Marcus Freeman gives blunt take on Notre Dame's offensive struggles: 'We couldn't run Riley every play'

After as tough as an offensive drive as you’ll see to start the national championship, Notre Dame went to a halt for much of the rest of the game, especially to end the first half.

Marcus Freeman addressed the offense’s outing after that first possession to start his postgame press conference after the 34-23 title loss to Ohio State. While they found a ton of success in running QB Riley Leonard, Freeman said it wouldn’t have been good for them to continue that for the rest of the game.

“We couldn’t run Riley every play. It’s not right for Riley and it’s not going to sustain the success we needed offensively,” Freeman said. “We can’t run Riley every single play. That’s not what the formula for success is.”

The Fighting Irish went on the longest scoring drive in playoff history to start against the Buckeyes as they went 75 yards in nearly 10 minutes on 18 plays. 13 of the 18 snaps were run plays with Leonard rushing on nine of them for 34 yards and the score.

However, from there, Notre Dame finished the game with just 308 total yards with 53 of those on the ground. Leonard finished with 17 carries for 40 of those yards as their leading rusher with a pair of sacks taking away from his total.

As Freeman noted, their other two offensive possessions in the first half played a part in that as they went three-and-out on both due to mistakes

“You know, we ran him a whole bunch that first series. And, you know, you look at the second series and you have two penalties, which ended up forcing us to punt. And then, the third series, you know, we had the miscommunication with the muffed snap and that’s the end of the half,” said Freeman. “So I think, more than anything, it was the two series after the first one. We didn’t execute and we had some self-inflicted wounds that we have to clean up.”

While still not running Leonard as much, though, Notre Dame did find more success in the second half. They turned it over on downs off a fake punt to start but, on their three remaining drives, the Irish were in scoring position on all three with them finding the end zone on two of them and converting on their two-point conversions.

“Second half, we drove the ball. I thought we did a good job, you know, with some, some tough situations,” said Freeman.

Still, it wasn’t enough in the end with them a score short before the winning kick with less than half a minute to go.