Everything Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said in Arkansas week news conference

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman was animated at Monday’s weekly news conference. He was determined to fix the defense. And he often spoke as much to his defensive players and coaches as he did to the press.

Here’s everything Freeman said at his pre-Arkansas press conference.

Note: Freeman’s comments are verbatim. Questions are often paraphrased.

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman’s opening statement

It’s a lot better feeling coming up here after a victory, and it was a much-needed victory as a team and a program. We celebrated it, and then you gotta get back to work and evaluate it and find ways to enhance and improve, and obviously areas of growth in all three phases. We gotta get back to work and do that. It was good to get a lot of meaningful game experience for a lot of young players, and that’s invaluable in that environment and those crucial situations. We’re gonna be better because of it.

I know [there’s] a lot of talk about the defense. As you evaluate it, I think it’s really two areas. The man coverage, when we’re playing man coverage, we’ve gotta play with better fundamentals. Better fundamentals and technique, and that’s gonna help you execute at a higher level. Or you might have to change a technique that you’ve been playing with in order to give yourself a better chance to execute at the level that we need. And the same thing, probably would say, will go with pass rush. It’s the fundamentals and technique that we’re rushing with that can help us get more pressure or stay in our lanes. And then as you evaluate the zone coverage aspect, if you’re getting beat man, you change it up and play some zone. There’s holes in zone coverage that are only covered up by how fast you play, and recognition of routes and different concepts and breaking off the quarterback. We’re just not playing right now with the velocity in some of our zone defenses to cover up some of the areas that zone defense presents. It’s our job as coaches to make sure that we attack those issues, those areas and get them to play with fast velocity, get them to execute at a high level, because that’s what matters. It doesn’t matter what the issues are. We have to continue to find ways to get them to perform at a higher level. I’m confident that we will, and we gotta go to work and really work on improving as we get ready for an extremely talented Arkansas team.

They’re 2-2, but if you’ve watched their games, they have a chance to win both of those losses in their last drive. They could easily be 4-0. It’s a top-five offense in the country, so the challenge for the defense doesn’t get any easier when we face a top-five offense. And their defense, they’ve got a solid defense that, you know, the No. 97, he’s a load. I think the whole defensive front, the whole defense, is big. It’s gonna present a big challenge for our offensive line. We’re looking forward to a great environment. It’ll be loud. I’ve never been down there. I know this is our first meeting with Arkansas, and so it’ll be a great challenge and we’re looking forward to the opportunity. So with that, open up for questions.

Two personnel questions: Madden Faraimo and Elijah Hughes, what did they do in the last couple weeks to earn that opportunity?

I think it goes back to the confidence built in practice. Both of those guys are starting to build more confidence in their coaches and their teammates with the way they’re practicing. And both played pretty well on Saturday. They both did some really good things, and Elijah’s an older player, but Madden’s a younger guy that is like the other freshman, he’s really improving. He made some mistakes, but the way they’re practicing and learning how to practice is really helping gain confidence to put them on the field.

In the past, you’ve prided yourselves on adjusting series to series, before halftime. How do you get back to that level defensively?

I wish — I know as you look back, it’s a unique situation where we’re playing well in the third quarter. We gotta find ways to play well on every play, and that’s the mentality. Every offense is gonna make some plays, but how do we continue to find ways to not let the bad play turn into a disastrous play is our challenge. I think the ability to get that corrected is, you gotta focus on this play. I don’t know if it’s as much of an adjustment, as much as, like, why the lack of execution on plays that are causing the points and the explosive plays. And unfortunately, a lot are happening in the second quarter.

The goal is clearly to be a more consistent defensive team, but is there anything to preparing a team for a game where Notre Dame might have to outscore somebody?

Yeah, I think that’s something we’ve always said: No matter how well the offense is doing or how well the defense is doing, our offense gotta score one more point. And defense, you gotta hold them to one point less. We never go into a game and say, ‘Our objective is to score 60 points and we think our defense is gonna give up 50.’ No, that’s not the objective. The objective is that no matter what it takes, we gotta score one more point. And no matter what it takes, we gotta keep them to one point less. 

The ability to do that is just — I think you have two groups. There’s different challenges to improve, right? But they both gotta focus on how to get better. Offensively, we gotta be able to understand, like, okay, we played really, really well. Point the finger at everybody else, but also, how do we make this thing better? How do we handle success? And I believe that our coaches and players do. Defensively, how do we handle some adversity, right? How are we gonna find ways to correct? And the only way to do that is to point the finger at yourself, right? And to say, ‘Okay, this ours. It’s all of us. It’s not one person. It’s not one call. It’s why aren’t we executing and okay, why did this explosive play happen?’ It’s on me. It’s on everybody. And if we do that, we’ll both get better.

Anthonie Knapp has been run blocking really well. He’s had some lapses in pass protection. Where are you at with the left side, and across the board, how do you feel about the five guys Notre Dame is putting out there?

I’m as confident in the entire offensive line as I’ve ever been. We gave up the sack, and Knapp will take ownership of it. CJ is gonna take ownership of it. They brought a boundary pressure, and we gotta know what type of speed is coming off that edge with the safety. CJ’s gotta understand and recognize, ‘Okay, it’s a pressure. Maybe I gotta drift away or just get the ball out.’ But I’m as confident in all five of those guys as I’ve ever been.

What physical gifts does Dallas Golden have that stand out, and how high do you think his ceiling is?

It’s extremely high. He is extremely athletic, talented. He’s got a lot of playmaking abilities. As you watch in high school, he’s probably as good on the offensive side as he was on the defensive side. He is an athletic, athletic player, and he wants to be great. He wants to be coached. We moved him to nickel last Monday, and for him to put himself in a position to play 60, 70 plays, it’s a testament to the work he’s put into it but also his ability. Like any freshman in the first game, there were some ups, there were some downs. But I’m very confident in where he’s headed.

What kept Jared Dawson off the field on Saturday?

He didn’t have a chance to — he didn’t practice later in the week. He was a little banged up. He was available for the game, but because he didn’t practice later in the week, we said, ‘Hey, let’s hold him unless it’s an emergency.’ And we never felt like we had to get him in there. He’ll be ready to go this week, and he’ll play for us.

Specific to Purdue, what do you feel like went better on defense in that third quarter that can be applied moving forward?

Again, it’s the execution of what’s called. We got pressure, right? We were getting some pressure on the quarterback. Didn’t give him a lot of time to go through his progression. I thought for the most part of the entire game, we did a good job of stopping the run. We didn’t give up the catastrophic pass. Now, there might’ve been a time somebody was open and he didn’t catch the ball or the quarterback didn’t see him, and just the result was better. But again, it’s not something specific in that third quarter, other than I thought we did a good job of getting some pressure on the quarterback. And I said, ‘This is what we gotta continue to do,’ right? We just have to continue to execute both of those areas that I mentioned in the opener. 

There’s not guys running free. It’s not like they don’t know what they’re doing, but how do we continue to get them into zone coverage defense to play with the clarity that it takes to cover up open gaps and open space when you play zone. And then man coverage, we gotta be able to use the proper technique. You’re there, but you don’t make the play. I don’t always wanna say, ‘Good throw, good catch.’ We gotta stop them, with the guys that we have. You can’t use the excuse that Leonard’s not out there and DeVonta and guys that have experience. The guys we put out there, we believe are good enough to execute what we call. So we gotta get them to play with the exact technique that we believe it’s gonna take to make sure they have success on that play.

Leonard Moore has to get healthy first, but is he getting to a point where you can just put him on the best receiver that the opponent has?

Yeah, absolutely. He’s as good as I’ve been around at that position. We’ve had discussions. If we need to match him up with the best wide receiver no matter where he’s at, we will. But you also gotta do a good job of being able to do that and playing some zone. You can’t just tell the offense, ‘Hey, we’re playing man. We’re playing man.’ Because no defense is good enough to just say, ‘Hey, we’re playing man every play. Stop ‘em.’ We have considered that. We’ve talked about it. We need to get him available and ready to go before we can do that. And that might be this week. He’s still questionable right now. But we’ll see if that’s what we decide to do.

You were an aggressive defensive coordinator. Al Golden was an aggressive defensive coordinator. The numbers indicate you’re blitzing quite a bit less. Is it just that you don’t feel like you’re getting home with five?

Yeah, I think as you evaluate the first two games, some of the pressures that we did call, we didn’t get enough pressure on the quarterback — no matter if it was a zone pressure or a man pressure — to warrant, hey, you’re gonna have one less defender or maybe two less defenders that we’re not getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hand fast enough. And so, if we’re gonna bring pressure, we gotta get home. We’re not gonna stop bringing pressure. We have to, and we know that as a coaching staff. But we gotta do a better job of winning our one-on-ones when we do bring pressure. You can’t ask the DBs to cover with one or two less defenders for an extended period of time if we’re gonna bring pressure. So we gotta execute those pressures better, but we’re gonna be aggressive.

Would there ever be a situation where you would consider taking over defensive play calling or passing onto somebody else on the staff?

If I thought it was a call, if I thought we weren’t calling the game the right way — trust me, I know the definition of insanity. If that was the case, you gotta do what’s best with your program. But that’s not, to me, the issue when I’m evaluating our defensive play. It’s not what we’re calling at this time or why we’re calling it. It’s, okay, why aren’t we executing? Me saying I’m gonna call the defense means, it’s a call. If I’m gonna call the defense, it’s based on a call. We’re not calling the right calls. I don’t believe that’s true. I would say, ‘Hey Chris Ash, call this.’ It’s, okay, we called this for this reason and it didn’t work. They executed an explosive play. What’s the reason behind it? And that’s what we spend a lot of time evaluating and discussing. 

So how do you get them to execute it at a better level or play with the right fundamentals? I think it still starts with a buy-in of, ‘It’s me.’ Everybody. I think right now we gotta make sure in our football facility that we’re not pointing a finger at a call. We’re not pointing a finger at, ‘If he would’ve called something else or if he would’ve —’ we’re pointing a finger at ourselves as, ‘What am I not doing to execute this call the right way?’ If I’m confused, then you better speak up and say something because you’re gonna be held accountable. But if we do this [points at himself] and we do this [clasps hands together], we’ll get it fixed. That’s the challenge during tough times. I get excited when I talk. During tough times, there’s two options: Fight or flight. And the guys that flight blame other people. It’s the call. It’s his fault. It’s this coach’s fault or it’s that player’s fault. We gave up a big play, that corner should’ve covered him. That’s the flight mode. You deflect and blame other people.

But the fight mode is, ‘Gosh. Call man again. Call man again. I promise you my man’s not gonna catch the ball. I’m gonna play with the right technique and I’m gonna refuse to let my man catch the ball.’ Put the pressure — ‘Man, I should’ve, agh, I gotta coach this better. I gotta coach this better. He should’ve known that this is the technique to play with. I gotta change his technique.’ That’s the fight mode. But in order to do that, everybody’s gotta be bought in. Everybody’s gotta believe that we have the answers. It’s not a person. It’s not, ‘Marcus Freeman should be calling the defense.’ We have the answers. We gotta all buy in and execute this the right way. 

And that starts with leadership. That starts from the top down. And that’s my job, but also Chris Ash’s job. It’s our coaches’ job. On down to our players. You have to create the buy-in to what we’re doing, and the ownership of it. If we get that, we’ll get it corrected with urgency. If we don’t, if we do this [points at the media], ‘It’s your fault, you shouldn’t have called that, Coach,’ then it’s gonna be bad. I know our culture ain’t gonna let that happen.

Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green isn’t the same player as Marcel Reed, but he’s similar in that he can hurt you with his legs and his arm. What can you do differently or better than you did against Texas A&M?

In the run game, his ability to read and pull it, like you got to be definitive in how you want to defend that. You can’t be gray, you got be definitive on how you wanna defend that, but in the pass game, you can’t let him escape vertically. Like that’s where our issues were with the A&M quarterback and even last week. It’s not the lateral escape, it’s the vertical through the B gap, then lateral, then he can extend plays or he can run. That’s where the issues are. So we have to be technically sound in our on rush lanes. But I don’t want to play spy. I think we’ve got into a little bit of too cautious versus A&M where we’re trying to play spy and we’re not being aggressive. And then maybe versus Purdue, there’s too many times where we’re behind the quarterback and he escapes in the B gap. It’s obviously a good mixture of both, but we can’t let him get vertical in the passing and extend plays with his legs, because that’s what’s going to be an issue.

What improvements did the offensive line make from Game 1 to Game 2 and Game 2 to Game 3?

I think probably more one to two is probably the pass protection. And the ability to keep CJ protected. And from two to three, I don’t know how many rushing yards we had, but they did a heck of a job in the run game. And then you know I say there’s bodies on the bodies. When you see big guys covering up big guys and the wide outs, like the perimeter blocking was as good as I’ve seen. And I told that to Coach (Mike) Brown. That’s as good of perimeter blocking execution that I’ve seen. You’re seeing a buy-in from wide outs to say, ‘All right, if we don’t have to throw the ball, we won’t throw the ball.’ But in order to be able to score points sometimes, we need you to block. We’re not gonna ask you to just go run down the field. They’re buying into that. There was some huge blocks, Jaden Greathouse, him and Faison had a block on J-Love’s touchdown. J-Love. If we’re not loving Jaden Greathouse and Jordan Faison for how they’re blocking right there, and our O-line, man, that’s what I want to celebrate. That unselfish, tough, gritty play. That’s what great offenses, they have, great teams have that. 

Jadarian Price could’ve gone somewhere else. What were those offseason conversations like, and what kind of player and person is he?

You give credit to his mother and the way he was raised. He’s not a ‘me’ guy. He’s a selfless individual that is gonna take advantage of his opportunities, but do everything to help his team be successful. And I wish I could take credit for that. He was raised the right way. His mother’s an incredible woman. And I’m sure he probably had people that did want him. And it’s a credit to his belief in this university, his belief in this football program that he can reach all the goals that he has being right here at Notre Dame in the same running back room with Jeremiyah Love and some of those other guys. There’s a belief that he has in this place, this university, this football program itself. There’s not something I’m sure I’ve said to him for him to be like that. He was raised the right way, and he’s a team first guy. And that’s why, I mean, I can’t praise him any more because if we get a 105 players to be that, it’ll be pretty special. That’s what I want to praise more than anything.

The defense hasn’t been what you thought it was before the season. What have you discovered that you might be able to use in the future toward that not being the case with the defense and how difficult is it to push the process of doing it now when you’re in game weeks?

I think our defense in fall camp was really executing at a high level. No matter what we were calling, they were doing a good job. I think as you look at the first two opponents, I think not having some of the guys that were playing with the ones out there at crucial positions can affect because it’s not saying the guys in there are not good enough, it’s saying, hey, it affects how you call it or what you want to call. And, you know, we still have the core of what we are defensively, what we’re gonna call, you don’t wanna create something. So I think you got a couple guys that are in new positions that haven’t played, that are going through the natural growing pains of playing big time college ball. And we have to live with that, we have live with them.

We’re never OK with a loss of a game or a loss on a play, like it’s not OK, but we have understand like great things take time. You learn from being exposed sometimes. You learn from that, and that goes for our defense period, not even a player. It goes for a defense period in that, shoot, I remember when I was the defense coordinator here, those first two games were rough, right? And there’s heat, right? And it’s hot in that chair. But as I said earlier, you got one of two options. You double down on what you believe and you get the people you’re leading to believe in what you’re doing or you point fingers. I know the result of both. I know.

And so we have to do that and that’s what we spent a lot of time doing yesterday as a defensive staff. It’s not a comfortable meeting. But I didn’t want it to be comfortable. We got one or two options as I told him, we’re gonna do this and get our guys better and believe in what we’re doing or we’ll separate. And if we separate, it’s not going to be good for anybody. It’s not. So that’s what now has got to trickle down to our players. That’s got trickle down on our players, because outside of the football facility, you know what it is. We got blame. Somebody’s got take blame. Somebody’s gotta take blame, that’s our world. Somebody’s taking blame. So they’re hearing that right? And they’re not in our facility as much as they are in the real world, so if you hear that and you start to believe it … you’re right, let’s blame. We got to make sure the minute they walk in there, hold on now, we ain’t pointing the finger at no one person, no one player, no one coach. We’re pointing the finger at ourselves. We’re gonna do whatever it takes to get this thing fixed, because we believe in it, we believe in each other and we’re believe in this coaching staff.

Why has it been so complicated to get the front and the coverage to marry and mesh?

When I say the front and the coverage have to work together, I’m using philosophy that if we’re gonna play coverage, right? Then our front has to beat some one on one blocks, right, and we got at some point affect the quarterback, right. We’ll rush four, but usually they’re protecting five or six, somebody’s getting one-on-one, we gotta be married up in our rush lanes and somehow affect the quarterback because we got seven guys in coverage.

If we are going to bring pressure, we have to know that there’s a certain amount of time that quarterback can have because we’re expecting our DBs and our back seven or back six, however many you bring, to cover for this amount of time. Because when you’re playing man or zone pressure defense, it’s just you can’t have a lot of time, you’re down a defender. We have to do a better job in that area. We’re rushing four, we cannot let the quarterback extend plays. We can’t. We have to make sure we marry up that rush so that we’re keeping him in the pocket but also affecting him. We have get pressure and we bring pressure and we have get home and we have to affect the quarterback because the DB’s can’t cover for that long.

What challenge does Green present?

It’s gonna be a great challenge, right? And I wish we could say we should, we can just do one thing and we’re gonna impact them and affect them. But you’re gonna have to do multiple different things. They’re in the top five offense in the country for a reason, you know? And so we’ve got to continue to show different things, play different things. When you play zone coverage, you can’t just tell them exactly what you’re playing pretty snap either, right. And that’s the other thing we’ve gotta continue to enhance that. It’s hard to do with new players, right, with guys that haven’t played a whole bunch of being able to say, OK, this is what we want you to do in the coverage. But we also want you show this pre-snap, and it just takes time. It’s gonna take work to get them to understand it. But we’re not gonna be able to just rush in with four. We’re not going to be able just bring five or six guys, we’re gonna have to mix it up and also mix up our pre-snaps. 

Put stats aside, is this the offense you imaged when the season started? You can lean on the run game, obviously, but also the pass game can punish you with deep shots.

Yeah. That’s a great description of what we went to the season said this is what we want our offense to be is have the ability to run the ball, which opens up those big play shots, right? That opens up the explosive plays because they’re saying, OK, we gotta stop the run, we gotta bring extra in the box. But we also know that we’ve got to pass the ball to have success. And we have to do it. I have the confidence we will. But I believe we are a balanced offense, and we are truly a balanced offense that prides ourselves on running the ball. And now you’re seeing some really explosive plays through the air.

What happened over the course of these three games to get to a point where you could show it against Purdue?

I think it was a unique game where you actually had to be pretty simple in the run game because they did so much different things defensively. You didn’t know if you’re going to see the 3-3 stuff or you’re gonna see 4-2-5. You didn’t know. I actually think it helped us play with a little bit of clarity and velocity and execute at a high level because you were pretty simplistic. That always ain’t gonna work, right? It worked this past Saturday. But I also think you see a quarterback that now is able to just start recognizing what the defense is doing. I saw a couple times he went like this [hand up, brushing off the sideline], I got it. Made a check, one to Faison, I got this, bam, bam. Good throw, good catch.

He’s now to the point where he’s recognizing things that he’s seen defensively that he can put a lot on his plate to put us in the right position to have success on that play and not depend on the coordinator to tell him what check we wanted the offense to, and so, man, you’re just seeing it come together. It’s intentional, I don’t wanna say it’s just time, right? It’s intentional work at it, right, and making sure that it’s on the same page. It’s putting that work into practice, but also time. The greatest things in life take time, man.  It takes time. You’re also seeing the benefits of an offensive staff. Other than Coach Seider, we’re like another year, right? The players know the system. I think all those things are contributing to the success that we have on offense.