Notebook: Looking in the mirror is Notre Dame's best evaluative tool

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The Notre Dame football team will finally receive a new national ranking Tuesday after playing two games, which may end up matching its preseason rating when the AP, Coaches and Super 16 polls are revealed.

Or not.

For second-year Marcus Freeman translating ND’s combined 98-6 domination of odd-schemed Navy and FCS school Tennessee State is all about introspection and taking a look at how his Irish played to a standard. Something this week’s opponent, NC State (1-0) in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday (Noon, ABC) should be able to confirm or expose to a great degree on the field quickly.

The Wolfpack opened with a Thursday night road conquest of UConn, 24-14. The Irish will be looking to extend their 28-game, regular-season ACC win streak, with the most recent loss against a team from the league the houses most of its other sports full time being a 41-8 cratering at Miami in 2017.

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► Oh, the things Hartman and Freeman could talk about ... and what they did

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► Marcus Freeman's Notre Dame Football press conference transcript, NC State

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“I think you start with defensively, you played one game so far against a traditional offense, and it took a while [to adjust],” Freeman said of his team’s self-evaluation. “That first quarter of going against Tennessee State, of having the Navy demons mangled. Like we hadn't played normal defense for about three weeks.

“And so, we’ve just got to continue to focus on improvement. I don't want to say that the wins over Navy and Tennessee State don’t mean anything. They do. But more than the wins, it's looking at us internally and saying, ‘OK, did we execute on this assignment? Why or why not?’ And that was the challenge I have for the coaches: I want to know why he MA’d [missed an assignment]. Like how many MAs did we have and what do we have to do to fix it?’

“[It’s] not as much as, ‘Hey, did we beat Tennessee State or did we beat Navy?’ But what about us? Our guys, do they know exactly what to do? And if they don't, why did they make a mistake? We have to figure out why, and then correct it with urgency.”

Notre Dame’s collective overwhelming of Navy (0-1) and Tennessee State (0-1) comes with some new historical markers. It’s the first time since coach Dan Devine’s 1975 Irish team that Notre Dame held its first two opponents of the season without a touchdown.

And the 92-point differential is the largest to open the season since coach Hunk Anderson’s 1932 Notre Dame team blasted Haskell and Drake by a combined 135 points.

“We can't beat Notre Dame,” Freeman said. “That's always a challenge. Don't beat Notre Dame. Well, 10 guys on the field is beating Notre Dame [which happened on defense vs. Tennessee State.] Making MAs, like not getting checks or not doing your assignment, that's beating Notre Dame. And so those are the things that when you evaluate. … What we talk about is that it's not the opponent as much as we're looking at ourselves and saying, ‘On every single play, did we do our job? All 11. Did you do your job?’”

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For the third year in a row, the Notre Dame coaching staff will have to try to out-strategize Robert Anae — in 2021 at Virginia, in 2022 at Syracuse and now Saturday as the offensive coordinator at NC State.

This time, he’s got Brennan Armstrong at the joystick of his offense.

That was to be the plan in 2021, when the Irish visited Virginia on Nov. 13 with Freeman serving as ND’s defensive coordinator in the last of the 12 Brian Kelly seasons as head coach.

But Armstrong was injured, and the Irish sacked backup Jay Woolfolk seven times and held the Cavaliers to 278 total yards in a 28-3 smothering of Virginia. In the 11 games in which Armstrong did suit up for Virginia that year, he ranked 22nd in pass efficiency (156.4) and second in total offense, his 427.3 yards per game a mere 0.1 yards away from leading the nation.

But when a new coaching regime took over at Virginia last season, Armstrong plummeted to 103rd in pass efficiency (109.1) nationally and the Cavs' total offense ranking dropped from third in 2021 to 102nd out of 130 FBS teams in 2022.

Reunited, the sixth-year collegian and lefty under Anae fashioned a modest 115.5 efficiency ranking against the Huskies but was a force in the running game, amassing 96 yards on 19 carries with two touchdowns.

“As defensive coaches, how we game-plan really starts based on personnel,” Freeman said in explaining what makes the Armstrong/Anae combination so challenging. “So what offensive personnel is in the game, and what do we want to be in defensively? And they have so many different personnel. They use guys at so many different positions.

“And that's the thing that's challenging, that yes, you’re going to get tempo. Yes, Brennan Armstrong is extremely talented, but you're getting so many formations out of different personnel, and so many different guys coming in the game.

“And so, you have to almost play with a base defense and say, ‘All right, no matter who's where, you're going to play defense, according to a picture, not to who's in the game as much as OK, we’ve got to make sure we see the picture.’ Don't worry if that’s a tight end or a running back or wideout. What does the picture tell you? And then you game-plan that way.”

Freeman’s film review of Irish safety Antonio Carter’s ejection for targeting against Tennessee State quarterback Deveon Bryant was indeed the right call.

Because he was flagged in the first half, Carter won’t have to sit out the first half of the NC State game.

“He hit with the crown of his helmet,” Freeman said. “He's got to keep his head up and not launch. And so, often I tell our coaches the same things I tell our players, like we can complain about it and disagree, but we have to — within the rules of the game — make sure that we're not getting thrown out of the game.

“So, you coach them by saying, ‘Don't launch. Keep your head up.’

Notre Dame running back/kick returner Devyn Ford also took a hit to the head on the game, fumbling a kickoff return when he did. Targeting was not called on that play, and Ford has entered concussion protocol and is out indefinitely.

“The explanation I got was it was with the forehead and not the crown of the head. And so those types of plays I'm sure they're really hard to call as the referee. But we have to coach, ‘Hey, where's the strike zone? Don't launch, and make sure you’re not hitting with the crown of your head.’”

Notre Dame was able to work in 51 different players on offense and defense in the 42-3 win over Navy on Aug. 26, a number that swelled to 75 in the 56-3 romp over Tennessee State this past Saturday. That’s not including kicking team specialists.

It did include 13 scholarship freshmen Saturday and a 14th, linebacker Drayk Bowen, who played against Navy but was out for Tennessee State.

Which sort of begs the question, how much of a priority is keeping the number of games at four or fewer this season for those freshman and thus preserving a redshirt year? And then throw the prospect of a non-playing or seldom-playing freshman and the transfer-portal dynamic into the mix.

“We don't make decisions based off, ‘Is this guy going to go into the portal if we don't play him?’” Freeman said. “But we do make decisions based off, ‘I don't care if he's young or not, if he can help us play, get him in the game.’ And those are weekly conversations we have.

“We talk weekly about, ‘Hey, this freshman is at two games. He's at three games. OK, before we get to four, is this a guy that we want to save if we can? Or can he help us, and we're going to play him.’

“And so, it's a little bit of credit to the high school programs. Kids are coming in more and more college-ready and developed. And if they can help us win, we’ve got to get them in the game.”

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