Marcus Freeman Searching For Answers To Notre Dame Offensive Letdown
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NOTRE DAME, IND. - There are plenty of questions to be asked after Notre Dame’s Saturday night loss. The answers are still hard to come by two days after that devastating defeat, but first-year Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman did his best to find them at his Monday afternoon press conference.
Freeman spent the late Saturday night/early Sunday morning hours after the prime-time defeat pouring over game film to search for his own clues. He had plenty of questions himself, some for his coaches, some for his players, but none were there as he studied the studied the evidence.
When he talked to his coaching staff on Sunday, he shared some of his initial thoughts on how the Irish can go about eliminating the mistakes and poor execution that led to the 16-14 loss.
"There’s certain things in football that there’s only one answer,” Freeman said. "So, we have to make sure in those situations that our guys are doing the one option that they have. We have to eliminate the things that there are multiple options.”
Simplify.
But simplification is sometimes easier said than done. Notre Dame had to turn to backup quarterback Drew Pyne, a former 3-star recruit, after Tyler Buchner was lost for the season to a shoulder injury at the end of another head-scratching loss to Marshall in week two of Freeman’s first season.
Pyne was riding high after back-to-back starts against North Carolina and BYU that saw him throw six touchdown passes while completing 74% of his passes. That Drew Pyne – the confident Drew Pyne – was not apparent Saturday night.
His confidence seemed to escape him as he completed just 48% of his 27 pass attempts, his worst percentage in any of his outings the last two seasons. Freeman and his staff now have to go about the process of tapping into Pyne’s confidence again.
"Sometimes I take his confidence for granted,” Freeman said. "Anybody in that position, when you’re not having early success, I’m sure your confidence can be shaken. He doesn’t show it too often, but I know his confidence was shaken a little bit. So, in turn what do we have to do as coaches? We have to put him in position to have confidence. Get him some easy throws, be able to run the ball effectively, so now his confidence can take back over. That’s what we’ve got to help Drew Pyne on.”
Those are all the things Tommy Rees’ game plan provided for Pyne, but things changed Saturday night. There were times the layups were there, but Pyne didn’t hit them, but just as big an issue was Notre Dame’s lack of a running game to help prop up Pyne and give him a better chance to succeed.
"If you’re able to run the ball with success, your offense is moving and you’re able to really, I think, build that confidence,” Freeman explained.
Freeman used the second half of Notre Dame’s win over California and the North Carolina game examples of how Notre Dame’s running game allowed Pyne to get in a groove and build confidence.
Somehow, the Irish managed to run for 4.4 yards per carry. A solid number, but far from spectacular in the college game. But take away Audric Estime’s 22-yard run and Logan Diggs' 26-yarder, both of which came in the second half, and Notre Dame ran for just 3.1 per carry on the other 32 runs in the game.
"You can have a plan to run the ball (but) if they stack the box, and you’re not able to run the ball you’ve got to spread it out and throw it,” Freeman explained. "They did a good job of trying to force us to throw the ball. We have to try to find ways to create those easy throws, easy completions, run the ball until the confidence is built where Drew’s Drew and he can make those difficult passes.”
The Irish may have had a plan to run the ball against a woeful Stanford run defense that was allowing 207 yards a game entering Saturday, but it never materialized early. Notre Dame managed just 47 yards on 16 carries for a lowly 2.9 yards per attempt. Things clicked more in the second half, when Notre Dame finally cracked the scoreboard with touchdowns on consecutive possessions, but there were plenty more empty possessions and wasted scoring opportunities where Pyne couldn’t connect.
One of those was an overthrew of a wide-open Braden Lenzy in the end zone. Lenzy had run a post pattern and just needed the ball to be thrown anywhere but closer to the goal posts than his head.
"We’ve got to make sure that we’re running that route and doing it more,” Freeman said of how Pyne can make such plays in the future. "I can’t just sit here and say, he’s got to make that throw; how do we help him make that throw? We’ve got to throw it more in practice. There’s got to be a way to get the results that you want without just saying, this is what I want. That’s what us as coaches have to figure out. Instead of just saying, this is what he should do, let’s figure out a way to make sure he does it.”
Pyne’s own worst enemy Saturday also turned out to be his usual security blanket, tight end Michael Mayer. Pyne connected with Mayer 11 times a week earlier in a win over BYU, but the All-American candidate finished with five receptions for 60 yards on 10 targets.
Unlike BYU, Stanford decided to actually cover Mayer with double and sometimes even triple coverage, and Pyne was not able to overcome it consistently.
"We as an offense have to say, ok we can’t always depend on Mike Mayer,” Freeman proclaimed. "It’s easy to do that. It’s easy to just say, ok go to Mike Mayer and usually he’s going to win, but we have to be able to go through our progression.”
"It’s an evolution on making sure that if you’ve got a chance to get the ball to a dominant player, get the ball to him,” Freeman continued.. “But also, we cannot force things to Mike Mayer. We’ve got to let the game come to us.”
Take away Mayer’s production and the one catch by Tobias Merriweather, and the rest of Notre Dame’s offensive personnel totaled seven catches for 50 yards.
The answers to Notre Dame’s offensive letdown may not be simple, but they had better come soon, with still half a season to play.
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