Monday afternoon, Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman opened the last full week of September with his weekly press conference. Here’s a look at what he had to say about Saturday’s win, Notre Dame’s evolving offense and an upcoming showdown with Louisville.
On Saturday’s 28-3 defeat of Miami (Ohio)
“We did some really good things as a team on Saturday. As you evaluate the film there are some things obviously that you have to clean up — I mean, it goes with every game that you play. But offensively [we] didn’t start the way we wanted to, but I thought we did a great job of responding after the first couple of drives and then picking up momentum as the game progressed, really as we got to the second quarter and throughout the rest of the game. They really did a good job of driving the ball, changing field position [and] scoring.
The one turnover — it can’t happen, but [we] really did a good job picking up momentum after the first couple of drives. Defensively, [we] played really well [and] did a great job in the red zone [in a] couple of sudden change situations. The defense really played well. [Miami] had a couple of scheme runs that went for more yardage than we would like, but all [are] correctable things that we’ll attack and practice.
I thought overall [the] defense did a really good job at tackling for the most part, and then special teams-wise, we punted as well as we have all year. [Graduate punter] James [Rendell] had a big game. I think we had around a 45-yard net which is huge. When you talk about the battle of field position, the muffed punt and the bad field goal snap can be detrimental, and we have to make sure we get those things fixed with urgency.”
On personnel updates
“[Sophomore tight end] Cooper Flanagan will be out this week with a left ankle injury, and [junior defensive lineman] Joshua Burnham is still questionable.
As we go into this week, [junior cornerback] Jaden Mickey — [I] had a conversation with him. He’s decided to redshirt with the intentions of going into the transfer portal when it opens and will get his degree here in the spring from Notre Dame.”
On this week’s top-20 matchup with Louisville
“Saturday will be the Irish Wear Green game versus Louisville, a 3-0 team playing at a really high level right now. As you watch film, they’re good in all three phases, so it will be a great challenge for our team.”
On his confidence in senior quarterback Leonard
“The performance that I see – the ability to rush the ball for about 150 yards or throw it for 150 yards … that gives me a lot of confidence in Riley Leonard as our quarterback. As you evaluate the film, we actually threw the ball downfield really well, probably the best we’ve done, but we missed some layups. And those are the ones that I’m sure everybody’s talking about. Everybody sees the layups. But those will be corrected in practice.
We’ve got to continue to do movement throws, but I’ve got a lot of confidence in Riley Leonard… I said it after the game. I said there is not much [of a] difference between being the head coach and being the starting quarterback at Notre Dame. You have to be able to handle everything that comes with it, and he’s doing a great job at doing that, but the deep shots — I mean, obviously he hit one to [graduate receiver] Beaux [Collins] and then just the pass interference negated what could have been another one very early in the game … He’s been doing a good job practice. He’s been practicing well at all the different things we’re asking him to do. As I said, there’s things you do well in practice, and you’ve got to make sure that we call the things you do well in the game.
But again, his performance … he was a player of the game for our offense in terms of what he did. If you would have told me before the game was going to run for 150 [yards and] throw for 150 and lead this offense the way he did, I’d be pleased. And so I think he did a good job of being a quarterback for [the] offense. And there’s always room to grow — we’re never satisfied, we’re greedy people. So I know there’s a couple of plays that he wished he could redo and guess what? We have the opportunity to redo it on Saturday.”
On the performance of Notre Dame’s wide receivers
“So much of their production is based off of if they get the ball – and they had some pass interferences that they created. I think the one challenge that we’ve said in our meetings with [wide receivers] coach [Mike] Brown – and he voiced this – is that we’ve got to continue to win the 50-50 balls. And we won a couple of them in the game Saturday – made some big plays, but there were a couple that we didn’t win.
And that’s the challenge for those guys is when the opportunity presents itself, we’ve got to make sure we’re winning, and then 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 and 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, and what I’m looking for is wins. Obviously we want to have positive production on our offense, and we’re doing that, but it’s hard sometimes when I’m sure you want the stats to kind of back that up as a wide receiver, but they’re 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 keep doing what they’re doing, they’re going to get the stats to back it up.”
On Louisville’s similarities from last year to this year
“They’re defensively an aggressive, attacking — are going to challenge you to stop the run, right? It’s something that they take a lot of pride in doing and try to make you throw the ball over the top. They give you some different looks, and those are things that they did to us last year offensively. I think they take a lot of pride in running the ball, and what you do when you’re able to run the ball is create some opportunities to throw explosive plays down the field, and that’s something you've seen from their offense. [Their] special teams are aggressive, they’re [an] aggressive punt block unit and they’re sound in their other units.
So a lot of similarities to who they were last year. It’s a good football team, [it’s] well-coached and as I said, it will be a great challenge emotionally.”
On revisiting last year’s loss to Louisville with the team
“You think back to last year, it’s not gonna be a lack of motivation — they’ll be motivated. I think it’s an opportunity for guys that weren’t in this program last year to be able to reflect and understand that, ‘Hey, we lost to this team last year, but there’s a lot of great learning opportunities from that game.’ And that’s what I'm gonna preach to our team is that I’m not revisiting last year to motivate you. I’m revisiting last year to learn from those things that game presented.
You know, 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. And 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.”
On his fiery coaching of sophomore safety Adon Shuler after Saturday’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty
“My dad texted me and said, ‘Man, you kind of got into number eight.’ But I told my dad, I don’t know if they saw what happened after that … I was upset because we had the momentum. I had a strong feeling if we were able to call two timeouts — if we were able to get the ball back — we had a great chance to go down and score before half, which would have been huge.
And we pride ourselves on being a disciplined football team. Every Friday, we watch clips of other teams making mistakes and we say we’ve got to learn from the mistakes of others, and we have a rule around here to hand the ball to the official, and he didn’t do that and was called for a personal foul, and I lost my temper a little bit. But the first thing he 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. And right after, as we were running into halftime, I said, ‘[I] appreciate you owning it. I love you. Let’s learn from it and let’s reload and get ready to come back [in] the second half.’
And I love that kid. He is a great young man, and I hope I would treat my son the same way, right? When you make a mistake … love is tough sometimes. And that was an example of tough love. But he owned it, and it was my job to remind him after he owned it that I love you, let’s get back to work and let’s go have a great second half.”
On his perspective regarding Jaden Mickey’s decision
“I think everybody is gonna have an opinion — and myself included, right? But it’s not our opinion that really matters, right? Jaden Mickey made a decision that he felt was best for him, so for me to do anything other than support him, it’s selfish. I’m not in his shoes, right? I don’t know what’s going on in his life, and this is what he said is best for him and his future, and so it would be selfish of me to have selfish thoughts and opinions about the decision he’s making.
I wish him the best of luck, I love him, he’s a great young man that’s been through a lot and will continue —he’ll go and do great things.”
On the personnel impacts of Mickey’s decision
“It will increase Leonard Moore’s role. It will increase Carson Hobbs’ role. And that’s why you’ve got to continue to have depth. And so those two guys are definitely capable of getting the job done.
I still feel strongly about the depth of the cornerbacks room. Rod Heard has played corner before. Jordan Clark has played corner. So if injuries occur in the future, we have plans, but I think the depth in that room right now just gives an opportunity for those younger guys to play some more.”
