Marcus Freeman's first year at Notre Dame graded 'B' by Greg McElroy

ESPN commentator Greg McElroy was going through the first-year head coaches this week on his Always College Football podcast, giving each of them a grade based on their jobs in 2022. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman was the first name off the list of coaches who received a B.

Freeman went 9-4 on the season with a Gator Bowl over South Carolina but had a scary start to his tenure two losses to Ohio State and Marshall. Another bad loss to Stanford almost made his grade lower, but Freeman’s work on the recruiting trail and closing the season was promising.

“Let’s get to the B’s,” McElroy said. “Marcus Freeman, we’ll start with him. Now, it got off to a little bit of a tricky start. We’ve already addressed the losses to Marshall. There’s no shame in losing to Ohio State I might add. But the losses to Marshall and to Stanford are inexcusable. They are. They’re difficult to even wrap your head around. You lose to Ohio State, lose to USC, fine. You can live with that. You cannot have the slip ups in week two and then they’re in the middle of the season. Just can’t happen. Absolutely cannot happen. But you win six of the last seven with a backup quarterback and you bring in a very solid recruiting class. Look, it’s a B. Not bad. Not great. But a B performance for Marcus Freeman in year number one. Now we’ll see what he does here in year number two.”

JD PicKell thinks Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman take another step forward

While Greg McElroy did not give any prediction for the 2023 season for Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame, On3’s J.D. PicKell believes Notre Dame is going to continue moving in the right direction.

“You won nine games last year, did the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and you did it mostly with a backup quarterback. Notre Dame, last year, was a team that fought one style, in my opinion, and that was just jiu jitsu,” PicKell said on The Hard Count this week. “‘We’re going to play you tough in the trenches, we are going to play stingy defense, we’re going to run the football and we’re going to be physical. That’s going to be our edge. We’re not going to make it a track meet, we’re not going to do this whole shootout, team that has the ball next wins, that’s not going to be how we do things.”