SOUTH BEND, Ind. — After his seventh carry Saturday night in Dublin, Ireland, Notre Dame junior running back Audric Estimé found himself on the sideline in a coaching maneuver that was hardly a coincidence.
His bruising 13-yard run, on 13th-ranked ND’s second possession of an eventual 42-3 romp over Navy in the Irish season opener, ended with Estimé losing his grip, and running backs coach Deland McCullough opting to flex his position group depth a little earlier than planned.
“There’s a standard that he and our offense and our team has set for that room,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said during his weekly Monday press conference. “And you can’t put the ball on the ground.
“We don’t care if you’re Sam Hartman or Audric Estimé. If you’re not doing the things that we say are the standards for this program, in this room, then there’s consequences. Part of that was, ‘Hey, Audric, you’re going to be pulled for a little bit, because you can’t put the ball on the ground.’”
The standard was set before either Freeman or Estimé landed at Notre Dame for the first time in 2021, Freeman in January of that year and Estimé as a freshman in June.
Following a 19-16 November escape over heavy underdog Boston College in Fenway Park late in the 2015 season until Nov. 2, 2019 against Virginia Tech, Notre Dame running backs strung together 1,273 carries without a lost fumble.
It was Jafar Armstrong who broke the streak four seasons ago, trying to plunge over from the 1-yard line and into the end zone just before halftime in an eventual 21-10 Irish victory, and having the ball punched away and returned 98 yards for a Hokies TD.
Estimé didn’t lose the fumble Saturday against Navy, but he did account for three of ND’s seven lost fumbles during the 2022 season. Quarterback Drew Pyne (3) and wide receiver/punt returner Matt Salerno (1) accounted for the others.
Still, Estimé finished last season as Notre Dame’s leading rusher (920 yards and 11 rushing TDs on 156 carries), and was ND’s leading ground gainer again Saturday (95 yards and a TD on 16 carries) against a team that finished second nationally in rush defense and returned nine starters from that unit.
Notre Dame (1-0) host Tennessee State (0-0) Saturday at 3:30 p.m. EDT (NBC/Peacock) in the Irish home opener.
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“It’s a credit to Deland McCullough for the trust that his players have in him and a credit to Audric Estimé that we all know is the guy. RB1,” Freeman said. “To be able to accept that you’re going to be held accountable, because you did not perform to our standard. You put the ball on the ground. It was a great example to not just those two, but to everybody in that room. Even our entire team. Nobody’s bigger than the standard.”
The Irish, as a team, averaged six yards a carry in amassing 191 rushing yards among Estimé, sophomoreS Gi’Bran Payne and Jadarian Price, grad transfer Devyn Ford and freshman Jeremiyah Love.
Price, Ford and Love were all making their Irish playing debuts. Payne logged two carries as a redshirting freshman in 2022.
“Let’s start with the room — five guys that are all talented,” Freeman said. “I told coach McCullough that he’s done a great job at keeping those guys unselfish, at putting them in situations. They have packages based off who they are and some of their strengths. I was really impressed by the depth and the execution of that room.”
Especially the guy still at the top of the Irish running back depth chart.
“It’s actually a really proud moment to be able to see that. There’s no pouting,” Freeman said. “There’s no guy throwing his helmet and mad because he’s taken out. No, it’s, ‘Hold me accountable, coach. That’s your job. When I get the opportunity to go back in, I will.’ And he did, and did a great job.”
Making adjustments
Freeman continues his offseason infatuation with sports science, as he made some temporary changes to his team’s routine — and a permanent one too — to deal with a lost day due to 7 ½-hour flight back from Ireland and a shift of five time zones.
Specific to this week, the Irish will go lighter with the physicality in practice as they adjust their body clocks. Staying beyond this week is Notre Dame taking Sundays off this season and practicing on Monday instead.
“Ultimately, I have to just make a decision about what I think is best for Saturday, and each place is different,” Freeman said. “And that's probably the biggest thing I've learned in the year of experience is you can't just take a plan and say it worked for me as a player or it worked at a previous place that I was at, and it's going to work at Notre Dame.
“You’ve got to take in consideration what they're being asked to do on a Monday here, compared to what it was like somewhere else. And so, that's kind of the biggest thing. I wanted them to truly have a day off on paper. You get one day off, but I wanted them to be able to take Sunday and really work academically, and you don't have anything mandatory from us on Sunday.
“Academics are so important, you have to have time to really work at that. And also the lifting part of what we're asking them to do, so a lot of things went into that decision. It's not just one thing. A lot of things went into that decision.”
Making adjustments II
So much was made during the Brian Kelly Era of the difficulty preparing for the uniqueness of Navy’s offensive scheme, but re-entry back to playing against a more traditional offense may have been more challenging.
After the 2017 season, the Irish under Kelly had a 5-6 record in games immediately following a triple-option opponent and their cut blocks. That included not just Navy, but games against Army, Air Force and Georgia Tech when former Navy coach Paul Johnson was coaching the Yellow Jackets.
The Irish faced only two ranked teams among those 11 opponents, and Notre Dame was the higher-ranked team in both of those games (vs. Arizona State in 2014 and Stanford in 2017). The Irish lost both, and by 24 and 18 points, respectively.
Of the five games they did win, only two came by double digits.
Often the Irish emerged from those games with injuries to its defensive linemen and linebackers. Modified cut block rules, have alleviated a lot of that, but ND junior nose guard Gabe Rubio did suffer a knee injury against the Mids on Saturday and is expected to miss the next couple of games.
But in 2018, Kelly found the cure for the triple-option hangover, and went 3-0, all by double digits, in his last three such games. And Freeman apparently learned the formula, presiding over a 44-0 rout of Boston College last November in a snow globe game the week after a 35-32 survival of Navy.
“We have to be smart in terms of our preparation,” Freeman said. “You can’t go from that Navy game plan to a game plan this week that is super complicated. You have to make sure — our only objective for our coaches is making sure our great players play great.
“That is a coach and a player challenge. As coaches, you have to give your great players an opportunity to play great by making sure you do things that they can execute. Players, you have to embrace that and understand, ‘OK, here’s the game plan. I’m going to study it. I’m going to work it so that on Saturday I have a chance to go out there and play great.’”
Making adjustments III
Sam Hartman, who rarely took a snap under center at Wake Forest and played in a different offense conceptually at that school, looked at home Saturday not lining up exclusively in the shotgun formation against Navy.
Freeman admitted it wasn’t always that way.
“Throughout the spring you saw that. His footwork,” Freeman said of the early struggles with the change. “You saw at times in practice that he would revert back to maybe some of his previous footwork that he did at Wake Forest. That is something that took a lot of work to really change his footwork in terms of getting it to how [offensive coordinator Gerad] Parker and [QBs] coach [Gino] Guidugli wanted here.”
Hartman had as many touchdowns (4) as incompletions in his ND debut, completing 19 of 23 passes for 251 yards.
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