Marcus Freeman And Notre Dame Must Go Back To The Drawing Board
It's hard to imagine the start of the 2022 season going any worse for Notre Dame and first-year head coach Marcus Freeman. The Irish lost its top commit weeks before the season started, and the on-field product has been incredibly disappointing.
Yesterday's 26-21 loss to Marshall was officially rock bottom, as Freeman and the Irish suffered the program's first loss to an unranked team since 2016. It is the program's first 0-2 start since 2011, when former head coach Brian Kelly lost to South Florida and Michigan to start that season.
Freeman inherited a flawed team, but a team that was still able to win games last season. Notre Dame played awful against a MAC opponent in game two, falling behind late in the fourth quarter, but that team rallied and was able to win. It blew a big lead against Florida State, and fell behind Wisconsin the fourth quarter, but it managed to find ways to win.
The current team doesn't know how to win. Notre Dame led Marshall in the fourth quarter and had the ball with a chance to go up by 10 points, but it failed to capitalize. Notre Dame led Oklahoma State for over half the game, and didn't lose its lead until there were less than three lefts left in the third quarter. They led Ohio State until there were 17 seconds left in the third quarter.
The plan Freeman implemented to fix things and get Notre Dame moving in a better direction has resulted in the program taking a step back in terms of the record.
There are aspects of what Freeman has implemented that must remain, and ultimately will become building blocks of success. The character he shows, and demands from his staff, are things to build upon. Demanding that his staff be workers on the recruiting trail is a must.
There are other aspects, however, that need to be addressed and fixed immediately, and after starting 0-2 and losing to Marshall everything needs to be on the table. Freeman appears to know that simply doing what he's already doing isn't an option.
"It starts with me as a head coach and looking at myself and saying ‘What do I have to do to help this football team’ and really look at everything we’re doing, because the performance isn’t where we need it to be.”
If Freeman follows through on what he said postgame it will have to result in changes, and they'll have to happen quickly with 2-0 California coming to town in six days, and before the Irish head to Chapel Hill a week later to take on a North Carolina team that is 3-0 and averaging 51.3 points per game.
Much has been made of the way the team prepares, with things being ramped up. Is it too much? Is more needed? That must be answered and addressed.
Whatever the staff has been doing on offense needs to change. Not get better, it needs to change. There are areas that must change, from a preparation and coaching standpoint, from a scheme standpoint and from a personnel standpoint. Notre Dame doesn't seem to have any kind of flow on offense, at all, and that must be figured out and addressed.
The defense has been much better than the offense, but it hasn't been able to stop the run and when it had chances to put games away in the fourth quarter the unit failed to do so. There were blown assignments against Marshall that proved costly, and the staff needs to figure out why those happened.
Leadership is a problem for Notre Dame right now, and it starts at the top from a coaching standpoint and is an issue from a player standpoint. That must be addressed, and fixed.
Notre Dame is broken right now, and it would appear the rot that existed prior to Freeman being elevated was much more problematic than I expected. Freeman's ability to fix it is going to take longer than I expected, but the reality is Notre Dame can't keep losing. It needs to get things turned around immediately, start winning on the field, keep the current recruiting class together and get everyone within the program going in the same direction.
Everything is on the table, and Freeman needs to combine the need to make a quick fix with the need to make sure that the changes are sound, and will be better for the future.
It's not just a "Well, we just have to play harder and coach better." Changes are needed, and they are needed now.
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