jump offsides and touch somebody on the offense, so you can stop the play.’ So, it was a learning opportunity for myself and everybody involved in our program.
“There were a lot of positives from the game, which obviously nobody is going to really care about because of the outcome, and that's the reality of it. But our players need to understand there were a lot of positives from the game that we have to continue to get better at and attack the deficiencies, the lack of execution that we have. And so, we have to get back to work. We'll meet with our players this afternoon and get back to work and attack some of those issues that we've had. And we’ve got to get back to work, prepare for a really good Duke team.
“Coach [Mike] Elko has done a great job in terms of where this team is right now. And so, we’ve got to prepare the right way and get ready to go to a hostile environment down in North Carolina with the College GameDay being there. So, with that, I’ll open it up for the questions.
Q: After watching the film from the Ohio State game, could you give an assessment of where you think your offensive line is now?
Marcus Freeman: “I mean, if you would have told me going into that game, we would have zero three-and-outs, zero sacks, zero turnovers, zero drops, zero penalties, run for 176 yards and not win, I would have said, ‘No way.’ But when you have three series that end on their side of the field, and we get zero points out of it, that's the reality of it. And so, again, we have to finish those drives with points. And that's a point of emphasis, obviously, that we have to make this week.”
Q: Looking ahead to this weekend, you face a quarterback in Riley Leonard who's really mobile. Are there similarities there that you used in the NC State game with Brennan Armstrong that you want to implement?
MF: “Yeah, there'll be some. He is a talented individual. Obviously, all offenses go through the quarterback, but the things he presents in the run game, the challenges he's going to present — and he's a big, physical, tough runner, too. He's accurate in the pass game for what they need him to do. And so, it's a huge challenge for our team. Biggest one yet.”
Q: As the head coach you're in charge of processes and systems, like you don't do the substitutions. You don't signal in the plays. As you audit what happened in the final four minutes, where were the breakdowns in terms of the substitutions? But also, there was a place where you had to burn a timeout, where the defense was struggling to get a signal in from the sideline. What did you find out about where those systems didn't hold up?
MF: “No. We called that timeout, because we wanted to see what formation they were in. We wanted to call the timeout just to try to match up to it. There's a whole bunch of systems in place to make sure that doesn't happen. But ultimately, it falls on me. I'm not going to get up here and say, ‘This person should have done that. That person …' Ultimately, I have to do a better job as the head coach and make sure those systems that we have in place are executed.
“We, as a coaching staff should be held to the exact same standards we tell our players to. We tell our players — you often hear me say ‘Fight the drift.’ You can't get caught watching the game. Everybody has a job to do on this play. Coaches too. We all have to own that and make sure that never happens.”
Q: How do you balance emphasizing the lesson of those last four minutes, and sticking with the guys and your staff versus not being overly punitive about it?
MF: “As I said, there are a lot of positives that you have to make sure that you see them and you encourage your staff and the players about how well they did for a great portion of that game. But the ones that you didn't do, those are the ones that you have to attack and you have to really get it corrected, because those are the ones that great teams find a way to get it done when it matters the most.”
Q: Speaking of positives from Saturday's game, the go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter was kind of engineered by three freshmen — Jaden Greathouse, Rico Flores and Jeremiyah Love. How much trust is there in them right now?
MF: “Jaden Rico and Jeremiah, again, I think I've said this before, it’s a credit to our recruiting staff and evaluation by our coaches of high school talent. And two of those guys came in early from really good high school programs. One came in during the summer. And so, that misconception of you’ve got to come in, in the winter to play early is wrong. But those three guys were well-prepared when they got to Notre Dame, and they’ve done a great job.”
Q: On the depth chart this week, I noticed that there was a change at holder. Is that something you identified in the operation that was an issue?
MF: “No. It was something that's a comfort for Spencer [Shrader]. When we worked in practice, ultimately he felt a little bit more comfortable with Bryce [McFerson] being the holder, and that's why we changed it.”
Q: Rico Flores’ snap count was probably the highest of the season. Was that opponent-specific? Do you expect to see more of him going forward?
MF: “Yeah. He just continues to improve. So does Jaden Greathouse. They continue to improve, and it's so good to see them get some of the rewards. And, as I told Rico, ‘I don't want the loss to overshadow the many improvements that you've made, and so just continue to do what you're doing, and do it better.’ And that's what I told him, ‘We don't need you to, all of a sudden, become a Superman and not take care of your classwork and the things that you're doing every day. But just continue to improve in practice, and you'll get those rewards in games like you did on Saturday.’”
Q: Why didn’t you call timeouts last in the first half to try to get a two-minute drill going if/when you got the ball back?
MF: “I have a saying: You win or you learn. Last year at Ohio State, the very same situation happened. Ohio State, I think, had two timeouts. First down, I wanted to take a shot, but we didn’t [get that communicated]. We ran the ball. On second down, we threw it. And Ohio State had time to call a timeout and still get possession. And I didn't want that to happen.
“They had two timeouts. I knew if we took a shot on the very first play, they could call timeout on second down and third down, and still get the ball back. So, I didn't want to put our offense or team in that situation. So, that's where we made a decision, ‘Hey, let's just take a knee and take It into the half.’”
Q: Do you have a sense of where your team is mentally right now? Whether it's anger, frustration? And then, where do you want them to be throughout the week as they build towards Saturday?
MF: “We haven't had a chance to meet yet. I’ve talked to a couple of them. I think they’ve taken it personally in terms of, as individuals, and you want that. I want every person on our team to take this loss personally. Everybody's accountable, but no one person is responsible for it. So, I'm going to get a chance to meet with them here at 2:40, and like I’m going to tell them that this game builds character. It builds resiliency. Like, you can put everything you have into your preparation for a game, and still lose. And that's what they did last week.
“They put everything they had — coaches, players — and we still lost. The pain of defeat, it's tough. It hurts you, physically. You're sick when you lose, but in the midst of that pain, you’ve got to own it and you’ve got to face it. You’ve got to attack it. You’ve got to go back to work. You’ve got to pick your head up and you can't feel sorry for yourself. You can't hope that somebody pats you on the back and says, ‘It's going to be OK.’ We have to face the mistakes that we made and truly own it. And it is so hard to do, but we have to do it.
“And resilient people and people of character do that, especially during tough times. And so, that's what I'm going to encourage them to do. And that's what we have to choose, and we have to choose hard. I have a saying, ‘Choose hard.’ You're going to have to choose hard, no matter how you feel right now, and truly face the mistakes, attack them and go to work.”
Q: I don't go too far down the road, but the Louisville game on Oct. 7 has been announced as a night game. So, you guys are going to end up playing four consecutive night games now. With that in mind, does that impact your preparation over the next few weeks?
MF: “Yeah, you’re adding the travel now. We'll get home from Duke around 3:30 in the morning, and so as I think to the following week, for Louisville, we have to take that into consideration. I haven't put together an itinerary yet, the practice schedule, all those things, but we have to take that into consideration. That was one of those things we talked about last year that I've learned — every week truly isn’t the same. Just because we're playing at night versus Duke and versus Louisville, you have to take into consideration when you get home, so that will change a little bit of the practice structure. But it shouldn't be too much.”
Q: Do you have the luxury of moving practice back until later in the day or do academics get in the way?
MF: "Not changing much of academics.”
Q: Where did you first see in Mitchell Evans’ journey that he could be a tight end that you’d never take off the field?
MF: “I noticed it last year really in the bowl prep. I think it noticed it through the season, but all of a sudden Michael Mayer’s not playing and Mitchell Evans — we are a tight end heavy offense. The bowl prep, I noticed he can be the guy. He played well in that bowl game, and he’s played really well all year. He hasn’t had the catches and the targets that he did this past Saturday, but he made some great catches and did a really good job in the run game too.”
Q: Is there an update on Deion Colzie’s condition?
MF: “He’s going to get his knee scoped sometime this week. It’s prevented him from really performing at the level he believes he should be at. So we’re going to scope his knee this week. He’ll be out for a couple weeks. Then Jayden Thomas is questionable right now with a hamstring strain.”
Q: When Ohio State was making its subs on third-and-goal, you did not know that you only had 10 players on the field at that time?
MF: “The second-to-play we had 10 guys on the field. We did not know. By the time we noticed on the last play, it was too late to do anything about.”
Q: How do you quantify success for a player like Marist Liufau who plays 61 snaps and doesn’t register a tackle? Did he have a good game?
MF: “Yeah. I think our entire defense played, for the most, pretty well, Marist included. There are always things to improve at. Marist didn’t really get a chance to practice at full speed last week. He was nursing a little bit of a stinger/neck strain. Did that have an impact on how he played? I don’t know. You look for everything. But Marist played fine. Marist wasn’t the reason why we had success or didn’t have success. I thought he did a good job when he was in there.”
Q: When you talk about the new procedure for if there’s 10 players on the field, is that something that starts getting implemented today?
MF: “No. We don’t. We talked about it as a staff. But you don’t want a plan for having 10 guys on the field. It’s just a unique situation where you can’t by that time get somebody into the game, because the ball’s on the one-yard line on the far hash. If that happens when the ball’s at the 25-yard line, you just get somebody on the field. We should be fine. We talked about the biggest thing is having a signal to say, ‘Hey, jump offsides.’ That’s something we usually go over on Fridays. These last situational plays that could happen in a game, we’ll go over it on Fridays.”
Q: How did you get a sense for how players were feeling since the game?
MF: “I’ve reached out to our leaders. Captains and the guys in our team that I always get a good pulse from. I make sure I reach out to them, meet with a couple of them and talk with a couple of them on the phone.”
Q: How critical is it for your roster to see that young guys — freshmen and redshirt freshmen — can earn their way onto the field? How important is that in recruiting?
MF: “It’s important to just understand like if you can help us win games, you’re going to play. We’re going to play guys that we can count on to do exactly what you want them to do. Freshman, senior, it doesn’t matter. That should tell recruits, yeah. Hey man, if I’m good enough to play as a freshman, than I’m going to play. But the other thing that happens is sometimes I’m a freshman and I’m not ready to play. And I look at that freshman, but he’s playing. You got to understand every journey’s different, right? Just because that freshman’s playing and you’re not playing as a freshman, that doesn’t mean that he’s better than you or coach doesn’t like you. You have to trust your journey. And it’s really hard when you’re maybe looking around at other people’s journeys or maybe somebody’s in ear saying, ‘Hey, that’s what you should be doing. That’s what you should be getting.’
"We have to constantly remind our players that you have to trust that this is your journey. Then you have to figure out how to improve on this journey. Not be content with it. I don’t want you to be content with it. But go see your coaches. Have that constant communication of OK, where am I at on this road? How do I continue to improve? And this feedback has to be consistent. It can’t be a one-time conversation with your coach. It’s really important that they understand that. If you’re good enough, if you’re ready to help us play and win games, you’re going to play. But there is no timetable for that. Every person’s timetable is different.”
Q: Audric Estime didn’t play for gaps in the game while others were having some success. Was he fully healthy or was that part of the game plan?
MF: “Yeah, he was fully healthy. We had certain packages, unique packages for that game, using two-back sets. Coach Parker was just continuing to call the game as he felt it was necessary. Audric understands that. Audric played well, really well, in the plays that he was in the game. He’s a huge part of our offense. It’s just a great reminder of how deep that running backs room is and the unselfishness of Audric that speaks volume about.”
Q: What’s the decision that went into him coming out of the game on the four-minute drive after an 11-yard gain?
MF: “When it doesn’t work, you always go back and say, ‘Yeah, we should have called something different.’ Because it didn’t work. But if it would have worked, nobody would be asking about it. I’m not second-guessing coach Parker, his play calling, at all. We got to execute better. It’s like, OK, not why did you call it? But why didn’t we execute on this play? What do we have to correct? There’s multiple different people that have to get things fixed on that drive that the offense had the ball with four minutes left. It’s not play calling. It’s not the call that wasn’t efficient. It was the execution of that play.”
Q: What pushed you in the direction of shortening the rotations outside of wide receiver and running back? How would you evaluate how that worked out?
MF: “We discussed it prior to the game. We always discuss how our rotations will be. There’s a level of comfort you have as a coach in who’s on the field versus a certain opponent or versus certain people. That’s why we made those decisions going into the game. Sometimes the flow of the game has that impact of the game in terms of rotations. We always look to say, ‘OK, how many plays can this person play and truly play at the level we need them to?’ And that’s a constant evaluation. Even we looked at it after the game. OK, hey, was this too many plays for this guy? Should this person have played more? How do we get that person in the game more? There’s no perfect science for it. But it’s an every week conversation that we have.”
Q: As you measure your pass rush against Ohio State and look at your upcoming opponents at quarterback, how do you balance what you want to do to improve it?
MF: “We had one sack in the game. We had a couple QB hits and pressures. We got there. We just didn’t get there enough. It’s never enough. But I thought the D-line and the different pressure packages that we had were effective. Especially in that last drive. It was effective. That got them into those third-and-long or fourth-and-long situations. Then we have to convert them. We have to convert defensively. All 11 guys have to convert on those long-yardage situations. We’re always going to try to improve. We’re not satisfied. We’re greedy people. Do we got to be better at pass rush? Absolutely. Do we have to be better at pass defense? Yeah. And we’re top-something in the country. I don’t know, top-2 in the country. We have to improve in all areas, absolutely.”
Q: How would you assess the play of Cam Hart and Benjamin Morrison against Ohio State? How confident were you that they could match up well with Marvin Harrison Jr. and others?
MF: “I don’t know after this game other than Duke the wideouts that we’ll face. But when you talk about that wideout crew that we faced on Saturday, it’s probably the best in the country. Maybe I’ll watch film and see somebody else. I don’t want to compare it to anybody else. But that’s a talented group. I feel really confident in our corners. Coach Mickens has done a great job in that entire room. Cam and B-Mo, they were up for the challenge. We played man-to-man coverage, and they made some plays on offense. They’re going to. Great players do make plays. But I felt those guys continued to battle, continued to challenge all three of the wideouts that they had. They did a really good job.”
Q: What can you learn from bouncing back against Ohio State last year that resulted in a loss to Marshall and apply to this week?
MF: “I told the coaching staff this yesterday. Last year, you lose to Ohio State. Then you lose to Marshall. You don’t know shoot, if you’re ever going to win. You don’t. Then you lose to Stanford, you’re 3-3 and you’re still trying to figure this thing out. Yesterday, there was the emotion of we didn’t play at our full potential. That’s still what it’s about. It’s still about Notre Dame continuing to do what it takes in practice so that on Saturdays we play at our full potential. Yes, we have to game plan the opponent. But this is about us playing at the potential that we truly have.
"That is my mind set. It’s not a sentiment — I was angry yesterday because we didn’t do that. We didn’t do that on Saturday. Last year, it was a little bit of, ‘Man, what is going on?’ My mind was all over the place. So I know we have a high ceiling as a football team. It’s our job as coaches to make sure we get our players to perform as close to that ceiling as we can. It’s not a sense of panic. It’s a sense of urgency to go get this team to continuously improve and to execute in the manner we need them to.”
Q: What stands out to you about Duke’s defense under Mike Elko?
MF: “He’s always done a good job. I was at Kent State when he was at Bowling Green. His defenses did a great job. I followed him at Wake Forest, followed him when he was here. His defense have always been well-coached. The thing that you respect is how hard they play. They’re aggressive. They play extremely hard and they’re sound. They’re not exotic. They don’t do crazy things on defense, but they play fast and they play hard and they tackle well. I have a lot of respect for him as a football coach and the defenses he’s been a part of. It will be a great challenge for our offense on Saturday.”
Q: How do you prepare your team for that Duke atmosphere of hostility that they’re walking into with a ranked team and College GameDay on campus for the first time?
MF: “I’ve never been there. Coach Parker coached there. We’ve played in hostile environments, so we have to make sure we have a good plan for the crowd noise and what it will be about. This thing’s going to be about us. We have to continue to remind ourselves that. We game plan for an opponent, but Notre Dame has to execute at the level that we need Notre Dame to. That’s our focus. That’s my focus. That’s gotta be what our team is focused on.”
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