SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When given the opportunity on Monday to evaluate his offensive line’s progress or lack thereof a third of the way through Notre Dame’s 2024 football schedule, coach Marcus Freeman spoke generically and optimistically.
Five days from now 15th-ranked Louisville seems poised to give Freeman’s assessment both a fact check and reality check.
The Cardinals (3-0), Saturday visitors to Notre Dame Stadium (3:30 p.m. EDT, Peacock streaming), are among the national elite in the statistical trends that will test Notre Dame’s still-congealing O-line unit. And one that added in two new starting pieces, due to injury, this past Saturday in a 28-3 dismissal of Miami (Ohio).
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Louisville is ranked 22nd in total defense — the best of any Irish opponent, 14th nationally in sacks, 18th in run defense and 10th in turnover margin. The Cardinals flexed all four of those strengths and more last season in Louisville’s 33-20 home takedown of the Irish on Oct. 7 that effectively ended any lingering College Football Playoff hopes in the old four-team format.
They’d love nothing more this week than to do that to the 16th-ranked Irish (3-1) and their aspirations to be part of the new 12-team version.
“There’s a lot of great learning opportunities from that game,” Freeman said, “and that’s what I’m going to preach to our team. ‘It’s not that I’m revisiting last year to motivate you. I’m revisiting last year to learn from those things that we have to learn from, that that game presented.’
“It’s a lot like therapy. Sometimes you’ve got to revisit those dark places to kind of get out of it what you need to. So, we’re definitely going to revisit last year, but my intentions are to make sure we gain the wisdom and the learning opportunities that the film of last year will truly tell us.”
Here’s what they’re likely to see when they go over the film:
In Louisville’s victory last season, the Cardinals held Notre Dame to 298 total yards, ND’s second-lowest total of the 2023 season. The Irish were held to a season-low 44 rushing yards, with a 1.6 per-carry average. And All-American Audric Estimé labored for 20 yards on 10 carries.
The Cardinals also coaxed five turnovers, three Sam Hartman interceptions and two lost fumbles by the Irish, and they sacked Hartman five times.
And that was with All-America left tackle Joe Alt and standout right tackle Blake Fisher, both now NFL rookies, in the ND lineup.
One of the big disruptors in the 2023 clash, 2024 preseason All-America defensive end Ashton Gillotte, is back. But so far he has only one of Louisville’s nine sacks. The team leader to date is South Florida transfer Tramel Logan, with three.
The Irish offensive line, with just six collective individual starts on its résumé at season’s onset, handled the challenge of Texas A&M’s vaunted front in the 23-13 season-opening road win on Aug. 31. But the Aggies haven’t been the vaunted defense — yet — that they were purported to be coming into the season.
In the loss to ND and wins over McNeese State, Florida and Bowling Green since, Texas A&M is collectively No. 51 in total defense and 108th out of 133 FBS teams in sacks.
The two new Irish O-line starters, center Pat Coogan and right guard Rocco Spindler, had successful re-entries as first-teamers, according to their film grades from Pro Football Focus. Coogan replaced junior Ashton Craig, out for the season with a knee injury he suffered Sept. 14 at Purdue.
Spindler stepped in for Billy Schrauth, who suffered an ankle injury in the Purdue game and is expected back sometime in October. Coogan was ND’s starting left guard last season for all 13 games, but got beaten out by sophomore Sam Pendleton in training camp.
Spindler, a starter in 10 games at right guard last season, got beaten out by Schrauth at right guard in the spring, then lost the three-way battle for the left guard spot in August to Pendleton.
“There’s a communication and gelling that it takes being out there to really happen,” Freeman said of seniors Coogan and Spindler. “But I think as you look at the overall performance of that game, those two, in particular, played really well. I think the entire offensive line played well.”
Both Coogan and Spindler started against Louisville in the 2023 game, with Coogan, according to the Pro Football Focus film grades, having the second-best game of his season against the Cardinals.
The best of his career came last Saturday against Miami (Ohio) — Spindler's too.
In the bigger picture, junior right tackle Aamil Wagner, a first-year starter, has been ND’s best and most consistent lineman to date this season.
The other two first-year starters, Pendleton and true freshman offensive tackle Anthonie Knapp, have shown growth but plenty of growing pains, too. Pendleton was flagged for two false starts and a holding penalty Saturday against Miami (Ohio).
Knapp, cumulatively for the season, is PFF’s lowest-graded offensive player for ND, starter or reserve, among the 37 who have played at least one snap this season. And his pass-blocking grade among FBS offensive tackles who have played 50% or more of their teams’ snaps ranks 164th out of 169 nationally.
But Freeman is keeping the faith as the offensive line moves back under the microscope again with a chance to change history instead of repeating it.
“For Knapp, he’s 18, 19 years old,” the coach said. “First game ever starting at Notre Dame is down at Texas A&M. Now you have four games under your belt and four weeks of constant improvement of seeing really what an opponent is like in a game.
“Those guys have really progressed. Sam’s playing well. I know he’s mad about the two false starts, as am I, but we’re gonna work on that. We’ll attack it, and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen. They’re just working at it, and they’re getting better.”
How to dress for success?
In mid-August, Notre Dame revealed that Saturday’s ND-Louisville showdown would be designated as “Irish Wear Green” Day through a video featuring Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman and 46-year-old professional wrestler Sheamus, who happens to be a native of Ireland.
When Freeman invited Sheamus to the game, the coach let him know that wearing green was part of the dress code. Except, perhaps, for the ND football team itself.
During his Monday press conference, Freeman acknowledged that he was putting that decision in the hands of his captains later on Monday afternoon.
“If they want to wear the green jerseys, then we'll wear the green jerseys on Saturday," Freeman said.
What the captains decided has yet to leak out.
What is known is that the last time Notre Dame donned green jerseys, they paired them with green pants. The was Sept. 23 of last season, and the Irish lost to Ohio State, 17-14.
Taking stock of ND’s wide receivers
Maybe numbers do lie, or at least don’t tell the whole story.
And Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman is convinced that’s a trend that will eventually reverse itself as the Irish passing game continues to grow.
“The one challenge that we've said in our meetings with [receivers] coach [Mike] Brown — and he voiced this — we have to continue to win the 50/50 balls,” Freeman said. “We won a couple of them in the game Saturday. Made some big plays. But there were a couple we didn't win.
“That's the challenge for those guys — when the opportunity presents itself, we’ve got to make sure we're winning. That's all they can control. You can run your route perfectly and be wide open, but if the play call doesn't dictate to throw you the ball or the quarterback makes another decision, then nobody really talks about it.
“But as we evaluate the film, our wideouts are playing at a high level. They're doing a much better job in terms of blocking on the perimeter. Stats are stats. What I'm looking for is wins.”
Clemson transfer Beaux Collins leads the Irish in receptions with 16 and in receiving yards with 176. And he’s the only wide receiver on the roster who has caught a touchdown pass this season.
“Obviously, we want to have positive production in our offense, and we're doing that,” Freeman said. “But it's hard sometimes when I'm sure you want the stats to back that up as a wide receiver. But they are an unselfish group.
“Credit to coach Brown and the job he's done with them to continue to put team glory in front of anything else. They just keep working and doing what they're doing, and they're going to get the stats to back it up."
In the heat of the moment
NBC’s cameras caught head coach Marcus Freeman’s heated sideline exchange with safety Adon Shuler late in the second quarter Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium — with Freeman providing all of the heat and most of the exchange.
Miami was trailing 14-3 at the time and struggling to move the ball on its final possession of the half, and Freeman was using ND’s timeouts to try to get the ball back. On third-and-11 from the RedHawk 24-yard line, a Brett Gabbert pass fluttered incomplete and the clock stopped.
But after the play had ended, Shuler picked the ball up and flipped it at the Miami sideline. He was then flagged for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. So, instead of Miami punting with 46 seconds left, the RedHawks got a first down on the 39 and ran out the clock.
“It’s funny. My dad texted me,” Freeman said when asked about the play and the interaction between the coach and his sophomore safety. “He said, ‘Man, you kind of got into No. 8. But I told my dad, ‘I don’t know if they saw what happened after that.’
“I told him I did what I thought [was] probably how I was raised. I was upset, because we had the momentum. I had a strong feeling that if we were able to — we called two timeouts — get the ball back, we had a great chance to go down and score before half, which would have been huge.
“We pride ourselves in being a disciplined football team. … I lost my temper a little bit, but the first thing [Shuler] said was, ‘Yes sir. I own it. I shouldn’t have done it. My bad. It won’t happen again.’
“And when a young person, a coach or anybody, when you own your mistakes, now we can fix it. If you make excuses, and you say it’s somebody else’s fault, it’s hard to fix that until you own it. And he owned it.
“Right after it, as we were running at halftime, I said, ‘I appreciate you owning it. I love ya. Let’s learn from it, and let’s reload and get ready to come back in the second half.’ I love that kid. He’s a great young man. I hope I would treat my son the same way.
“When you make a mistake sometimes that you need a reminder of a selfish action you made, it’s not always going to be lovey and kind. Love sometimes is tough. That was an example of tough love.”
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