Marcus Freeman evaluates quality of European college football prospects

Notre Dame is playing in Europe on Saturday in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland. It is far from the first football game to be played in Europe and will definitely not be the last.

The game of American football, as it is known in that part of the world, is growing in Europe with multiple Europeans each recruiting cycle seeming to get signed by big programs each year. The Fighting Irish even had a native of Germany on their team the past three seasons in defensive lineman Alex Ehrensberger.

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman discussed the rise of the game in Europe and how that leads to better quality players during his pre-game press conference at Aviva Stadium in Dublin.

“We had a young man from Germany last year on our team named Alex Ehrensberger,” Freeman said. “The game of American football is continuing to grow here in Europe. Games like Saturday’s game will help promote the game of American football. As you get more interest — there’s great athletes in Europe, trust me, we see it in plenty of other sports. As the game continues to grow, more young people continue to play the game of American football and the prospects will continue to rise. But there’s been plenty of European prospects that have come over to the states and they were really good football players.”

The game will be a memorable one for the Fighting Irish as it is the third time that Notre Dame and Navy will face off in the country. They previously played in Ireland in 1996 and 2012.

There are still questions remaining to be solved for the Fighting Irish as they prepare for the Week 0 game. Among those questions is the question of who will start at guard among the group of Pat Coogan, Rocco Spindler , and Billy Schrauth.

“So you want to have four guards, right? And I think right now we feel really good about three going in there and I look forward to evaluating today’s scrimmage with coach Rudolph and the offensive staff and saying, ‘OK, who’s going to the be the third and fourth guard that we say can go in a game at any point?’ But man I love the competition that they’re having. Nobody’s comfortable at those guard positions and I think we all know who the tackles are going to be and we all know who the center’s going to be. And so to continue to create that competition is something that you love as a coach,” Freeman said.