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

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman met with local reporters on Monday, and two key topics dominated the press conference.

No. 1 was the upcoming game against Navy and its modernized triple-option offense. No. 2 was Notre Dame’s kicking situation after Noah Burnette, Erik Schmidt and Marcello Diomede all missed an extra point or a short field goal during Saturday’s win over Boston College.

Here’s everything Freeman had to say as Notre Dame prepares for the Midshipmen.

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

Opening statement

Just a couple thoughts from reviewing the game, I’m proud of the way the guys continuously battled for 60 minutes. Obviously to acheive the outcome that we achieved. It’s a reminder of each game, each game you play presents different challenges throughout the game that you have to overcome. You have to over come to win. I think everybody, myself, we all have thoughts of and preconceived notions of how you think a game is going to go based on preparation, based on the record, based on your rosters, and your game plan, and all different things.

But, you know, it’s a reminder the game of football is always unpredictable, right? And how you handle the different things that happen throughout the game, and the ability to make sure you win the next play is — if you do that more in your opponent, you’re probably gonna be able to get the desired result that you want. And I’m proud of the way our guys and our coaching staff did that. We know it wasn’t perfect. Obviously, way too many penalties, mistakes, missed extra points, field goal. I think just too many missed opportunities in all three phases.

Like any other week, we can all figure out why, figure out what happened. We can all figured out what happen, but the challenge is to figure out why and then come up with a great plan of attack to fix those things. And while also getting ready to finalize a plan of attack against an opponent. And so, that’s obviously the challenge. We know what happened, we got to figure out why and how we’re gonna continue to fix those things that we have struggles in on Saturday. And make sure our plan for Navy is one that we feel great about.

So Navy presents another challenge, right? 7-1 team, Coach Newberry’s third year, won 10 games last year. It’s a good program and a good team. Experienced. And as I look at the roster, I look and see film, a lot of guys that we saw last year, their offense is probably even more challenging as you prepare for them this year than it was last year. A lot more gun, pistol, and they still have the traditional triple option attack. And so I think their quarterback, Horvath, he’s an experienced guy. He makes the whole thing go. He’s a special player in the run game and in the pass game. He’s got a lot of respect for him and he’s tough. And so it’s just gonna present a great challenge. And defensively, their defense is just as challenging. And that unique set of looks, high pressure, high chaos. And then all of a sudden they’ll drop eight guys out. And so it’s gonna be a really good challenge and a rivalry game that we’re looking forward to here on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.

How have you seen Tae Johnson mature?

He’s matured tremendously as a football player, as an individual — he’s a father — as a person. You know, I’m proud of him. You gotta first understand like, I need to grow. I think that’s the most important thing. Like, if you don’t think you need to grow and mature, you’re not gonna do the things it takes to grow and mature. He’s understood that and he’s embraced it and he’s put the work in and you know you’re seeing some of the rewards on the football field. But off the field he’s maturing and having rewards in the classroom, doing good in school, in all areas of his life and so I’m really proud of him and I know he’s going to continue to do great things on and off the field.

Three players with at least 400 receiving yards already this year; it took you twice as many games last year to accomplish that. How important was it for Notre Dame to have a more dynamic offense?

I think as you look at last year, teams can stack the box. And you still have the element of a quarterback run, which now kind of paralyzes that extra person they put in the box. And that’s not CJ strongsuit, but we know that if you continue to stack the box, he’s got an opportunity to throw the ball over the top of the defense, make good checks, put the ball in good areas.  That has to be a staple of what we do. We have to be able to run the ball, but if teams aren’t gonna allow you to run a ball, as you’ve seen some teams try to do, we gotta be able throw the ball to the top of the defense and we’re having some success doing it.

How do you make the Navy game as big as it is to your team every week?

I think this is a unique one because it’s an every year rivalry, just like USC. Boston College, obviously isn’t every year. And so they often say in rivlary games, the records don’t matter. Records do matter, I believe, I mean records are a reflection of where you’re at as a program. Records are, it’s a reflection on the opportunities you have in front of you. So we know how big this game is for us personally, but also for the rivalry. I always say that what’s more important than the opponent is the obligation we have to each other to get our jobs done. That’s what’s personal, is that I have an obligation to everybody in this football program to get my job as the head coach. And I want everyone in our program to have that same mentality.  That’s what we got to take personal. But this rivalry game is one that means a lot, just the history of it. It will be a good challenge. 

What would two-running back packages do for Notre Dame’s offense the rest of the way?

I mean, there’s so many different ideas and things that you can experiment with. We’re having a lot of success with what we’re doing. We experimented with that early in the season. And if there comes a game that we think is going to give us an edge, we will try it. We just got to continue to do what we are doing better. You know, we’re greedy people and we all want perfection, but what we’re doing right now is really, really good and we just got to continue to make it better. And again, we got to look for ways to enhance, too. If that’s a way to give us an added edge, an added benefit, then we’ll definitely consider that.

How do you teach the defense what they need to know without overloading them and then allowing yourself to still play fast against Navy’s offense?

Yeah, it isn’t one where you can have a whole bucket list of calls defensively because they do so much and it’s a unique offense that you’re gonna have to make sure your eyes are in the right spot. And so we have to have enough, right? You have to enough where you can play certain type of coverages, certain type of fronts, have enough to bring some pressure. But you’re not going to have your normal call sheet that you would going into a game where you’re playing with “a typical offense.” And so you’ve got to have enough to keep them on balance and to change the look and the plan of attack for their offense. But you can’t paralyze your defense, because again, you always know velocity is what matters. And our guys have to be clear on what they’re asked to do.

What does Josh Burnham at full strength mean to your defense?

Josh has been battling some injuries. He’s a tough, tough individual that would rather play at 75% then to wait till he’s 100. I mean that’s just who he is and there was times we didn’t play him because 75% maybe it wasn’t better than the other guys that we would put on the field. But he’s getting closer to feeling as healthy as he normally does before an injury. He played well. I just remember some conversations I had with him. I know you want more. I know what you want, you just keep practicing, you keep getting healthy. You’ll get more. And I didn’t know when that was gonna happen. It happened to be last Saturday and because he was playing at such a high level, he got more in that game.

And everybody in our program has to have that mindset, man, like Josh Burnham. I want you to want more, but you still choose team before yourself. And you work your tail off and take advantage of the opportunities that you get. You rewarded with more. And that’s what Saturday showed me. He is a tough, tough leader, and he’s a team-first guy. And I’m glad he’s on our team, and I’m glad that he got a little bit of the reward on Saturday for his hard work.

In the past when we’ve talked about mistakes, pre-snap the penalties and then also like the small kicks, right? I know there’s some technical stuff with it, but I’m assuming that you expect every extra point to go through. 

eah, 100% Right? Pre-snap penalties are not acceptable. They do happen, right? They do happen and we got to continue to work on them. I think we had one false start and one offsides and we have to get that to zero. You know, probably over the course of my career as a head coach and even as a player, that number being zero doesn’t happen often, but it doesn’t make it OK.  Because I always say, we strive for perfection. And so we got to keep working that.

As far as the kicking situation. we owe it to the team to be able to make extra points, if we’re gonna attempt it. And if we don’t think we’ll make an extra point, we shouldn’t attempt it. I have confidence that we’re going to be able to put the ball through the uprights. From a certain length, we’ll figure out how far that line is. It usually changes every week. As I look at, evaluating some of the issues in our kicking game, it’s both physical and mental, but I think it’s more starting to trend towards the mental side.

So what does that mean is that we got to put more work into the mental side of things, right? I can hear the answers. I’m not a kicking coach, but I’m responsible for it. And so you can tell me the answers. Everybody can identify some of the issues, like how do we fix it? What’s the plan of attack? And that’s what we spent a lot of time in the past 48 hours. I want to know the plan attack to attack the mental and the physical side of kicking the football. And so we have a good plan. I’m confident that the kickers and the coaches and the people, sports psychologists, all the people that we’re investing into trying to fix the situation. We’re going to get it done because there’s want-to, and there’s a good plan.

That doesn’t guarantee any success. I felt the same way two weeks ago. Right after we missed an extra point or field goal and we got together and said, what’s the plan? Let’s make a better. It was better during the week. But we’re evaluated off of results. even though I’ll focus on that, we are evaluating based on results. I am and our coaches are and our players are. And so we have to continue to enhance, change, configure that plan so that the results can be better than they were on Saturday.

How much of Notre Dame’s kicking issue is isolated to games and how much of this are you seeing in practice during the week? 

Yeah, most of it’s game. They’re never perfect in practice. I mean, some days they are right. We kick two times a week and it’s been pretty good in practice, but that doesn’t mean anything if we’re not doing it in the game. There has to be a process of translating what we’re doing in practice to the game. And that’s why I say a lot of it is mental. 

There’s a technique to it. There’s a technique to kicking a football, but there’s a human element when all sudden you’re out there on Saturday that can mess with your mind, mess with your head and get you to revert back to a technique that isn’t producing consistent results. So we have to really have a plan of attack for the human element that happens on Saturday. There’s added pressure, and it’s easy to say, ‘Don’t feel the pressure. Don’t worry about the pressure.’ Like I would tell them, ‘Who cares?’ It’s easy to say, but that’s really hard to do. And we have to continue to equip them with tools that helps them in that moment.

We can try to simulate it in practice. I can yell and scream at them. That’s a way to simulate pressure, the coach going to yell and scream at you, but that has nothing — that’s not even close to the pressure they feel when they got to make a field goal, and especially after you’ve missed some. It’s a challenge, but we got to fix it and we got to work at it and attack it, and we’re going to do that. We are doing that. 

What have you seen from Luke Talich, and his ascension these last few weeks?

Yeah, he’s doing his job. And when you do your job and the ball comes your way, now you’re in a position to make a play. I mean, you’ve seen him make some big-time interceptions, game-winning interceptions the past couple weeks.

His fourth down stop this past week was huge, huge for our team, where we’re at that moment. It’s a guy that embraces his role, works at his role. And when he’s in there and in the game, he’s getting his job done and playing well. He’s doing a great job for us.

Is Noah Burnette still your primary option, or is that something that’s going to be decided during the week?

We’ll figure it out during the week. 

When we’ve asked you about the offense starting slow or short yardage, you mentioned that you’ve been seeing looks from the defense that you hadn’t seen before. How can you deal with that in ways you haven’t earlier in the season?

Yeah, I mean, you got to make adjustments. It’s the game of football. We all aspire to go out and score every drive. That’s what we want, but it doesn’t happen. And you come up with different plans of attack and you prepare for an opponent.You have your openers, and you go out there and try to execute. But again, there’s still communication, there’s looks, there’s things that you have.

We can try to create as many different defensive looks as we can and practice and say, ‘If they do this, we want to do that.But this isn’t, it’s not — I mean, it’s not robots. Like, there’s only so much that they can comprehend. you have to be able to get them to the sideline, make the adjustments, and they did. The first drive had some positive plays, and decided to punt. The second drive, again, had some positive momentum and got to a point where we had fourth down and we didn’t convert. 

Then it took off. Like, we could have went four drives in a row with scoring. We fumbled on the five-yard line, but after that second series, you started to see, okay, now we’re rolling. Now we know the different looks we’re going to see defensively. There’s only so much they can do. It was really good, but we just didn’t always finish, right? You score on the third series, you got the ball on the five-yard line, the fourth series, and you fumble.

We can’t fumble. That’s another score if you don’t. We score on the fifth series. And then the series right before half was as good as we’ve done, like that two-minute execution. and to put ourselves in a situation where we can kick that field right before half and we miss it. And I think the second half to come out and score the first two possessions.

We want to start fast. We want to score every drive. We want to stop on every drive. Defensively, the first two drives, we went three and out and forced me to punt. You know, I think the third one, we got an interception. But it doesn’t always happen like that. What matters is you win the next play, and we’re going to come up with a plan where we hope, we plan on scoring the first drive. But if we don’t, adjust and go attack the next drive. 

How has Navy prep evolved since you’ve been the head coach, and is Tyler Buchner still the scout team quarterback?

When I first got here, I know at some point they were recruiting triple-option quarterbacks, local guys. I think of Chase Ketterer, and Justin Fisher played in a triple option type offense in high school. As you watch this offense evolve, it’s less and less true under center and triple option.

There’s still unique things that it presents, but I don’t know if you just go to high school to get that one guy to be a quarterback. We’re gonna have Blake be our scout team quarterback. But you run so much, a quarterback runs so much that we — it’s a unique week where I think you’re going to have to have two guys because of so many quarterback runs.

But we’ve spent time throughout training camp, maybe a day or two, a night or two, during the bye week. Because what you can’t do is wait till the game week to try to say, ‘Okay, hey guys, we’re going to try to simulate this offense.’ You do that with other opponents, but not this one. So we’re going to try to get as close to a resemblance of what they’ll see on Saturday. You never fully can resemble the speed that they run their offense at, but you try to get close. 

What’s Cooper Flanagan’s journey been like as he recovers from his torn Achilles? And what can he do for this team with a higher pitch count?

What we’re trying to do is, we want to get the most out of Coop when we decide to play him. Like right now, he went out the USC game and played a couple plays in first half, but there was pain, but also confidence that he had in himself. And again, that’s the human element that sometimes it’s hard on these young guys, man.

There’s a human element. There’s maybe a little bit of fear. There’s a pain. What does the pain mean? Especially when you’ve had a trauma, when you had a tough injury or you miss an extra point or miss field goal like that. There’s trauma that we got to continue to help these young guys get to a mental place that they can overcome that. And Coop’s the same way.

He’s practiced the last two weeks. Probably not at a level where he can like help us in a way we believe we need him to help us. Hopefully here in this week, next week, we can get him practicing to a level that we feel like we can get the most out of Cooper Flanagan.

How much more valuable is experience of having seen and played against Navy’s offense than maybe a different offense? 

So valuable. You always can tell. I was looking at last year’s postgame notes and maybe it was like KVA — Kyngstonn — and Ausberry. I think it was their first time playing Navy and I was like, ‘They seem like first-year triple option players,’ right? And the experience of understanding how fast it’s gonna happen is so important. So there’s so much value in being a person that has played against Navy or Army in previous experiences.

You mentioned that Chris Terek was the next guy to go in on the interior. Who’s next up at tackle, with Styles Prescod’s injury?

Yeah, I think Stiles will be back. But you can you can move Guerby out, right? There’s options. Guerby can play tackle. Matty Augustine, I think he’ll have four games. We’re going to try to redshirt him, but he still has four games to play. Will Black, another guy.

So there’s different options of moving — it’s not just a guy that’s not playing, maybe going in a tackle, but we can make some adjustments with the guys that we have starting. 

Short-yardage defense, where do you guys, where do you feel like you guys are defensively with that after Boston College was successful last week?

Yeah, I think on paper you, you say 50 percent, but that’s, I mean, that might make you one of the tops in the country. The best short yardage defense is being better on first and second down. It really is. You got to have a good plan, but even with a good plan, it’s really difficult to prevent an offense from getting a yard. But we’ll never be okay with that. 

So we looked at our short yardage plan, how we can enhance it versus whatever opponent we’re going against, but the biggest thing is, is be more efficient on first and second down and not put yourself in third-and-short situations.

You mentioned the mental plan for the kickers this week. What does a mental plan look like?

Yeah, we’ve been working really hand-in-hand with Joey Ramaeker, our sports psychologist. He meets with the specialists weekly, but we need to do more, right, and equip them with the right tools and practice the right tools, so they can utilize them in crucial moments. It’s one thing to hear different ideas of what you can do, but if you don’t practice them and work at them, you can’t use them. You can’t use them when they matter the most. You got to really work at them. 

We have a plan, right, and you’re going to put as much work into the plan on the mental side as you do on the physical side. We’ll kick them two days a week like we always do, and there’s going to be two days a week for multiple lengths of time that they’re working on practicing those different tools that could help them in those moments. 

Every Sunday, Brandon Aubrey kicks a ball to the moon. Is looking at the soccer team an option for you guys?

Well, it’s an NCAA rule that before the season, you set your rosters at 105. There’s guys that you can declare grandfathered in that were previously on your roster, but once your rosters are set, you can’t add anybody to your roster. And so that’s why we can’t do anything about that right now.

Is that for the entire season, postseason?

*nods head*

Are there any times when you’re tempted to just go for two?

Yeah, I mean it’s a it’s a strategic thing, where you want to go for two at times based on what the situation in the game is. But if there’s a confidence that you can’t make an extra point, you can either be insane and keep missing extra points or you can go for two, right?

I’ll tell you right now, in this moment, [we have] the confidence that we’re going to be able to make an extra point. But if we don’t, then then I’ll have to make you have some decisions to make about going for two and those are things that we’ll have to decide. 

You are the exception, but six of the last seven coordinators really struggled in their first year against Navy. Do you remember yours, and what is your advice for Chris Ash?

Yeah, I was fortunate that I faced Navy four times when I was at Cincinnati. I think four times; it might have been three. But the very first time I faced Navy they might have ran for a record.

So you’re no longer the exception. 

Exactly right. So don’t let my first year at Notre Dame confuse you with my first time playing Navy. I think it was a rushing record in 2017. I didn’t have any answer. They just kept running the ball and just kept running the ball. And we couldn’t stop it. It’s a rough feeling. It was a decision we all made as a coaching staff, but it was like, ‘We can’t let this happen again. We gotta dive deeper into it. We gotta figure out what they’re looking for, not just how to stop it.’ 

We got better as we continued to move forward against triple-option offenses, and we did a good job my first year here. But again, it’s a different offense than I faced when I was a coordinator here. It is truly enhanced. 

But I feel we’ll have a good plan. Our guys will play fast. We’ll be able to adapt and adjust. But our guys have experience, which is important. You can say they had experience when Coach Golden took over. That offense, they did a good job. 

I don’t know how it’s gonna be. We all have these preconceived thoughts of how we think it’ll go on Saturday. Win the next play. Find a way to win this game, is what’s important.