Marcus Freeman shares how he handled New Orleans tragedy with Notre Dame players

Notre Dame is turning its attention to the 2025 season. There, head coach Marcus Freeman is looking to live up to the massive expectations set for the team by their deep College Football Playoff run last season. Amid that Playoff run, however, the Irish battled tragedy after the attack in New Orleans that delayed the Sugar Bowl.

Recently, Freeman appeared on The Pivot. There, he explained how he and the Notre Dame players handled the tragedy in New Orleans.

“When I think about that moment, that night,” Marcus Freeman said. “I remind myself life is a makeup of unpredictable moments. Like there’s unpredictable things that happen and how you handle those unpredictable things, to me, determine the success. I remember when I got the call. They said it was an incident. I didn’t know exactly what happened. This was early in the morning. So, I go down and they didn’t say the game was gonna be canceled or anything like that. We’re getting ready for the game… I remember during a break, I got a call from our AD that said, ‘Hey, they’re going to postpone the game. I don’t know if it’s gonna be tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s gonna be two days from now, but they’re postponing the game.’ Okay. Unpredictable moment. How do we fix this?”

At about 3:15 a.m. on New Year’s Day, a man drove his truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. He’d later get into a shootout with the police before being killed. In total, 14 innocent people were killed and another 57 were injured. Ultimately, that would lead to the Sugar Bowl getting delayed by a day, forcing both Notre Dame and Georgia to adjust on the fly.

“I go downstairs and I grab the captains,” Freeman said. “In tough moments, I value the input of our leaders. I grabbed the captains, said, ‘Here’s the situation.’ I grabbed our sports science guy and our strength coach, said, ‘Here’s the situation. I don’t know when the game’s going to be. What do we need to do immediately to make sure, if we play tomorrow, we’re physically going to be ready to go? Do we need to run? Do we need to practice? What, physically, do we need to do?’ They kind of suggested, ‘I don’t know if we need to walk through the stadium, but we need to get flushed and run.’ I said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do that.’ And I said, ‘Captains, you have any opinion on it?’ ‘Coach, we’re good. We’re gonna reiterate that message. Do whatever you need to do.’ They’re loyal. They’re just loyal individuals.”

Ultimately, Notre Dame’s gameplan worked. Notre Dame was able to take down Georgia and move to the College Football Playoff semifinal. There, they’d add another win before falling in the national championship game.

Marcus Freeman emphasize family, relationships amid New Orleans tragedy

Because of the attack in New Orleans and questions that still needed to be addressed, the city went into a lockdown on New Year’s Day. That meant that players and their parents, who were staying in different hotels, couldn’t see one another. For Marcus Freeman, a father himself, finding a way to address that became a priority.

“But then the next thing, I said, ‘Okay. I don’t want to make you sit here and meet all day and make you do walkthroughs all day when you have your parents at a hotel a block away and they can’t touch their kids.’ In these moments, as a parent myself. All you want to do — you can call your son — but you physically want to be around your child. I said, ‘How long do we need to get physically ready and have a quick meal because what I want to do is I want to get the parents to this hotel so that the parents can feel a sense of comfort but the players can feel a sense of comfort knowing that their parents are covered,'” Freeman said.

“That’s what we did. We had Shannon Vincent, our parent coordinator, there. She got ahold of the parents and I think that was important. There’s some people that say, ‘I don’t want any distractions right now. We’re just gonna do walkthroughs and meetings and football, football, football.’ Man, there was a tragedy. There was a tragedy and sometimes love and family is bigger than just football. So, that was what we did, and it was a reflection of the Notre Dame community. The football program, but the community itself, in tough times coming together.”

One of the hosts of The Pivot, Ryan Clark, has a son who played for Notre Dame. That made him a part of that challenge that Marcus Freeman was trying to address, and he shared that the move was very important to them as a family.

Coaches are consistently being judged on their wins and losses. Many, however, will speak about being able to impact the lives of young people. This was an opportunity for Freeman to do that by showing his love to his players, which does lead to a better relationship on the field too.

“For me, it’s why you do what you do. Yeah, I’m a competitive dude. I want to be the best at what I do. We’re competitors, but that’s not why I do what I do. It’s because I truly want to make sure the young people you coach are better football players and better men because they chose to play football at the place you’re the leader of,” Freeman said.

“That’s why I do what I do. So, when you have a player come to your house, or you have 120 players come to your house. When you’re around those guys or you pull them into your office and say, ‘Hey, let’s have a real conversation.’ It isn’t about wins and losses as much as it is about I want this young person to be better for the time that we spent together. That means caring about them as an individual. Caring about them as family. So, you don’t do that for me to win games, but you know what? It helps.”

This season, Notre Dame has massive expectations. That comes from the job that Marcus Freeman has done with the program. It’s something he’ll look to live up to because of those relationships he’s continuing to try and develop.

“I bet [Charlie Strong] was hard on [Channing Crowder], but you knew he loved you. You knew he loved you. Jordan [Clark] would tell you. At times, I’m hard on them, but they know I care about them. I like to tell them more than not, ‘Hey, I love you. I’m gonna get after your ass, but I love you. I swear I love you.’ When you feel that way about somebody,” Freeman said. “That’s when you’ll run through a brick wall for them.”