Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame Are Already At A Crossroads
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Success as a football coach goes well beyond just winning on the gridiron, and in less than a year Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman has thrived in many of the areas that go into success as a head coach, especially in South Bend.
The Fighting Irish are recruiting at an elite level. Freeman’s outreach to past Notre Dame players was something the program desperately needed, and tapping into the program’s rich tradition was a wise move. How Freeman goes about his business and how he engages with fans and the community is a breath of fresh air.
We've heard the expression Freeman has made the program "cool again" is a constantly repeated phrase.
At the end of the day, however, a football coach at the University of Notre Dame will be evaluated by his ability to thrive in the off-the-field areas while also putting a championship caliber product on the field. If a coach thrives at all the areas except winning he won't be considered a success.
After Notre Dame’s devastating loss to Stanford - a team that had lost 11 straight games against FBS opponents - the on-field product has drowned out everything else, and rightly so. Notre Dame’s 2022 football team has been wildly erratic, at times looking like the top program it was expected to be and other times looking like a train wreck that is capable of losing to every team on the schedule.
The ups have been impressive.
Notre Dame went toe-to-toe with No. 2 Ohio State on the road, leading the Buckeyes for over 33 minutes in that game before falling 21-10. The Fighting Irish went on the road and absolutely dominated North Carolina, a program that is now 6-1 and ranked No. 22 in the national rankings. Notre Dame also went out to Las Vegas and outplayed BYU (4-3) to earn its third victory in a row.
That’s the good, and it shows that this Notre Dame team is capable of being quite good.
Then there’s the bad, and that is the team that was thoroughly outplayed by Marshall, who has since lost to Bowling Green, Troy and Louisiana-Lafayette. Marshall’s only win since it defeated Notre Dame was over Gardner-Webb, a FCS squad that is currently 2-5.
Losing to Stanford this past weekend was nothing short of embarrassing. There is no way around it, Stanford just isn’t very good. It has not only lost 11 straight games against FBS opponents, but only three of those defeats were within single digits. Stanford had lost four straight games this season, but came into Notre Dame Stadium a confident team that took the fight to Notre Dame.
Freeman’s squad briefly fought back to take a 14-13 lead early in the fourth quarter, but once again a poor offense, the inability to make third down stops on defense, and overall poor fundamentals did the Irish in.
It has been a far too common theme in 2022.
The first-year head coach is just six games into his tenure, but after Saturday's loss to Stanford he enters a crossroads. How Notre Dame finishes the 2022 season will have a tremendous impact on his ability to build the Irish into a championship program.
It's incredibly early to make that kind of statement, but that's where Notre Dame is. Much of the excitement about Freeman's tenure was sapped away by the embarrassing losses to Marshall and Stanford. Notre Dame entered the season as the No. 5 team in the country, but after week seven the Irish failed to receive a single vote in the Top 25 rankings. It has been an incredibly fast fall from grace.
A coach's career won't necessarily be determined by what happens in his first season, but there is always the risk that things can go bad enough to create the kind of negativity, culture and lack of momentum that can make it very hard to recover from.
Unlike when Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney took over struggling Alabama and Clemson programs back in 2007 and 2008, respectively, Freeman inherited a program that had won 10 regular season games in four straight seasons.
More was expected of this team, no matter how inexperienced the head coach is at this point.
Freeman's teams have looked disjointed, have shown a lack of leadership, have failed to make clutch plays in key moments, and there has been a disturbing drop in play and production from the team's top players.
Notre Dame's offense has been especially problematic. Freeman faces an incredibly challenging task very early in his career, and how he responds to this will not only determine how the 2022 season will play out, but will also go a very long way towards determining the programs momentum heading into the offseason, and into the 2023 campaign.
How Freeman responds to the current issues plaguing the program will go a very long way towards establishing himself as the kind of leader that can get things turned around. I believe he is more than capable based on what he did as a defensive coordinator at both Cincinnati and Notre Dame, but now it's time for him to prove it.
Freeman must first show the ability to identify the team's problems. His statements following the loss to Stanford were problematic. Freeman talked about offensive coordinator Tommy Rees doing an "excellent job" this season. If Freeman actually believes that it is a huge red flag. If he's just protecting his embattled coordinator I understand that and respect it, but going that strong on his defense hurts his own credibility.
The Irish head coach kept mentioning his team's failure to execute, a word he used in some form 27 different times in his post-Stanford press conference. Execution and finishing have been common themes throughout the season, with Notre Dame leading in the fourth quarter in all but one of its game this season, and it didn't lose its lead against Ohio State until there was just 17 seconds left in the third quarter.
Notre Dame is now halfway through the season and those same issues are so bad that they resulted in a loss to a really bad Stanford team and a very mediocre Marshall squad is concerning. It seemed Notre Dame had started to turn the corner in wins over North Carolina and BYU, but the Irish took a huge step back against Stanford.
Notre Dame looked woefully unprepared for Stanford.
So where does Notre Dame go from here? Can Freeman quickly find answers to what plagues his team? Will the loss to Stanford be something that causes the team to be torn apart, resulting in the Irish collapsing down the stretch? Will Notre Dame rebound, become the team it was supposed to be and go on a roll? Or will it continue to be the wildly erratic team that could do something crazy like beating Clemson on November 5th, only to lose to Navy or Boston College, a pair of 2-4 teams?
The reality is Notre Dame has opponents left on its schedule that beating would go a very long way towards restoring some of the shine on Freeman and his program that has been lost over the last month. Notre Dame has shown it is capable of playing with and even beating anyone left on the schedule. It has also shown it is capable of losing to every team left on the schedule.
So which will it be? The answer to that will tell us a lot about Freeman's ability to lead a program. He has tried to allow his coaches to have a lot more authority than you often see from a head coach, but that needs to change now. Freeman is the one who's neck is on the line, and it's his program. He'll need to quickly figure out whatever preparation, focus and program changes that need to be made to get his team playing to its full potential.
Over the next few days I'll address areas that I believe are key to Freeman and Notre Dame getting their season turned around. But at least now the stakes have been established.
If Freeman identifies, addresses and fixes what is broken the Irish will finish on a very strong note and any questions about his ability to build a winner will be answered.
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