Marcus Freeman gives telling story on recruitment of Jaden Mickey

Notre Dame freshman corners Jaden Mickey and Benjamin Morrison got their first collegiate snaps of their careers in the team’s week 1 loss to Ohio State. Head coach Marcus Freeman was asked about the play of his young defensive backs and spoke on their performance and potential.

“Really good, really positive. Jaden Mickey obviously gave up the one touchdown, but it’s not just on him, there’s a whole bunch to it. People look at him and he gave up the touchdown, but there was the pressure that didn’t get home, it was a couple other things that we got to make sure w get corrected. But to have Jaden Mickey and Ben Morrison play and preform at the level they did in that game as true freshman, wow, they’re going to be special,” Freeman said.

Freeman spoke on the recruiting process of his corners and talked about the importance of cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens’ recruitment, evaluation, and development of talent. Mickens coached with Freeman at their previous school Cincinnati, where he also recruited a familiar corner that will be seen playing on Sundays this year.

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“Both of those two players are going to be special football players for our program for years to come and coach Mick did a good job in evaluating those guys. That’s something coach Mick has done in the past, I mean he’s the same guy that evaluated Sauce Gardner with me as a defensive coordinator,” he explained. “I don’t know, and he said no Sauce Garnder’s the guy. Same thing Jaden Mickey man, he came last year and stood on the table, this is they guy. Ben Morrison, this is the guy, you sure? Okay. He was right, so he’s done a really good job, he does a great job of evaluating talent and then developing their skill.”

Mickey may have given up a touchdown in his first start, but also got on the stat sheet with a tackle, and Morrison had a solid debut with three tackles and a pass breakup.

Freeman was also asked if we could expect to see more freshmen get playing time in the event that their upcoming game versus Marshall goes smoother than their week one matchup.

“If the opportunity presents itself, experience is important, but we’re not going into this game thinking hey we’re gonna be able to play some guys that haven’t been able to play. We gotta go into this game ready to go, this is a good Marshall football team that’s gonna come in here and be motivated and ready to go against Notre Dame,” Freeman said.

Freeman is clearly focused on the Thundering Herd and not taking them lightly, as the Irish look to overcome their week one woes and defend their home turf for the first time this season.

“And that’s gonna be the challenge of this group, is that you spend so many months, so many days, so many hours preparing for this Ohio State game and the emotional aspect of it and how big this game is,” Freeman said. “So we have five days from now until Saturday and the preparation can’t lower, it has to increase and that’s gonna be our job as coaches and our player’s jobs to make sure we’re preparing the right way so that we can go out and preform on Saturday.”