Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame Have A Lot To Get Right After Louisville Loss

There’s a mountain of a mess to work through for Notre Dame this week. The Fighting Irish opened Marcus Freeman’s second season as head coach with four straight wins in convincing fashion, but they have now lost two of their last three games after Saturday night’s turnover marred 33-20 loss to Louisville.

"Just disappointed in the performance,” Freeman said just minutes after the disheartening loss. "We’ve got to take ownership as a coaching staff and as the head coach first. Our guys weren’t prepared for whatever reason. We’ve got to take a deep dive and figure out what it was. You can point your finger at any person, any specific unit, but the reality is we better point the finger at ourselves and figure out what were the issues that led to the lack of execution.”

The most glaringly ugly stat of the night was turnovers. The Irish entered the night having committed just two turnovers through their first six game, but they gave the ball away five times to the Cardinals. There were two fumbles and Sam Hartman threw his first three interceptions of the season.

"We obviously know we’ve got to take care of the football,” Freeman remarked. "You can’t turn the ball over five times and expect to win. But everybody’s going to point the finger at Sam. You’d better point the finger at us, at me, we’ve got to protect him. We’ve got to do a better job of protecting our quarterback and put him in situations to have a higher percentage for success.”

The Louisville defense harassed and hammered Hartman all night. Hartman was sacked just six times in the first six games, including four against NC State. Louisville dropped him five times while grinding Notre Dame’s running game to a halt.

"Nobody’s affected our quarterback quite like Louisville did,” Freeman admitted. "You have to give them credit. They were stacking the box and saying, hey we’re going to refuse to let you run the ball and that means we’ve got to make some plays in the passing game. We didn’t, and we’ve got to make sure that we cannot let this happen again.”

The Irish ran the ball for a season-worst 44 yards on 28 carries (1.6 per carry). They also converted just three times in 13 third down attempts.

It doesn’t get easier from here. Notre Dame will play its fourth consecutive game against a ranked team when Southern Cal visits next Saturday. It will also be the first time in program history the Irish have played four consecutive night games.

"We’ve got to get things figured out and we’ve got to turn it around, because we’ve got USC coming in next weekend,” said Freeman. "So, we don’t have a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves. We’d better get back to work and start preparing for this next upcoming game.”

The game against the Trojans will be the eighth game in as many weeks to open the season. No other team in the country will have faced such a stretch. The Irish then get their first bye week before they close the month on Oct. 28 with a home game against Pittsburgh.

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