What Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said two days before the Syracuse game

On Thursday, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman addressed the media for the final time before the No. 9 Fighting Irish (8-2) face Syracuse (3-7) on Saturday. Here is everything Freeman told the media in his 15-minute meeting with reporters over Zoom.

Q. Coach, we had the opportunity to speak with Justin Fisher this week. He’s a young man who’s been very versatile for you in his four years at Notre Dame. How has his role changed since you recruited him, and what is his value to the program?

FREEMAN: “Yeah, man, I can’t even remember where we started him at — what exactly what position. But he’s done so many different roles for our team, but the effort he puts into his role and the pride that he takes, whether it’s a scout team guy, a scout team tight end, or a scout team running back, or Navy Week, he’s a scout team quarterback, and he does a great job. And he does a great job on special teams. 

“And so everybody’s role is important, right? And your value isn’t determined by your role, and Fish is a great example of a guy that embraces his role and really has a lot of value to this team.”

Q. Hey, Marcus. Jaylen Sneed was probably your first real huge recruiting commitment that you got when you were defensive coordinator. Now, you’ve obviously coached him for four years.

He told us this week there were not football times, but lifetimes, academic times where he wondered if he would ever make it through Notre Dame. Now he’s on track to graduate next month. 

What are some of your memories along this journey with him? And maybe how has helping him grow as an individual helped you grow as a coach?

FREEMAN: “Yeah, I think about when I first met Jaylen down in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and obviously, I have a long relationship with his high school head coach, and to get a young man like him to choose Notre Dame, it is a huge reason why I do what I do. 

“I don’t know if he understood the value of this place before he decided to come here, but we had a relationship, and Notre Dame football speaks for itself. What you’ve done is seen him grow. He’s matured a ton since he’s been here, not only as a football player but as a person. 

“So there’s been ups and downs in his life like everybody else’s. And to get him to understand, you just keep going. You keep battling, you learn from the past, you learn from the mistakes, you get better because of it. It is special to be on the journey with him and really everybody in this program, especially our seniors.”

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Q. Hello, Marcus. I want to ask about the art of the long Pick-6 or Pick-2, as it were. What are the teaching points on that to the other 10 guys as they’re storming downfield, especially when it comes to avoiding penalties?

So many returns from other places seem to come back on penalties. How much pride do you guys take in everybody pitching in on those moments?

“I mean, it’s a great example of winning the interval. Usually, we say an interval’s about five seconds long, but that interval went a lot longer. 

“And we work it. You practice it in training camp in the spring, where the actual return, you try to give the returner the near sideline, and you got to teach the other 10 defenders who to block. You block the intended receiver, and you got to lead him up the sidelines, but give him the numbers if you can. 

“And then, you got to be smart. You can’t block in the back, and you got to be smart on the quarterback, which I think it was [Jason] Onye did a really good job of maybe high screening the quarterback, but not being out of control and trying to punish ’em because that’s going to be a penalty. 

“So, it was a great return obviously by Adon [Shuler], but really 10 guys finishing and winning the interval.”

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Q. Coach, you guys have the kind of oddity on offense of having a lot of red zone touchdowns, top 15 in the country, but goal-to-go has been a bit of a challenge. 

FREEMAN: “What’s that?”

Q. Goal to go situations have come up. Those have kind of bitten you down in the red zone. You’ve come up empty eight times. 

How did Coach [Mike] Denbrock and how did you guys kind of attack that recently? What’s the challenge down there other than the obvious that you’re out of space in terms of stretching the field?

FREEMAN: “Yeah, like when you say goal to go, you mean like anywhere where it’s first, second, third or fourth and goal? Is that what you’re talking about? 

Q. Yeah.

FREEMAN: “Again, it all depends on where the ball is, right? Fourth-and-goal is a lot different than first-and-goal at the plus-9. You’re still staying in your red zone type offense, gold zone if you want to call it that. But as you get closer to the goal line, your mindset changes. What are you going to do? Are you going to run the ball?  Well, what if they come out in this look?

“I think about the fourth-and-goal play from the Pitt game and we had a check that if they were going to show a certain look we were going to do this, but hindsight is 20-20, man, you probably say you put the ball, in my opinion, the best player in the country’s hand and you know what you can live with not scoring with the ball in his hands and trusting our O-line. 

“But to not give that guy a chance in that moment was a bad decision on my part and our part. And so we have a good plan, and we’ve got to be able to trust our guys to execute it, even if it’s a look that maybe we haven’t seen. It’s about players and we’ve got to make sure we continue to get the ball in our playmakers’ hands.”

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Q. Hey, coach, kind of in the same vein. I get a lot of armchair coaches that ask me this question. So I’m going to ask you. 

What would be the disadvantage in short yardage and goal line situations of having your quarterback under center? And does the quarterback’s physical build and the center’s physical build factor into that?

FREEMAN: “It’s really risk versus reward. And when 90, whatever percent of the time that you take a snap, it’s in the gun, it’s like, ‘Hey, in that moment, right? When you’re so close to the end zone, or maybe it’s a short yard situation, is that something you want to commit to?’ 

“We did it when we were backed up in the Pitt game, and it’s something we practice, but we didn’t have much success on that quarterback sneak either. So there’s no — I’m not going to say anything negative about it. You just got to commit to it and say, ‘You want to be under center, but you got to practice it and practice it.’ And, it’s like, do you practice that? How much does that take away from the plays that you have to run out of the gun? 

“And so that probably is the biggest reason why in those moments, we haven’t done that. And we just, again, we are committed to the gun, and we might reconsider.”

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Q. Hey, coach with Aamil [Wagner] and his pregame speech to the offensive line. And then Jeremiyah [Love] saying after the game that some of the players felt disrespected by Pitt in the week leading up to it. I was wondering what’s your philosophy on bulletin board material, and how often do you use it when you’re getting the team ready for a game?

FREEMAN: “I don’t. Those guys are on social media. And I don’t know if there was something that was said. I don’t know. I didn’t hear the pregame speech.

“Again, I don’t really use it. Again, maybe make points of emphasis of what we need to do and why we need to do it, but I’m not a big bulletin board material guy. But everybody is motivated in different ways, and everybody receives information in different ways. And so if they received information, maybe it’s something I said, maybe it’s something they read, I don’t know, in a certain way, then if it helps them play at a high level, I’m all for it.”

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Q. Marcus, you mentioned earlier in the week the meetings with CJ Carr, but also meeting with Kenny [Minchey], too. 

And I was interested more about meeting with your backup, how those are different, what you’re trying to sort of understand about him, or how his season is going, and how much you talk about, ‘Hey, here’s where the future goes. Here’s how Notre Dame can help you get there.’

FREEMAN: “Only a part—every meeting that I have with a quarterback is going to be different, right? Because it’s not just football. I mean, that’s a very little part of the meetings I have with the quarterbacks. It’s more headspace. It’s more life. It’s more what’s going on with your life, and I can explain and talk about things going on in my life.

“And so again, the conversation I have with CJ is going to be different than Kenny. We talk about ball. We talk about what he’s doing, how he feels, what he’s (feeling) about the game plan. Are you ready? And I remind him, ‘You have to stay ready because you’re one play away.’ 

“We talk about his future and what we all don’t know. But also, we talk about the present, and that’s something that Kenny always brings me back to, is the present. He doesn’t know what he’ll do after this season. He’s focused on being the best quarterback he can be. And being ready to go if he’s called upon and help this team win.

“There’s a lot of different things that go on in our conversations. We talk about our faith. We talk about our families and a whole bunch of topics.” 

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Q. Hey, coach. I know we’ve asked about him a lot lately, but Jaden Greathouse. I think this is the first time he’s been off the injury report in a long time.

Is the plan still to redshirt him if you can? And is that game flow dictated? Like if you guys get up early, like you did against Pitt, it’s ‘OK, we probably don’t need him here, so we’re not going to play him.’

FREEMAN: “No, it is more—it was when he finally got to the point where we felt like he could help our team and play at a high level because of his health. 

“I kind of had a discussion with him and Coach Denbrock and all the staff. What’s best for the team, but also what’s best for the young player—the person. We have two games left. And if we don’t have to play him, it would give him another year because he didn’t redshirt. And so we want to be able to do that. So we want to try to treat him like the other freshmen that you want to play four games and not obviously burn the redshirt. 

“If something happens, right, and we feel like we have to put him in the game, then we will. And he will be the first one to say, ‘Put me in coach.’ If we need, if you need me to go out there to help our team win, then he’s a team-first guy. But I want to try as best as we can is not burn his red shirt, if we can, in the last two games.”

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Q. Coach, Syracuse question here. Coach [Fran] Brown said that [Joseph] Filardi, the walk-on, will start at quarterback for them. 

I know he hasn’t played a whole lot, but what have you seen from him? And then, typically with an inexperienced guy like that, what are some of the things that you like to try to throw at young guys that might be most problematic for him?

“Yeah, you obviously watched the North Carolina game and part of the Miami game. And you know, he’s got talent. I see why he’s playing.

“He’s a slippery—I like to say a slippery, sneaky, like athletic. He reminds me, actually, a lot of the quarterback we just saw versus Pitt, and they find a way to extend plays with their legs. You think you have a clean shot at him, and you can’t get him down. They have some designed quarterback runs with him, and he can throw the ball. He wouldn’t be playing for ’em if he couldn’t throw the ball. 

“So, we’re prepared for all three. I don’t know how much our game plan will truly change depending on who’s at quarterback, but we have to understand the target on a quarterback. We have to make sure we do not open up vertical lanes for the quarterback to escape and extend plays. 

“Because we saw that earlier in the year, you see it again in every game—if you let the quarterback escape vertically and extend plays with his legs, either running or in the pass game, it presents problems for the defense.

“So we have to be able to give them some different looks. But he’s a good player and they got good skill. Their tight end’s really good, right? They use two of them, but 89, he’s a good player. I think their wideouts are good. Two and 15 have shown up, and the running back number six. And they got another one, 24, that they can use in the pass game a lot. It’s like, ‘This is a good team.’ All you got to do is watch film and you’ll see it. 

“So we’ve got a great challenge and 13 will be a challenge for our team.”