Quick Hitters: Marcus Freeman explains Audric Estimé’s extended absence during Navy game

Notre Dame dominated Navy in Dublin, Ireland, dancing to a 42-3 victory in Saturday’s Week 0 Aer Lingus College Football Classic. And Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman sang his team’s praises afterward.

Here are four key things Freeman told reporters after securing his first season-opening victory in his head coaching career.

On Notre Dame running back Audric Estimé’s departure after the fumble and other running backs stepping up:

“Yeah, we had planned to get out all the running backs in the game. And I don’t know if Coach (Deland McCullough) pulled him out just because he fumbled. It was a pretty long run that he had. But we wanted to rotate all those guys. You’ve got to be unselfish, man, right?

“There’s one ball. And there’s a lot of talented individuals. And this is just Week 0. That’s what you have to be able to do is: have a team that is full of unselfishness. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. But I think coach McCullough has done a great job with that room in terms of making sure they understand before the game.

“The worst thing, to me, you can do to a kid is tell them that, ‘You’re going to play,’ and you don’t play. Right? The ability to say, ‘All five of you are going to play,’ and they all played, it’s really a great job by Coach McCullough. But we’re going to have to be unselfish, man. And Audric (Estimé) is a great example of that.”

On the meaning behind Sam Hartman’s Notre Dame debut:

“Yeah, I think it’s a reflection of, he told me today this was, I think, the 48th or 47th game he’s played in, right? He’s started 42 games. This moment wasn’t too big. And it’s about him going out there and just executing. And what I really, really thought he did a great job of is putting our offense in a really good position to play.

“There were a couple of calls that we had that, depending on what the defense was showing, we were going to check to a run or pass or a certain protection. And just to hear the communication of our coaches, to making sure that Sam is putting our offense in just really a great situation to succeed was really good.

“I thought just the overall operation of our offense, the ability to run the ball helps Sam a lot, too, right? We talked about this in our team meeting, the greatest friend for a quarterback is the ability to run the ball. And that was something that our offensive line and our running game did a great job doing today.”

On Hartman and Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker’s connection working together:

“As I said, the overall operation from Coach (Gerad) Parker, to the signallers, to Sam, getting in the right protections, getting to the right checks, executing — that’s the whole operation. And it was really good. I mean … usually the first game, first-time offensive coordinator, first-time quarterback, like, there are some operations in Week 0 that you’ll see, there’s some pre-snapping, it didn’t happen.

“We didn’t have to call timeout. I think we had one in the second half late. But I mean, that’s the little things that we really worried about in this first game. How many operational mistakes are we going to have, from the communication to the actual problems? And it was really good that we didn’t have any.”

On Notre Dame offensive guards Rocco Spindler and Pat Coogan making their first starts: 

“Yeah, I was just talking to Jack Swarbrick about that. I guess we found out those two guards can play, right? We knew those guys didn’t have game experience. But both Pat (Coogan) and Rocco (Spindler) stepped up and did a really good job vs., again, Navy’s defense is almost as exotic as their offense.

“You don’t see some of the things they do. And so for them to execute and run the ball, and to play physical, man, credit to, obviously, Coach (Joe) Rudolph, and just credit to those guys, man, for what they were able to do in our first game.”