Marcus Freeman reveals how he pushes Notre Dame's coordinators to help identify issues after slow start
As college football teams around the country near the midway point of the season self-scouting has become a big emphasis for many coaches, including for first-year coach Marcus Freeman. Freeman spent some time this week outlining how he’s pushing Notre Dame‘s coordinators to identify key issues following a slow start to the 2022 campaign.
The Fighting Irish have certainly turned things around in recent weeks, posting three straight impressive wins over FBS opponents, including a 28-20 win over then-No. 16 BYU over the weekend.
“It’s the same thing after BYU, and that’s what I challenged our coaches, and I’ll challenge our players today,” Freeman said. “That same lens that we have after a Marshall, after Ohio State, we’ve got to watch after BYU.”
The Fighting Irish started the season 0-2 but have bounced back nicely with wins over California, North Carolina (on the road) and BYU.
Still, Freeman is pushing to find areas he can continue to maximize growth as Notre Dame’s season continues to play out. That’s been a little bit of an adjustment for him as a first-time head coach, but the process he’s adopted is similar to the approach he took as a coordinator.
“I think it’s a little bit different when you become the head coach in that you challenge your coordinators to figure out why the execution isn’t where we need it to be,” Freeman said. “As the defensive coordinator I challenged myself and said, ‘OK, what do I need to do to help us play better?’ And that was one, was simplify what we were doing.”
Marcus Freeman urging Notre Dame coordinators to take ownership of player issues
Freeman noted one thing he does with his Notre Dame coordinators is sit down on a regular basis and discuss why certain things aren’t clicking right. Even after wins.
“‘OK, we had a mistake here, tell me why,'” Freeman said. “‘Is the player confused, is it lack of coaching?’ And always evaluating.
“It’s tough because when you feel a certain way after Marshall, it’s easy to go and say, ‘All right, I’m already angry. I don’t like that.’ And we’re going to challenge each other. Right now everybody’s like, ‘Oh man, I feel good after yesterday.’ Today we’ve moved on, but we feel good after a big win over a really good opponent. We have to ask those same critical questions. What happened here, why is it happening, what do we got to do to fix it? It could be we have to simplify. It could be we have to coach it better. It could be we have to meet with a kid so he understands exactly what he has to do.”
One major reason Freeman takes that approach? He’s all about accountability.
For him, leadership starts at the top. It’s his job to set the direction for the program and get everyone pushing in a unified manner. His coordinators are his lieutenants, ready to give marching orders.
“I’m not going to sit here and point the finger at the player,” Freeman said. “These players have class, they have life, they have everything else going on and we get them for a couple hours a day and try to get them to execute what we need them to do. This is our life, this is what we’re doing, so we as coaches have to meet that player.
“Now we’ve got to challenge them. We’ve got to challenge them and we’ve got to push them, physically we’ve got to push them, mentally. But I think it starts with us challenging ourselves and saying, ‘OK, if he’s not performing at the level we need him to perform, let’s figure out on our end why he’s not doing it.'”