Marcus Freeman shares how he's evolved as Notre Dame head coach

The Marcus Freeman era didn’t get off to a great start his first season as Notre Dame coach. A loss to Ohio State out of the gate was followed by a home loss to Marshall before Freeman got his first victory as a head coach against Cal.

A lot has changed since.

Notre Dame finished the year 9-2 after those back-to-back losses out of the gate, including a win over South Carolina in the Gator Bowl. Now back for his second year at the helm, Freeman said he’s evolved in the role. As great as it is to get results right away, he pointed to the process it take to get where he wants to go. That’s been his biggest takeaway of his first two offseasons at the helm.

“I think the biggest thing is understanding it’s a progression of where you want to go to,” Freeman said during Saturday’s Blue and Gold spring game. “We all want perfection now, we want perfection yesterday. We have to really look at it in a big-picture point of view and are we improving? You look at it within a day. Are we improving? It’s not just the outcome of every single drill, every single rep, but are we getting improvement from both sides of the ball? And that’s what I want to make sure our team, our coaches and our players understand. It’s all about constant improvement.

“Sometimes the outcome can lie to you. If they understand that, then I think we’ll continue to find a way to improve. Even if the outcome’s good, right? We can’t let a positive outcome kind of muddy up our eyes, in terms of did we improve? Did we do exactly what we’re supposed to do? Because ultimately, that’s what’s going to result in the success you want.”

Notre Dame will have a new look in Year 2 under Marcus Freeman

Of course, this year is going to be different in multiple ways for the Fighting Irish. Tommy Rees, who stayed on as offensive coordinator last year under Freeman, is now out of the picture after taking the same position at Alabama. Gerad Parker will replace him after serving as tight ends coach last year, and he’ll have quite a piece at quarterback this year in Sam Hartman.

Hartman has been competing with Tyler Buchner for the starting job this spring, and he made an early impression in the spring game by completing 13 of 16 passes for 189 yards and two touchdowns while also running in a touchdown to lead the Gold team to a 21-0 lead into halftime.