Where Marcus Freeman has grown the most from Year 2 to Year 3 as a head coach

Expectations are trough the roof for Marcus Freeman to succeed as Notre Dame head coach entering his third season on the job.

Freeman has the Irish ranked No. 7 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, and with expectations for the Irish to succeed in 2024 through the roof, nothing short of a College Football Playoff appearance will appease the hungry Notre Dame football fans.

BlueandGold.com’s Tyler Horka recently joined On3’s Andy Staples to explain how Freeman is expected to maintain the success the Irish enjoyed during the 2023 season.

“I think he’s finally able to put some trust in everything and everyone around him,” Horka told Staples. “At that point, you have to realize that Gerad Parker, for all intents and purposes, that was his first go at being the all-encompassing offensive coordinator. I know he called some plays at West Virginia, but he really wasn’t the guy there. He was the guy for Notre Dame, especially because Marcus Freeman is a defensive minded head coach, so he was comfortable in what Al Golden was doing for sure.

“But now he says, ‘Okay, I have Mike Denbrock, who’s also been doing this for a while. Let me kind of dig into the things that I should be doing as a head coach. And that’s some of those — I wouldn’t call that intangibles — he should have 11 people on the field at all times, but he’s thinking about those things in a way that he couldn’t before, because it never crossed Marcus Freeman’s mind that Notre Dame might only have 10 people on the field for that play. And it happened. And now he’s thinking, ‘Okay, how can I make sure that stuff doesn’t happen again?'”

Once Freeman has established those pieces, it gives him the ability to step back and worry about all the other aspects of his different jobs as head coach.

Horka compared Notre Dame to Ohio State in this respect, saying that the Buckeyes are either always in or on the cusp of making the College Football Playoff.

“I know Notre Dame has made [the CFP] twice in the last handful of years, but right now, it doesn’t feel like Notre Dame is on that level of an Ohio State, or Michigan last year,” he said. “Marcus Freeman is finally digging into the things that can get Notre Dame there, because he knows he has a couple of coordinators that he doesn’t really have to worry about the X’s and O’s as much.”