Quick hitters: What Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman said about coaching points for Sam Hartman

Marcus Freeman addressed the media Monday for the first time in nine days. In his weekly Monday news conference, Notre Dame’s second-year head football coach spoke to reporters for about 30 minutes.

Freeman talked about Sam Hartman, defending Wake Forest’s offense, first-year players who could see an increased role and the NCAA potentially banning photoshoots on recruiting visits. Here are four quick hitters from today’s presser. 

On the coaching points for Sam Hartman:

“I think it’s an accumulation of things. The thing you love about Sam (Hartman) is that he takes ownership of everything, right? He’s not passing blame. As the head coach, you look, watch and evaluate. It’s an accumulation of we got to protect better, right? We have to protect Sam Hartman better. We have to be precise and exact route details that we have. Sam’s got to make better decisions, as he’ll be the first to tell you, but it’s not just one thing. 

“Obviously, that’s a talented defense we went against, and they did a good job. But we expect to be better, and we expect to perform better running and passing the ball. That’s what we’ve been working at.”

On utilizing Hartman for a scouting report on his former team in Wake Forest: 

“We spent a little bit of time with him last week trying to look at different ways to coach the scout team and reciprocate a look that we think we’ll see from Wake Forest in terms of their offense. Sam is truly just all in on making sure that we have success on the offensive side of the ball. So, I have to be smart. 

“Our defensive coach has to be smart in terms of what we ask and how much time we ask from Sam saying, ‘Hey, what do you see here? What do you think? What are they doing here? Our coaches do a great job evaluating offenses and really game-planning. I think they’ll have a great plan. 

“Obviously, you have a guy that’s been in the system in the building that we can ask questions. It’s no different in Javontae Jean-Baptiste when he was here when we played Ohio State. Anything you see, anything personnel-wise. But at the end of the day, Sam’s got to be ready for their defense and make sure that our offense is playing at a high level. We have to make sure we’re ready to go.”

On Notre Dame defending Wake Forest’s offense:

“It obviously starts with the slow mesh. It’s how do you defend it? (Line)backers are used to attacking. When you get this slow mesh, you get a run action, but you can’t. They’re gonna read you, and the minute you just attack downhill, there are open areas behind you. So, you almost have to untrain your backers to be so aggressive downhill. 

“Then, they’re really good at — they have a system that has answers, right? So if you do this, they do this. If you do this, they do that. So, it’s not the triple option, but it’s similar in terms of the system that they run. They have answers for what you do defensively. 

“Again, it’s a great challenge for our defense. We have to make sure we change up the looks that we give them defensively. But at the same point, I don’t want to play on our heels, right? I want to be aggressive in what we do and that’s what we’ve done all year.”

On identifying younger guys that Notre Dame could get more involved:

“As you look offensively, especially with those wideouts, we want to find, ‘How do we continue to develop those three freshmen, right?’ Get the ball in their hands, right? Not just have them out there. But we have to find ways. There is a reason why they’re out there playing — Jordan (Faison), JG (Jaden Greathouse) and Rico (Flores).  We have to find ways to put them in positions or ask them to do things so that we can get the ball in their hands and let them have some success. 

“The same thing with the O-line. I think as you move forward, now you have Billy (Schrauth) in there. Ashton Craig played some last week. As I said earlier, ‘Man, was it really good to see him out there.’

“But defensively, no, I don’t think anybody defensively that we’ve talked about in that situation. But I really want to see those wideouts continue to excel, continue to improve these next two weeks.”

On the NCAA’s decision to potentially ban photoshoots during recruiting visits:

“Listen, we always want to make sure that we maximize the experience for young people when they visit our campus. For a lot of those guys, they love photo shoots, right? And they love to do the photo and video shoots. We want them to have the greatest experience when they come to our campus. 

“But we also understand the labor and the demands on your program and those people that work for you that it takes to continue to do photo shoots over and over and over and over. There is no easy answer, right? There are people above me that make those decisions on what you’re allowed to do on recruiting visits. 

“To second that, I reiterated to our staff that our only obligation is to talk about Notre Dame football. It’s not to question what any other football program is doing. And it’s not to say what another program should or shouldn’t do. It’s about what Notre Dame football does. 

“Again, we want to really maximize the experience young people have when they come to Notre Dame within the rules that are set, right? But in no way are we going to critique another program and what they decide to do.”