Everything Notre Dame HC Marcus Freeman said before Week 3 at Purdue

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman knew he was in for a long press conference when he stepped up to the lectern at 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday. His over-five-minute, 880-word opening statement reflected that as he explained what went wrong when the Irish inexplicably lost to Northern Illinois.

Here’s everything Freeman said Monday as Notre Dame starts preparing to face Purdue at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday in West Lafayette, Ind.

Opening statement

“When you evaluate the film, here are some of the key factors that led to the outcome. Turnover margin, we lost 2-0. Explosive gains, they had 6 for 186 yards. We had 5 for 94. Time of possession, they had 35-plus minutes, we had 24. Rushing yards, they had 190 and we had 123. And then they won the third-down battle. And so, no matter who your opponent is, if you lose all those key areas, you’re not gonna win the game. The question in the past 48 hours, the challenge for everybody in our program is to figure out why, why those things happened.

“Obviously, there’s going to be some schematic things that I’m sure I’m asked about that we’ll talk through. We gotta improve. We have to make sure we’re putting our guys in the right positions to do what they do best, but also to be able to execute in the game exactly what we want. But to me, the biggest thing I’ve been reflecting on in the past 48 hours is we have to learn how to handle success. And that, to me, is what really spoke to me watching the film, but really thinking about it. This is the first time in my three years as a head coach that we have won the big game early in the season. Two losses to Ohio State, and then all of a sudden, we win and everybody says, ‘Hey, you’re going to the playoffs. You got an easy schedule.’ We all hear it, and I think we started to believe that.

“There is a physical approach to preparing for a game, and I think physically, we prepared the right way. But there’s also a mental approach, a mindset that you have to have every single week. And I think that’s where we failed. And so, we gotta challenge ourselves to make sure no matter who our opponent is, that physically and mentally, our approach to the game is the same way. That, to me, is really what we have to learn from this. We have to be able to handle success, and how you do that is you don’t change the way you approach in your mindset each week. No matter what people say, no matter what you hear, as much as you can, you gotta try to tune out the noise. It’s easy to listen to the good things. Nobody wants to hear the bad things people say, but neither of them should matter. Your approach should be your approach. Your routine should be your routine. And that’s the challenge we have as a football program, is how do we handle success and make sure each week, we’re approaching the opponent the right way?

“The reality is that we got the talent. We have the coaching staff to be a great football team, much better than we displayed on Saturday, but we have a lot of work to do to ensure that we perform that way, each opportunity we get.

“Couple injury updates: Faison will be back. Expecting him to practice on Tuesday, expecting him back for the game. Tosh Baker will be out this week. Hopefully we can get him back as soon as we can. And then Burnham is questionable. He went out, I think, the very last play with an ankle sprain, but he made a lot of progress in the last 48 hours, so he’s questionable right now in terms of if he’ll be available to play.

“Just talk a little bit about Purdue, it’s a team as you watch film, really from last year to this year, has continuously improved under Coach [Ryan] Walters. They’ve won three of their last four games. On offense, I have a lot of respect for Hudson Card. He’s a really good player, runs their offense well. Graham Harrell is a guy I know that was the coordinator at USC when I was the defensive coordinator here. I have a lot of respect for how he runs an offense. They do a really good job at running the football. They led the Big Ten in rushing last year in conference games, and they rushed for 250-plus in three of the last four games. So we gotta make sure we’re prepared to stop the run. And they have good skill. Really good tight ends, and some good, skilled wideouts.

“Defensively, it’s a unique defense that you don’t see every week, in terms of their scheme. They’re gonna stack the box, and they’re gonna make you have to try to throw it on them. They take pride in stopping the run. Played a lot of man coverage, so to have success, we’re gonna have to beat man coverage. And they’re big up the middle. They’re really big up the middle with their interior D-linemen, the linebacker and the safety’s a really — [Dillon] Thieneman’s a good player. They do a good job of pressuring the quarterback, too. I think they were third in the Big Ten [in sacks] last year. 

“So, we got a great challenge for us. Our guys will be ready, and we’re about to have a great week of preparation, mentally and physically, and get back at it on Saturday. So with that, I’ll open up for questions.”

You were in the same sort of position last year, where you lose one in September and it feels like you need to win the rest. Why can this be different? Why can you guys run the table?

“I think, Tyler, this is a different situation. The focus can’t — that’s another part of this thing that I got to make sure our guys understand, is that everybody now is, ‘Hey, you’ll be fine. Run the table, 11-1.’ That doesn’t matter. This week matters. Who cares about the rest of that stuff, man, like we got to take care of this week, and that’s got to be our mindset, right? Our preparation — Golden said this to me — the preparation has no opponent. We gotta prepare the right way to have success on Saturday. That’s all our focus is on, is this upcoming week and this upcoming game.”

Similarly to last year, the Notre Dame offense is having trouble pushing the ball down the field. Lack of play-action passes, lack of passes 20 or more yards down the field. Why is that the case again, and what’s leading to that?

“Yeah, I think there’s opportunities to throw the ball downfield. We gotta do it. We gotta make the decision to throw it there. We try to create some opportunities to push the ball down the field. For whatever reason, for that play, maybe we didn’t do it. A couple plays, we did push down the field, we gotta make the play. A couple times, one time we dropped it, a couple times we got it picked off and a couple times we scrambled. There’s a lot of different things that go into the passing game that we have to improve on, but what we gotta do is make sure we’re doing things that we feel like our guys can execute on game day. There’s one thing to execute it in practice and to feel like we have the answers — ‘If we see this look, this is where we wanna go with the ball’ — but it’s another thing to actually do it on game day. And so as coaches and players, we have to be aligned on, ‘Hey, this is exactly what we want you to do.’ And then we got to go out and do it on Saturday.”

On the interior defensive line, Cross isn’t getting full reps and you’re without Rubio. You’re a little light in both numbers and size. Does Notre Dame have some options there? Is Mukam ready to contribute? Sevillano?

“Yeah, I mean, Armel is really getting — he’s improving. He’s improving, and probably right now is your fifth inside guy. Rubio should be back, I don’t know exactly when he’ll come back, in but a couple weeks. But I think Howard and Rylie and Hinish and even Onye have done a good job. We gave up way too many rushing yards. We know that. I don’t think it was because of our play at D-tackle. I think it was more so they did a good job of forcing us to be lateral. And that’s not who we are. We are an aggressive, attacking defense that plays on the other side of the line of scrimmage, but when all of a sudden you get all these motions and color in front of your face and you get outside running plays, it made our guys almost play fit-ball instead of football. That’s a challenge that we have for our defense, is we have to be aggressive. No matter what type of offense we’re seeing, we still have to play on the other side of the line of scrimmage. And that’s gonna be a point of emphasis this week.

You talked about being physical last week on the heals of the win over Texas A&M. Do you want to remain that way, and where’s the line of diminishing returns?

“I don’t think physically we weren’t ready to play. I loved the way – the physicality of practice last week was good. We’re going to be physical and get after it on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I believe that’s going to be an edge for our team. What we didn’t do well is maybe correcting some of the mistakes that we made in practice to the point where we executed it the right way in the game. That’s kind of the topic we had as a coaching staff. At times, it’s OK to fail in practice. That’s what practice is for. We’re going to be physical. We’re going to get after it offense vs. defense, but what we have to do is take some of the plays that we didn’t execute for whatever reason in practice and make sure we get it corrected so that in the game, we can execute it at the level we want to. 

“That’s where a couple of the mistakes that we made in practice showed up in the game. We went back as coaches, and I said, ‘Let’s look at practice and make sure where in the preparation we faltered.’ You can talk about holding penalties. There were a couple plays we said, ‘That’s probably a hold in practice that we just didn’t get it corrected in the game.’ We gotta block better in space. We gotta block better on the perimeter. Maybe you throw an interception in practice and say that’s practice. You’re supposed to fail a little bit in practice, but how do we get this corrected so it doesn’t happen in a game? 

“The other thing is sometimes quarterbacks being in the red jersey gives them a little false sense of security. We gotta continue to work on our footwork at the quarterback position. Step up in the pocket and believe that you have more time than maybe you perceive with an edge rush. That’s where the red jersey sometimes creates a little bit of bad habits. 

“All those different things are areas in practice that I believe we have to get corrected – that every week you’re going to have failures in practice. That’s what practice is for, but we’re not going to pull back from the physicality. I don’t believe the performance on Saturday had anything to do with the physicality of practice.” 

RJ Oben only played 11 snaps on Saturday. What do you need to see from him, especially with Burnham’s status in question?

”For him, it was more physically we didn’t during the game that he was able to perform at the level we needed him to. He’s fine physically. We just gotta get him to play better and he will. We have a lot of confidence in RJ. He’ll have a good week of practice and he has to step up this week.”

Leonard threw much more than the running backs ran for Notre Dame. Is that where the ratio needs to be?

“When you have back-to-back three-and-outs and I think the one interception drive we had four plays – that’s going to affect the amount of carries we can give our running backs. We gotta be more efficient on first and second down so we can create more plays. Part of that time of possession, they did a good job, even we held them field goals, they did a good job of moving the chains. We gotta do a better job of that because three-and-outs or four plays and an interception, it limits your opportunities for anybody to drop back or run the ball for any offensive play.” 

Was Riley Leonard playing through an injury, and was there any consideration to playing Steve Angeli in the fourth quarter?

”No. There was no consideration of that. We have a lot of belief in Riley and him running our offense. We have a lot of beliefs, too. That’s not a shot at Steve. We have a lot of faith in Steve, too. There was no consideration of that. 

“The quarterback is just like the head coach, right? Rightfully so, he’s going to get the blame and he’s going to get the praise. There are times that he has to throw the ball better. He knows that and his fundamentals have to be better and his decision making has to be better, but we also have to be better around him. That’s coaches in what we’re asking him to do and what we’re asking him to read and that’s players wise too. We gotta catch the ball when he throws it. We gotta be better on contested balls. They made some contested catches and we didn’t when we needed to make as many contested catches as we’re supposed to. 

“The fingers at everybody. We’re pointing a finger at everybody and it starts with the coaches. It’s always us. We have to make sure we have a plan that our players can execute. You can love your plan, but you better love what your players can execute. I got a lot of faith and belief we’ll make sure we’ll do that.” 

Are the Notre Dame wide receivers making contested catches and other big plays in practice?

“Yeah. They’re battling. You can see it in 1-on-1s. You can see it when we go good on good. It’s always a battle, right? If we’re making too many contested catches on offense, then you’re saying, ‘Defense, what are we doing?’ Defense, if we’re winning every single ball, then you’re going to look at the offense. 

“It’s been a great 50-50 battle, but at the end of the day, we gotta do it on Saturdays.” 

The first offensive drives in each half were touchdowns, but the rest of the game resulted in zero Notre Dame points. How do you explain the difference?

”I look at that, too. It isn’t a problem coming out of the locker room. We’re ready to roll. You evaluate every play. The first drive wasn’t perfect, but we overcame some of the mistakes to make sure we scored a touchdown. That’s what we have to do consistently throughout the game. We can’t make consistent mistakes that get us the third-and-long situations or we weren’t even great on third-and-medium situations on Saturday. 

“I think every play within itself is its own evaluation. We have to really stack plays. Keep the chains moving. We can’t go three-and-out. We can’t do that.” 

Did you see growth from the Notre Dame offensive line from Week 1 to Week 2?

”I did. I thought they did a good job. It might not look like it sometimes, but they did a good job protecting the quarterback. We gotta trust that. We gotta trust that they’re going to protect you around the edges. We gotta step up and make those throws. I thought they did a good job in the run game. There were a couple times we might have miss-ID’d somebody or they rocked back and made a play in the run game. Overall, I thought our five offensive linemen, they played better week two than they did week one.” 

Why has it been difficult to sustain success?

”That’s the game of football. If I had the perfect answer, we would win every game we play. That’s the ultimate challenge. I think every year presents a different challenge. I think I said this after the game, we have been here before, but it was different than the loss to Marshall. We hadn’t won a game – I hadn’t won a game. That’s a lot different than where we’re at now. That’s why it took me a little bit of time to look back and say, OK what do we have to learn from this game?

“Yes, schematic things we have to fix, but here’s what’s different about this one, we have to handle success the right way. That’s every individual, including me, all the way down to our players. How do we handle success in terms of our mental approach to the game? I’m focused on making sure we’re ready to go this week, and that’s more important than worrying about a season-long sustained success. Let’s get better this week and take care of business this week.”

What, about the identity of this team, do you need to see on the practice field and in the meeting room this week?

”Nobody is going to feel sorry for us. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for us. Let’s go. I’m a competitor and I’m surrounded by competitors. Let’s get back to work and let’s challenge each other. They’ve all watched the film, but we actually get to meet with them today as a coaching staff. Let’s look at it. Let’s own it. Own it first, come up with a plan and attack it. And then let’s go. Let’s have the right mindset. I’m ready to just get back to work and go. I don’t want sympathy. No one needs sympathy. Let’s just get back to work and do the things it takes to have success on Saturday. Do whatever it is within our routine better than we’ve done it to make sure we can have success on Saturday. I’m confident that we’ll have an entire program with that mindset.” 

New director of analytics Anthony Treash had some airtime on the sideline next to you late in the game. How has he done in a big role? And how did you manage the clock on defense down the stretch?

“Treash has been great. He did the first game too. He was down there for both games. So, he has the book that kind of just — we talk about what to do, when we want to go for it in certain situations on board. I like to use that as a reference in terms when to call timeouts. It’s just something that I’m able to kind of just ask him, ‘Hey, what’s the book saying right now? What should we be thinking about’? 

“As far as on defense, we were hoping on that last drive to get them in a third-and-long situation and try to force them to throw the ball, so that there could be some incomplete passes and keep the clock stopped. But they converted a second-and-long to make it third-and-short. And so, I wanted to save that timeout for third down, just because I want to say, ‘OK, fourth down, no matter what, no matter if they’re going to go for it or they’re going to kick it, let’s take a minute to kind of get a plan together of what we want to do on this fourth-down play.’ That’s how it works. But Treash has done a great job.”

There was confusion on the TV broadcast as to whether Notre Dame had a timeout as it took over on offense. Did you?

“No, we didn’t have a timeout. We used one timeout on the defense early in the second half. We had two timeouts left on that last [Northern Illinois] drive. We used it after the first down. We used it after the third down. I don’t know what the TV said.” 

Jason Garrett wasn’t informed of that.

“Yeah, well I don’t watch the TV copy [of the game film], so. I knew how many timeouts we had.”

After the game, Riley Leonard said he needed to lead by example with how he reacted to the loss. What would they have seen from both him and you?

“Riley, he’s a competitive person that takes ownership, puts a lot on his shoulders in terms of performance. And so, I’m sure he was down on Sunday, but we had a good meeting yesterday about the confidence we have in him, and hey, we’ve got to learn from this game. And let’s get back to work. It’s the same thing you’re going to see from your head coach. You don’t get much time to feel bad for yourself. The reality is let’s go work and let’s figure out the solution.

“And I’ve told the staff, like misery wants company, right? Misery wants company. We all want to sit here, and I want everybody in this room to have misery with me. But this misery, you have to do alone. You need some time with solitude to figure out, OK, what you as an individual — every person in our program — what we failed in preparation. Why weren’t our guys or why wasn’t myself, as a head coach — what failed in preparation? Where do we have to get better at? And come up with a plan and to fix it.

“So, you’re going to have a head coach that’s eager, that’s ready to go, ready to attack this next opportunity. Is confident. I’m so confident in the coaching staff and confident in the players that we have. I know we’ll get it right. We’ve just got to go back to work and come up with the right plan and get it right. But we have the people in that building to make sure we get this thing where it needs to go.”

What do you see around the corner with Riley Leonard that gives you confidence he can improve?

“I’m trying not to look so far around the corner. I know what I can expect of Riley Leonard this week, and that’s a quarterback that’s going to be prepared, that is going to look to enhance the way he prepares, is going to look to be a great leader and challenge teammates in the right way, and that will be ready to go on Saturday. That’s what I know in terms of him, and that’s what I’m focusing on. It’s like let’s get the mistakes corrected from Saturday.

“Let’s come up with the right plan and go and attack that plan and let the performance take care of itself on this upcoming Saturday. But I know that’s who our quarterback is, and now it’s time to go do it.” 

When you talk about physical vs. mental preparation, what does the mental prep look like?

“I think about, what I’m going to tell the team is the mindset you have right now, the way you want to go and attack this week should be the same way it is no matter what happened the previous week. And that, I’m sure, not many people want to read social media this week, or not many people want to turn on ESPN. It’s natural to see ESPN saying ‘Hey, they’re talking about the Notre Dame win over Texas A&M. Man, let’s watch it.’ But that doesn’t help you mentally get prepared for this upcoming week.

“And that’s what I want to make sure our guys — that they have the same hunger, the same approach, in terms of the mental preparation for a game and respect for their opponents, no matter who we play, no matter what happened the previous week. That is a question that only the individual can answer. You, as an individual, can answer that, because I can’t always get into the head of what you’re thinking and what you’re doing outside of this football program. But I always say that your choices reflect what you value. And so, we have to make sure we value the mental approach, we value the right things. And our choices are going to truly reflect that.”

Can you and will you try to use disappointment and frustration as a means of motivation?

“I’d say there’s a good chance I’d use some of that. I’ve always said I think leadership is knowing what your group needs. And if I think our team needs to look back at a loss and use it as motivation, I’ll use it. But I don’t think they’re going to need much motivation this week. This is a group that has high expectations. I’m sure they feel poorly about their performance, and they’re hungry and ready to get back to work, just like the coaches.”