Live updates: Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman pre-Tennessee State press conference
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman will address the media at 12:00 p.m. ET on Thursday via Zoom. These are real-time updates from BlueandGold.com on what the second-year Notre Dame coach has to say in advance of Week 1 vs. Tennessee State.
Notre Dame hosts Tennessee State at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday in South Bend.
What Freeman is saying
• Freeman on Jadarian Price: “I’m so excited for him to have that reward. … He’s put in tiresome work.” Freeman has seen the behind-the-scenes rehab Price went through and it was “extremely rewarding” to see him score in the game.
• Sophomore TE Eli Raridon is not available for the Tennessee State game, Freeman confirmed. “It’s just a progress for him, from where he’s at now to being able to be game-ready.”
• Freeman reiterated that it’s an exciting opportunity to face a Historically Black College or University, and that he’s excited to be across the field from Eddie George.
• Notre Dame cut a couple minutes off its practices after the transatlantic trip, but they were normal practices in terms of intensity. Freeman was really happy with the Wednesday practice in particular.
• On sophomore WR Tobias Merriweather: “He did some really good things in the game. Sometimes the stat sheet doesn’t show that.”
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• Freeman: “You will see some personnel [groupings] that you haven’t seen in the past,” both this week and going forward. He was asked about being a mostly 12-personnel team against Navy.
• Paraphrasing Freeman’s comments on Jordan Botelho: Playing with velocity has never been an issue for him, but he’s practicing and playing with maturity that he hasn’t played with in the past.
What the Notre Dame coach said Monday
Freeman on the practice schedule this week: “We have to be smart about what we’re going to do [Monday]. We’re not going to do a whole bunch. We’re going to meet. And we’re going to watch the game. And we’re going to put it to rest. Then we’re going to start moving forward to Tennessee State and go out and have more of a jog-through instead of a practice on Monday.
“And as I looked at Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the work is the work. The scout work’s the work but where I could tweak it in terms of maybe an individual period, taking off a couple of minutes of practice to really, ultimately, everything we do is to make sure Saturday they’re ready to peak and perform at 3:30 p.m. EDT. So that’s just the small changes we’ve made since they came back.”
