Everything Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman said after beating Miami University

Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman notched his first home win of the season when the No. 17 Fighting Irish beat Miami University 28-3 on Saturday. Afterward, Freeman spoke to reporters for 11 minutes. Here is everything he said in his postgame news conference.

Opening statement

“Yeah, proud of the way our guys competed. You know, it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean. 

“But to beat that football team, 28-3, I told them, that’s a really good victory. I think they are going to be a really good team. 

“I told (Miami) Coach (Chuck) Martin after the game, that’s a good football team. I’m really impressed with their offense, their quarterback. So to hold that offense to three points, man, was a huge, huge sign of how the way our defense had played. But battled. 

“Again, we got down 3-0. Didn’t start the way we wanted to. We had too many penalties that we had to clean up; that we’ve got to clean up and see why they occurred, and make sure that we don’t continue to allow that to happen. That’s on coaches, and we’ve got to own it and make sure we drill it, and we fix it, and put our guys in positions to have success.”

On how much the Notre Dame offense needs a dual-threat quarterback because of different O-line starters:

“I think there’s benefits no matter who your quarterback is. To me, that’s like you have to call things around the strengths of your players. And obviously, Riley, one of his strengths are the ability to run the ball, and they showed today that we can run the ball and they had a lot of success. 

“I’m proud of the way those two guys stepped up, Pat (Coogan) and Rocco (Spindler), and really performed well. It felt like they performed well, obviously the rushing yards showed they performed well. 

“We’ll go back and watch it and continue to get those guys to improve but I’m really proud of our offense, being able to run the ball, but also those guys being able to step up and get their job done.”

On what is keeping the Notre Dame special teams from playing a clean game:

“I think the first one was the muffed punt. One of our players, I think were — I kind of saw it when we were watching on the iPad. One of our players was trying to get away and kind of ran right into (Jordan) Faison. 

“We’ve got to be better there. We’ve got to peel off earlier. The block in the back on the reverse was unacceptable, and obviously, we weren’t clear enough as coaches. 

“I’m not going to blame the player. We’ve got to hold them accountable, but we’ve always got to own it as coaches. We can’t do that. We can’t block in the back. 

“And then the field goal. We had a new guy doing short snaps, and after that one snap, we put Rino Monteforte back in, who had been our short snapper, and so again, that’s what happened. Can’t happen. We’ve got to make sure we are continuing to attack those issues in practice, and perform better on that football field.”

On factoring in Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard’s ability to break off a big play into the game plan:

“It definitely factors into it. We have a lot of confidence in him making the right decision in the run game and the pass game. I don’t know, we had, what, 270 yards rushing, which — yeah, 270-yard rushing which is, again, a lot came from him in running the ball. 

“I don’t think we design plays to say, ‘Okay, this one is going to go for 50 (yards). But he has the ability to, if you misfit or if he misses a tackle, to take it all the way.”

On balancing a three-touchdown win despite early mistakes that could’ve changed the outcome:

“Yeah, it’s the same way you really look at every game, except for the only thing that’s different between a win and a loss is the 24 hours from now until you get back together. Our guys are going to celebrate. They won a tough game and did a good job.  We are not going to shy away from that. It’s hard to win.  You get 12 guaranteed opportunities, and you can’t take any win for granted. 

“So I told them to celebrate. But when we get back together, we own it. We evaluate the film. We own it. And we come up with a plan to attack the issues that we’ve had. We come up with a plan to enhance the things that we did well, and then we move forward throughout the week. That process won’t change. It’s just the 24 hours from now until we get back together that changes.”

On what gives him the confidence to stick by Leonard when he’s struggling, and the fans want a change at the quarterback position:

“Yeah, we don’t make decisions based off what the sentiment of the stadium is. So that’s to answer that part of the question. 

“But again, I don’t know how many yards Riley led our offense to through rushing and passing, but there’s always parts to clean up. And we’ve got to continue to look at the mistakes that he made and say, ‘Okay, how do we do a better job of not putting him in a position to make mistakes, and where was the disconnect?’

“But we’ve got a lot of confidence in our quarterback that led us to a great victory today.”

On the game plan against Miami University quarterback Brett Gabbert:

“Yeah, he’s a really good player.  He’s talented. He’s experienced. You’re not going to confuse him. We tried to get pressure up the middle and make him uncomfortable. We tried to give him some different looks, but we still have to do what we do well. 

Our defense did a really good job of competing. We had some drives where they had some yards but stuck the cleats in the ground and didn’t let them into the end zone, which is a huge credit to Coach (Al) Golden and our defense and the players.”

On how the Notre Dame defense regained their composure after a slow start:

“Yeah, I think as you look at how the game started, the muffed punt didn’t hurt. They came out, our defense did a good job. All of a sudden, we muff a punt, and then we’re able to get an interception on the goal line. That’s a heck of a job by our defense. I can’t remember the drive they ended up getting a field goal. 

“We’re greedy. We don’t want to give up any rushing yards.  We’ll look at it and see where they had the ability to run the ball, and we’ll attack it and fix it.”

On Notre Dame punter James Rendell’s performance being the best this season:

“They did a good job. Our job, again, I always say this, as coaches, is to put our players in position to do what they do well on Saturday, and we tried to call some punts that we feel — he felt comfortable with in the stadium. We were able to do some different things in practice, as I talked to you guys about on Monday. 

“But at the end of the day, he went out there and performed. Coach did a good job of getting his head into a place that was confident; and he booted the ball and we’re going to continue to build on that.” 

On guarding Miami man-to-man to slow its offense:

“That’s who we are. We play some zone as change-ups, but as you watch this defense, that’s what we’re built off of. We play a lot of man coverage. And again, our job as coaches is to call the things your guys do well and if we played man well, then let’s call man and have enough change-ups to make sure that every play, they don’t know what we are playing and show some different things pre-snap. We were confident in our DBs being able to execute the defense that we called and they did a good job doing it.” 

On Notre Dame vyper Junior Tuihalamaka’s interception:

“Junior had a huge pick, I know, on the goal line. I know he made another good play. I can’t remember exactly what it was — big tackle for loss. Boubacar (Traore) is playing at a high level. He’s been playing at a high level in the first three games, and he’s continuing to progress. And so we need them both. And proud of the way they performed today.”

On how Leonard dealt with fans booing him and missing open wide receivers:

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him about how he feels about people booing him; that people boo me.  We can’t perform to — like to make sure everybody cheers for us, all right? That’s a part of the game, right? If you don’t do your job, people are going to boo you. 

“But if you let that affect the way you go out and execute the next play, then man, you’re not the right person for this job or to be our quarterback at Notre Dame. I hope he handled it the exact way that I would expect him to is, you hear it, great, what do you need to do to refocus to go out the next play and get your job done.”

On his message to the team ahead of the Louisville game:

“I don’t know if I gave them something that was, ‘Let’s move to Louisville.’ They know who we play. We know who we play next week. They will be ready to go. But right now, let’s just celebrate. Enjoy it.  Enjoy this hard-earned victory because we are going to get back together Monday as a full team and we’re going to go on the attack and we’re going to evaluate. We’re going to find ways to get better and then we’re going to have a great plan to attack our next opponent. That’s exciting. 

“That’s the ultimate challenge of a coach and players is how can you come up with a plan each week to beat your opponent, and that’s what is so fun about this game. 

“So we’ll get back to work as coaches tomorrow, bring the players in Monday and look forward to attacking our next opponent.”