Marcus Freeman stresses importance of uplifting assistant coaches, developing careers

The best teams in the country tend to be ones that have a depth of coaching talent beyond the head coach. The problem is that the best teams also tend to have their assistants poached for other jobs, making replacing those coaches part of the job for top end coaches.

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman knows that turnover on the coaching staff is a reality to deal with. As he explained ahead of the Sugar Bowl, he also knows that uplifting his assistant coaches and developing their careers is a vital part of his own job. Part of that has come from his head coach-of-the-week program for assistants.

“It originated from when I was in college and Coach [Jim] Tressel did something similar where each week we called it an opponent expert,” Marcus Freeman said. “An assistant coach was supposed to be the expert on your upcoming opponent. I thought it was a great way as a player to hear somebody else’s voice, to hear some of your assistant coaches in front of the entire team. And as a coach, it’s a great way for me to empower our coaches and give them the opportunity to be in front of the whole team, which not everybody gets the chance to do and it’s been great. They embrace it. They really look forward to it, and I think our players enjoy it.”

Since getting to Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman has had former head coach Al Golden at defensive coordinator for all three seasons. Offensive coordinator, however, has consistently turned over, with Gerard Parker becoming the head coach at Troy and Tommy Rees leaving for Alabama. On top of that, Marcus Freeman has also loudly advocated for Mike Mickens, the team’s defensive backs coach.

“As far as Mike Mickens, obviously, we have a relationship that goes way back, even to high school. And the growth I’ve seen Coach Mickens make from Cincinnati to Notre Dame to where he’s at now has been tremendous. He’s always been a great evaluator. I’ve said that from our time at Cincinnati when he was the one that stood on the table for Sauce Gardner and some other guys,” Freeman said.

“And the same thing at Notre Dame when he stands on the table for Benjamin Morrison and Leonard Moore and some of the guys we have. He’s a great evaluator, but he’s a great teacher. He develops some of the talent that he has in the room. He’s ready to be a defensive coordinator when he gets the right opportunity, but I’m not super excited to see him leaving our defensive coaching staff at any point soon.”

Marcus Freeman, like any other head coach, had to rise through the ranks of coaching himself at one point. That journey started as a graduate assistant in 2010 at Ohio State. He quickly rose the ranks and by the time he was coaching at Cincinnati in 2017 under Luke Fickell, he was seen as an up-and-coming coach. That allowed him to take, essentially, a promotion to become the Notre Dame defensive coordinator under Brian Kelly before he then earned the head coaching job.