Everything Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said in final pre-Sugar Bowl press conference

On Tuesday, Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman addressed the media for the final time before the Fighting Irish face Georgia in the Sugar Bowl in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal round. Here is everything Freeman said.

Opening statement

“To reiterate what (Georgia) Coach (Kirby) Smart said, it is an honor and a privilege to be a
part of this prestigious game. I want to thank the Sugar Bowl Committee and the city of New Orleans
for being such great hosts in this short stay that we have.

“We’re finishing up our preparation, and we’re going to have to use every minute we can to be
prepared for this opportunity tomorrow night. We’re looking forward to it. What a great challenge it’s
going to be versus a great opponent that has earned the right to be in this game.

“And so we’ll get back to work after this, and we’ll be ready to roll tomorrow night.”

On Notre Dame football’s two-running back combination of Jeremiyah Love and Jadarain Price and their health going into the Sugar Bowl

“Yeah, both of them are healthy. You know, J-Love was a little banged up last week after the USC game, but he’s going to be as healthy as he can be for this opportunity tomorrow.

“It’s something we’ve done in my three years as a head coach, with Coach [Deland] McCullough being
our running backs coach, is that we pride ourselves on being able to rotate running backs and sell it in
a way in recruiting and to your current players of we’re going to get you enough film to get you
prepared for the next level, but we’re also going to make sure you’re healthy. We don’t want you to use
every rep you have in your body in college.

“And so, they buy into that. They’ve done a great job within the roles that have been determined for
them. Aneyas Williams is another guy that’s really stepped up as a freshman this year.
It’s very similar to what you see Georgia does. They have multiple running backs that can hurt you in
different ways.

“And I think as you continue to progress in college football, that’s what you’re going to
have to see because you can’t — the days of playing just one running back, I don’t think that’s going to
really happen in too many places for multiple reasons.”

On whether it’s advantageous to have a first-round College Football Playoff bye or to play a game

“For us, we knew when it was determined this was the 12-team playoff what our journey would be like and our postseason opportunities would be.

“So, I think you have to embrace your current circumstance. If I’m going to sit up here and say I
wish I had somebody else’s, you’re making an excuses for the circumstance you have. So, we embrace it.

“Again, we embraced Week 13, which was the conference championship week,
as our bye week. We had to have that mindset. We’re going to use this as our bye week. The
conference champions are going to use the first round as their bye week.

“So that’s the mindset we’ve had. It was an amazing experience to host a home playoff game
versus Indiana in the first round. I think that is — I mean, that was a great experience for college
football and our fans and our players. And now you get a chance to play in a great opportunity that we
have versus Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

“So, we’ve embraced it, and we look at it — hey, you have to embrace it as a challenge for your
program, and the minute you don’t, I think you open up doors for excuses, and that’s not something
we’re going to do.”

On Notre Dame defensive backs coach Mike Mickens, Freeman’s head coach of the week program during the season, why it’s important to empower coaches in that regard and where it originates from

“It originated from when I was in college and Coach (Jim) Tressel did something similar where each week, we called it in an opponent expert. An assistant coach was supposed to be the expert of your upcoming opponent. I thought it was a great way as a player to hear somebody else’s voice, to hear some of your assistant coaches in front of the entire team.

“As a coach, it’s a great way for me to empower our coaches and give them the opportunity to be in front of the whole team, which not everybody gets the chance to do. It’s been great. They embrace it. They really look forward to it, and I think our players enjoy it.

“As far as Mike Mickens, obviously, we have a relationship that goes way back, even to high school.
And the growth I’ve seen Coach Mickens make from Cincinnati to Notre Dame to where he’s at now
has been tremendous.

“He’s always been a great evaluator. I’ve said that from our time at Cincinnati when he was the one that stood on the table for (Ahmad) “Sauce” Gardner and some other guys. And the same thing at Notre Dame when he stands on the table for Benjamin Morrison and Leonard Moore and some of the guys we have.

“He’s a great evaluator, but he’s a great teacher. He develops some of the talent that he has in the room. He’s ready to be a defensive coordinator when he gets the right opportunity, but I’m not super excited to see him leaving our defensive coaching staff at any point soon.”

On Notre Dame football’s team motto to ‘Choose Hard’ and how they have navigated the trials and tribulations to get to the College Football Playoff quarterfinal round

“I mean, ‘choosing hard’ is a motto that we have in our program about the guys that choose to come to Notre Dame and play football there, and we don’t try to hide it. We want them to embrace it, but also it’s a motto for life. Every day you wake up, you’ve got to choose hard. It’s a reminder for myself as an individual, and it’s a reminder for everybody in our program.

“There’s valuable lessons. Obviously, I’ve said it over and over — that the NIU (Northern Illinois
University) game has taught us and taught me, but there’s valuable lessons every week. And what
we’ve got to understand as a program is that you can’t wait until you lose to have the urgency to fix the
issues that you have and to improve with the urgency that you must improve with. And that’s, to me,
something that we continue to reiterate.

“Every week, we’re chasing elevation. Like, how do we get better this week as we prepare for an opponent like Georgia? We still have to get better. Georgia is the opponent. Our challenge during the week is to still get better as a football program, and it’s a never-satisfied mindset.

“So in order to get better and have that mindset, you’ve got to choose hard. And that’s something
that you’ll hear me say, you’ll hear our players say, but what you say doesn’t matter as much as what
you do.”

On former Georgia running back Herschel Walker and the standard the Bulldogs have set in college football

“Yeah, I was asked about that game in the press conference, and I wasn’t aware
of it at that time. Obviously, I was made aware that we lost to Georgia, and Herschel Walker was the
running back.

“Listen, I grew up, you hold Herschel Walker on a pedestal that not many people are on. And I’m
thankful that we don’t have to play Herschel Walker tomorrow, but we’ve got some other challenging
running backs that we’ve got to try to defend.

“And so, yeah, I have a lot of respect, obviously, for the past, the history, what this program has been
about, in terms of the University of Georgia for many years and the history of college football that
Georgia has a piece in. And so, again, looking forward to it.”

On what he remembers from playing LSU in the national championship in New Orleans as a player at Ohio State and Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua saying he and Freeman have an ‘obsession’ with winning a national championship

“Number one, what I remember most about that LSU game is it was the second year in a row that we
lost the national championship, and that sticks with you a lot longer than however many tackles you
made or the individual glory that people talk about. It’s that we didn’t achieve the team glory that we
aspired to have.

“I remember I saw (former LSU fullback) Jacob Hester yesterday. He scored a couple touchdowns on us, and I remember LSU had a heck of a defense, heck of a D-line.

“I love the opportunity to come down here and be a part of the city of New Orleans. I think it’s a great
city. We were back here in 2010 when I was a GA at Ohio State, and we played Arkansas. We
were able to win that game. This is an amazing bowl game, a great city, and they do it right. It’s
great to be a part of this experience.

“Somebody said that to me last week. Yeah, everybody has an obsession with winning the national
championship, but my obsession is to get this program to reach our full potential, and if we reach our
full potential; if the result of that is earning the national championship, great.

“But we don’t walk into the office every day and say “Let’s win a national championship.” We walk in the
office and say, “What do we got to do today to elevate and get better and reach our full potential?”
Because at the end of the day, that’s all we control. We control how close this program can get to
reaching its full potential, and we’ll see what the result of reaching our full potential truly is.”