Marcus Freeman identifies 'hidden failures' that Notre Dame must clean up before next game

It’s hard to find much of anything to complain about coming off a 56-13 win. For Notre Dame, it also got the Irish back to .500 and seemed to signal that head coach Marcus Freeman has righted the ship in South Bend. At the same time, he’s not done cleaning up mistakes.

In the week leading up to the Boise State game, Freeman addressed those hidden failures of the Arkansas win, covered up by the final score. Those are the mistakes that he now wants to address before the Irish take the field again.

“On all three phases,” Marcus Freeman said. “So, I’ll start with defense. We have to eliminate some of those explosive runs, right? And execute exactly on every play what we do in practice, like perfectly, so that the quarterback can’t keep the run.”

The Notre Dame defense has been heavily criticized this season, especially as it has struggled under new defensive coordinator Chris Ash. That has included some pretty major struggles in their run defense. Notre Dame is currently 48th nationally in rushing defense, giving up 121.5 yards per game on the ground.

That’s not the only issue Marcus Freeman noticed, though. One notable one was an issue the Irish were having with their signals on both sides of the ball, and making sure play calls are properly communicated to everyone on the field.

“On both offense and defense,” Freeman said. “There was one or two plays where one guy got the wrong signal for some reason, right? The signal – we’ve got to be very intentional with how to hide signals and things like that. It’s just a game of college football. We’ve got to be so dialed in. We know what the right signal is. We missed a couple signals on both sides of the ball that we can’t have.”

Notre Dame is currently 52nd in sacks allowed, giving up 1.75 per game. For a program that’s used to having one of the best offensive lines in the country, that’s not up to the standard. In particular, because it hurts first-year starter CJ Carr as he tries to spark the offense.

“We’ve got to protect our quarterback, right? I don’t ever want to see that quarterback on the ground,” Freeman said. “There were one or two times he was on the ground.”

Ultimately, Notre Dame isn’t the only team nationally still trying to take strides to get better, and the Irish have certainly already made several of those strides. Now, Notre Dame will hope to showcase even more improvement against Boise State. Kickoff for that game is scheduled for Saturday, October 4th, at 3:30 p.m. EST.

“So there’s always room for improvement. We’ve got to enhance the things we’re doing well,” Freeman said. “But dive into those things that we didn’t perform perfectly and make them better.”