Why Marcus Freeman has elevated expectations for Notre Dame in 2023

Marcus Freeman is 37. He’s a second-year head coach. He’s the first to tell anyone he doesn’t have every single detail of his job figured out yet. But even he knows how important the addition of Wake Forest quarterback transfer Sam Hartman to the Notre Dame roster was for the Fighting Irish.

Heck, any one of the six children Freeman has with his wife, Joanna, could probably say with authority what Hartman means to their father’s football team.

It’s not a secret. It’s a major reason why Freeman has high hopes for Notre Dame in 2023.

“You’re going into this season with a guy who has proven to play quarterback at a high level,” Freeman said on The Pivot. “Last year we had two guys who are great kids, but neither of them had proven to play quarterback at a high level for the consistency of a season. Now you have a guy who has some experience.”

Unintentionally, Hartman’s arrival forced the departures of Drew Pyne to Arizona State and Tyler Buchner to Alabama. Those two have combined to started just over 28 percent of the total number of games (45) Hartman has started in his college career.

Hartman is proven. Buchner and Pyne are not. That’s reality.

There is added pressure that comes with putting a player like Hartman on the field. Another 9-4 season for Notre Dame would be immensely disappointing considering the quarterback is a guy who routinely checks into the top 10 Heisman Trophy candidate lists that circulate through the college football media landscape during the dog days of summer.

Amidst the stress exists an element of comfort in putting the ball in the hands of a sixth-year graduate student. The same feeling is found in retaining a good chunk of assistant coaches from one year to the next. Freeman lost offensive coordinator Tommy Rees to Alabama, special teams coordinator Brian Mason to the Indianapolis Colts and offensive line coach Harry Hiestand to retirement, but he retained the rest off his on-field staff.

The defensive coordinator is still Al Golden. The offensive coordinator is Gerad Parker, an internal hire who was Rees’ right-hand man on the headset last season. The wide receivers coach, running backs coach, defensive line coach, safeties coach and cornerbacks coach are all the same guys from 2022.

Continuity and chemistry is not lost on Freeman.

“There is more camaraderie amongst the coaching staff,” he said on The Pivot. “We know what to expect. I’ve learned so much in a year. I don’t want to say I’m not going to continue to learn; we’re going to continue to learn. But to see where I was last year at this time to now, I have some experience and expectations for what it takes to have success.”

Sam Hartman was not Sam Hartman after his freshman season, for instance. He started nine games before he was injured and knocked out of the rest of the season and everyone saw his potential, but by many metrics (completion percentage, yards per attempt, passing efficiency rating) he had the worst year of his career. Expected, right? Few players are the best they’ll ever be in year one. The same can be said for coaches — for Freeman.

It remains to be seen just how successful Freeman can be overseeing the immense operation that is Notre Dame football. If he never pans out, it won’t be for a lack of trying. He’s primed for incremental progression akin to that of Hartman bettering his passing efficiency rating in all five of his seasons at Wake Forest. He started at 125.2 as a freshman and finished at 159.4 as a fifth-year slinger. That was 15th nationally just ahead of TCU standout and Davey O’Brien Award winner Max Duggan.

Maybe 9-4 was to Freeman what 125.2 was to Hartman.

“We have to focus on improvement every day,” he said on The Pivot. “I don’t want to give you coach talk. ‘Focus on improvement every day.’ But that’s the reality of it. If you continue to talk about week one and week two and week three and when we play Ohio State, you’re wasting the valuable time that you have now. That’s the expectation — to get everything we can out of today.”