Marcus Freeman reveals message during Notre Dame's 'two-week sprint' after first bye

For eight straight weeks to start the season, Notre Dame played a football game. The Fighting Irish came out of the gate with a busy schedule, including four straight games in prime time — two of which came on the road — prior to a bye week.

Now, Notre Dame is preparing to play two straight games before another bye. Teams that played in Week 0 customarily get two byes during the season. In the Fighting Irish’s case, those both come in the span of a month as they try to make a push toward a possible New Year’s Six bowl appearance.

To Marcus Freeman, the bye week came at a good time after that tough four-game stretch, which ended with a huge rivalry win over USC. During an interview with former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski on SiriusXM, Freeman detailed his approach to the two weeks before the next bye.

“We had eight games straight,” Freeman said on Coach K on Basketball. “We played in Week 0, and we started fall camp in the last week of July and going straight until last week. It was a much-needed bye week. And so, we really have four games left with a bye week in between the two games. So we go two games, another bye week, and two games. … My whole message will be, looking at this thing as a macro picture.

“It’s a two-week sprint. You’ve just come off a bye week, everybody’s fresh. We have to sprint. Not just run, jog. We’ve got to sprint for two weeks. Everything we have for these next two weeks, and then you get another bye week. Then we’ll come back and we’ll finish it the right way. Two weeks, we need to go everything we can.”

Marcus Freeman: The ‘micro picture’ over Notre Dame’s last four games is to ‘take care of today’

While it’s important to look at the next four games, starting with this week’s game against Pitt before a big game against Clemson, Freeman also wants his players to keep their focus on the task at hand. This week, it’s the Panthers, who are making the trip to South Bend in Week 9.

Freeman’s biggest message is winning the day, and that’s the other part of his approach amid an interesting last month of the season.

“Now, the micro picture of that is we’ve got to take care of today,” Freeman said. “We have to win today, and all we have is today. That’s the mindset I want them to understand is that we stay in the moment today. I always say, our mentality has to be right. Stay in the moment, and if you stay in the moment, you win the moment.

“Because the reality is, it’s us vs. Pitt today. And that’s how you’ve got to look at it. Pitt has four hours today they can get together, Notre Dame has four hours today we can get together. We have to make sure that we win those four hours that we’re together, and that’s going to be the micro picture of what today’s all about.”