Notebook: Freeman tinkering to help Notre Dame feel at home on the road
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman didn’t have to stall for an answer when asked during his weekly Monday Notre Dame football press conference what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving week.
Let unsaid is that the second-year Notre Dame head coach would like to add something else to that list by Saturday night — specifically bottling up what went right for the Irish in their 45-7 Senior Day smackdown of Wake Forest this past Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium and taking it on the road.
For a change.
Two of Notre Dame’s three losses have come on the road this season, along with two more lethargic starts the now-17th-ranked Irish (8-3) were able to reconfigure into victories. True road game No. 5 is a regular-season finale matchup Saturday night at Stanford (3-8), with a 7 EST kick time on the Pac-12 Network.
“As I told the coaches, I don't want to make this only a road issue, but we haven’t performed to our standards.”
So, Freeman is prepared to make some changes in their pregame routine. It’ll start with more competitive team practices, including 1s vs. 1s, early on.
“Just to give them the right mindset of ‘OK, whenever we say go, it’s go.’” Freeman said. Typically those parts of practice are at or near the end of them.
Travel schedules have also been altered, another lean into sports science as Notre Dame did with its season-opening neutral-site game in Ireland and crossing multiple time zones.
Since 1998, the Irish have ended almost every regular season on the West Coast, alternating between Stanford and USC, with three tweaks.
A Sept. 15 matchup Purdue in 2001 was postponed because of the 9/11 tragedies and then tacked on, Dec. 1, to the end of that season after a road trip to Stanford in what turned out to be coach Bob Davie’s final game.
In 2003, a December road game at Syracuse was scheduled after the Thanksgiving week road trip to Stanford. And in 2020, the scheduled finale at USC was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Irish played an ACC schedule that season instead.
The usual departure date for these California trips has been Thursday. But Freeman was advised he’d likely get a better performance out of his team on Saturday night if the Irish left Friday after walk-throughs instead.
On Thursday, the team will have a morning practice, then a Thanksgiving meal together. The players will have Thursday night free, before walkthroughs and a 4-hour, 15-minute plane ride on Friday.
“We wanted to keep it as normal as possible, even though it is a three-hour time difference,” Freeman said of the change. “All these decisions that we make are to help performance. Nothing we do is just because. We believe this will help performance on Saturday. I have good confidence that our guys will be ready to roll.”
And in the meantime, what is Freeman thankful for?
“No journey is ever how you perceive on the front end,” he said. “But you’re appreciative of the people you get to be on the journey with. That’s what I’m thankful for. The people that I’m surrounded by every day that are on the same journey as I am.
“The players, the coaches — every person in our football program — the endless work they put in to try to earn the outcome that we want. It’s not always the outcome we get. What we want isn’t always what we get. But they continue to work and continue to choose to love each other. “It’s a special place. It’s a special football program. I’m so thankful to be here with this university and this football program.”
Decoding Angeli’s numbers
The numbers Notre Dame sophomore backup quarterback Steve Angeli has put up in six relief cameos are impressive and unusual but not unprecedented, dating back to the start of the Brian Kelly Era of Irish football in 2010.
He’s completing 79.2% of his passes (19-of-24) for 272 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. His pass-efficiency rate is a cartoonish 229.4, and his Pro Football Focus grade is third among Notre Dame’s offensive players, behind only midseason All-America running back Audric Estimé and reigning All-America left tackle Joe Alt.
“The confidence that he's building in our program is evidenced by his performance on Saturdays,” Freeman said. “He works tirelessly in practice, does a great job in practice, but again, until you do it in a game, that true confidence and belief isn’t totally there.
“He's done an excellent job. I'm so proud of him, and it's a reflection of how he prepares. He's ready for whenever his number's called, and so we have a lot of confidence in Steve Angeli.”
Still, Freeman has said he’s committed to going December shopping in the transfer portal, which opens for business on Dec. 4, the same date the Irish find out their bowl destination and opponent.
It’s hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons of quarterbacks who accumulated the second-most pass attempts in a season for the Irish. Last year, for instance, Tyler Buchner fashioned a 121.3 pass-efficiency mark, but the only three games he played in were the only three he was healthy enough to play in, and all three were starts.
In 2021, he had a 142.7 rating as a change-up QB with starter Jack Coan. In 2000, Drew Pyne threw only 12 passes and had a 106.3 rating. Notably in 2012, when Kelly employed a bullpen QB concept with Tommy Rees to complement starter Everett Golson, Rees had a 124.11 rating at season’s end.
No one, not even injured or displaced starters, have come close statistically to what Angeli has done, except for the backup to Ian Book in 2019, Phil Jurkovec. As a sophomore he completed 75% of his passes, threw for 222 yards with two TDs and no picks over seven cameos and put up a 232.8 pass-efficiency rating.
Jurkovec transferred out after that season, later criticizing the Irish coaching staff on why/how he wasn’t developed and landed at Boston College. He was a three-year starter for the Eagles, but missed games all three seasons there, including at last six games twice.
His best season by far since leaving ND was 2021, in which he had a respectable 150.0 rating in a six-game season for him. He transferred to Pitt for his sixth and final college season, but came to Notre Dame Stadium on Oct. 28 as the Panthers’ third-string QB after beginning the season as their starter.
He was a bystander in Pitt’s 58-7 loss to the Irish.
Should Angeli choose to remain at ND after his sophomore season, it’s likely Freeman will give him a chance to win the job over a portal import, freshman Kenny Minchey and talented newcomer, CJ Carr, who enroll in January and participate in spring practice.
Mixed signals
What Notre Dame is trying to avoid in potentially stolen signals of plays coming from the sidelines can potentially produce some collateral friendly fire on game days.
Freeman acknowledged it happened twice in the Wake Forest game Saturday, on a drive just before the half that ended in a field goal and a three-and-out in the third quarter following a successful onside kick in which the Irish lost six yards on a running play on second day and three more on a running play on third down.
“The one before half was a wristband error kind of thing,” Freeman said. “Read the wrong one, and it’s happened plenty other times this year. And that's the point of sometimes not wanting to signal everything and be able to change up how you communicate from sideline to your quarterback. At times you might read the wrong wristband number.
“And I think at that point, [quarterback] Sam {Hartman] was like, ‘That's not the play we want right now.’ And so, there was communication [error], so that’s why we called timeout. But it's a part of the game, and we want to be flawless. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to make sure on the next play, on this play, let's make sure we execute the right way.”
Squibs
• Players of the game for Wake Forest were QB Sam Hartman (offense), linebacker JD Bertrand (defense) and defensive end Javontae Jean-Baptiste (special teams). Scout team players of the week were Skip Velotta (offense), Jaiden Ausberry (defense) and Chase Cook (special teams).
• Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden did not make the cut to 15 semifinalists for the Broyles Award, given annually to the nation’s top assistant coach. The Irish are sixth nationally in total defense, which if it holds would be the highest national ranking in that category by a Notre Dame team since 1980.
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