Marcus Freeman shares what Notre Dame's senior class means to him
Notre Dame will be looking to send their seniors off on a high note this weekend, as they take on Boston College in their last home game of the season. Head coach Marcus Freeman was asked about his senior class, as he spoke on their importance and impact on the program in his first season as Notre Dame’s head coach.
“I think I’ve told the captains but what I’ll tell those seniors is they’ve built the foundation of what I believe is the future of the Notre Dame football program under me, and that’s different than previous head coaches,” Freeman said. “Notre Dame football has been successful for a really long time, but the leadership has changed and you have to rebuild that foundation to fit the new leader. And that’s what I’ll credit this group for, is really building the foundation for what I believe is gonna be an extremely bright future of Notre Dame football.”
Freeman elaborated on the buy-in that he received from his senior class despite them undergoing a head coaching change headed into their final season in South Bend, and the impact they had in driving Freeman’s new culture.
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“And so I’ll be forever in debt to this, this will be a special group forever, forever to me because they had blind faith. They didn’t choose me to be their head coach and they came to Notre Dame for other reasons, well you know what, I was named head coach no matter if they chose me or not and they committed to the vision I had for this football program. They worked tirelessly, they really built the bond, they established, probably the best word is they implemented the culture that I put on the walls,” Freeman explained.
New head coaches are allowed to canvas the facility with whatever messages or mantras they want to once they are hired, and Freeman’s first senior class clearly went the extra mile in making sure the groundwork of Freeman’s vision was set during their final year at Notre Dame.
“Like I can put whatever you want on the walls, I can say this is what I want our program to do, but until it’s implemented, until it’s carried out from the players and the leaders throughout the football players and the team, that’s just words on the wall,” Freeman said. “And this group of seniors has really done that, they’ve taken those words off the wall and said this is what our program is going to be built around, and they’ve truly built the foundation of what this program is.”