Notre Dame Notebook: Marcus Freeman Talks Road Games, Mike Mickens, Tight Ends

Notre Dame is back on the road again this week when the Fighting Irish visit Clemson. It will be the first time the Irish have played at Clemson since 2015 and it will also be the first road game for this year’s team since the Oct. 7 loss at Louisville.

The Irish are not quite Jekyll and Hyde in their home/road splits this season, but there is at least some disparity in how they have played heading into a game against what will be the best defense they will see the rest of the season.

Notre Dame is 4-1 and averaging 43.4 points in its five home games this season. The Irish are 2-1 with a scoring average of 28.6 points in its three true road games (they scored 42 points in their neutral site game against Navy that seems like it was played three years ago at this point).

The Irish defense has given up a total of 54 points in those five home games (10.8) and 71 in the three road games (23.6). The defense has also played a much bigger factor in the team’s overall success in the last two games against USC and Pittsburgh.

Ten of the 18 turnovers the Irish have forced all season came in those two games. Two of them were returned for touchdowns and three others set up short field touchdowns for the Irish in the USC win. Meanwhile, five of the nine turnovers the Irish have committed all season came in the 33-20 loss to Louisville.

"I look at everything in its own identity,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said when asked about going on the road again for the first time in a month. "The one thing you learned from a road game this season was at Duke with the many pre-snap penalties that we had. That was something that we had to address, right and how we want to use cadence when you have crowd noise.

"Louisville, you know five turnovers for different reasons,” Freeman continued. "The short yardage situations that we didn’t have success on. Those are, to me, the situation that you go, 'How do we make sure this doesn’t happen,’ and as the head coach, I look at how we practice. I look at what we’re doing and all I want to do is make sure we give our guys a chance to play fast. There’s many teaching opportunities in that Louisville game but there’s been obviously in the past two weeks still teaching opportunities to get better.”

Moving On Without Mitchell Evans

Freeman announced on Monday that tight end Mitchell Evans will miss the rest of the season after tearing an ACL in Saturday’s win over Pittsburgh. Evans currently leads the Irish offense with 29 receptions for 472 yards. His 134-yard performance against Duke is the top receiving day for any Irish player this season.

With Evans out, Notre Dame will look to Holden Staes, who had the only other 100-plus yard receiving game earlier this season against NC State, Cooper Flanagan and Eli Raridon, who is rounding back into form after tearing an ACL of his own last year.

"He’ll be asked to do more,” Freeman said of Raridon. "Along with Holden Staes and Cooper Flanagan and those guys. You don’t make up for the production that Mitch gave our offense with one guy. I think every person in that tight end room will be asked to do more and I’m confident they’ll be able to.”

Raridon has played in the last three games against Louisville, USC and Pitt since his return from injury. He is yet to have a reception in his brief career after playing in five games prior to last year’s injury. Flanagan had the first catch of his career, a 19-yard touchdown, in the fourth quarter against Pitt last Saturday.

"I think one was the ability to grasp what we’re asking him to do on offense, but two, he presents a skillset that’s a little bit different in terms of the power that he’s able to block with,” Freeman said of Flanagan. "He blocks with a physicality that not everybody in the room has. But he’s also developing in the pass game. He’s doing some things in practice in the pass game that is really impressive. So, that kind of was the number one reason we said ok he has a different skillset than some of the other guys in that room. But too is the ability to continue to get better as we’re going throughout the season.”

Mike Mickens Is Ready To Lead

Mike Mickens is in his fourth season as Notre Dame’s cornerbacks coach. He spent the previous two years in that position at Cincinnati before coming to Notre Dame a year before Freeman did the same when he became the Irish defensive coordinator in 2021.

Mickens has proven himself to be both a top-notch recruiter and developer of talent in his time at both schools. He recruited 2022 No. 4 overall NFL Draft pick Sauce Gardner to Cincinnati and has recruited the likes of Benjamin Morrison, Jaden Mickey and Christian Gray to Notre Dame.

Freeman gave the 36-year-old the title of “Defensive Passing Game Coordinator” over the offseason and Micken’s stock is on the rise, to the point that he could soon become a hot commodity.

"I absolutely think Mike Mickens is ready to be a defensive coordinator and so we gave him the passing game coordinator during the offseason,” Freeman began. "He is a tremendous football coach, schematically and in the fundamentals of playing the cornerback position. One of the greatest things he does is the way he evaluates. I’ve said this story before, but at Cincinnati I wasn’t standing on the table for Sauce Gardner when we started recruiting him. Mickens did. Mickens said, 'This is the guy that we need here’ and we knew right away when he got to campus, man that he was special. The same thing goes for the guys in his room now. He’s a great evaluator and then he’s a great developer of the cornerback position. But as far as the schematics, he has a great - a brilliant mind. They’re all in that defensive room collaborative on the game plan but I firmly believe Mike Mickens is ready to be a defensive coordinator.”

Fifth And Sixth Year Decisions

Freeman indicated on Monday that he hopes senior wide receiver Chris Tyree will return next year for his fifth year of eligibility. Tyree was a freshman during the 2020 Covid season, which makes him eligible to use the fifth-year option granted by the NCAA. There are several others on the current roster who have pending fifth and sixth year eligibility decisions to make.

"You’re always aware of it,” Freeman said when asked if any of those discussions have begun. "You’re aware of it and they know that they have decisions to make to be fair to themselves obviously if they plan on moving forward or to come back and to be fair to us in terms of how we replace that roster spot. So, I’m always aware of it. We don’t have daily conversations about it because I want them to focus on performing. You know, getting the performance you want on Saturday. But as you go into the second bye week, you’re going to probably have more conversations and then the end of the season.”

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