Tommy Rees And The Offense Are The Ultimate Key To Success For Marcus Freeman
Notre Dame has a new head coach, but the goals of the program haven't changed now that Marcus Freeman is in charge. If anything, his arrival has re-energized a fan base that had come to accept that the former coach had taken the program as far as he could.
Marcus Freeman hasn't been at all bashful about discussing the goal and desire for championships. One area where Notre Dame is either playing at a championship level, or at least on the verge, is the defense. The way Freeman recruits and the demands he placed on his defense this season, and his Cincinnati defenses, expect the defense to continue being excellent and to take yet another leap forward into elite status.
That won't win Notre Dame a championship, it will just be a very key ingredient to one. If Freeman is going to win a title at Notre Dame, the program's first since 1988, he will have to do what Brian Kelly failed to do for 12 seasons .... build a championship caliber offense.
Freeman hitched his wagon to Tommy Rees, a 29-year old coach who ran the Notre Dame offense the last two seasons. With Freeman being a defensive coach it is likely that he'll give Rees and the offensive staff more freedom to evolve the offense. Freeman's charge to Rees needs to be simple, what we've seen the last 12 seasons isn't good enough. This offense needs to be explosive, it needs to be efficient, it needs to be elite.
Rees has continued to grow and develop the last two seasons, and during the second half of the 2021 season we started to see glimpses of what he's capable of.
Heading into its bye week, the Irish were 5-1 and averaging just 27.5 points, 367.8 yards and 5.2 yards per play. The offense relied on big plays for what little success it had, and the offense had become stale, with Kelly seeming to continue pushing for the same philosophy we'd seen fall short for years.
Rees and the offensive staff used the bye week to make some much-needed changes. In the final six games of the season we saw an offense that looked a lot like what Rees said he wanted from the offense when he spoke with Irish Breakdown during the summer.
Some might point to the fact Notre Dame played a lot of bad defenses down the stretch, and that is true. What cannot be ignored - or dismissed - is that it wasn't Notre Dame just doing what it did, but now against bad defenses. We saw changes, we saw enhancements, we saw a shift in emphasis towards the aspects of the offense that were working and fit the personnel.
We saw a Notre Dame offense that was more willing to mix up its tempo, we saw a Notre Dame offense geared towards attacking the perimeter more frequently (and effectively), we saw an offense that was more willing to attack the middle of the field, one that used more vertical concepts and one that was so much better designed from a pass game standpoint.
It was impressive from an Xs and Os standpoint, and it was a welcome sight. The results, of course, were significant.
Notre Dame averaged 37.2 offensive points per game (39.5 as a team), 461.3 yards per game and 7.1 yards per play in the final six games of the season. To put that into perspective, if that was Notre Dame's season long average it would rank 15th in points (7th if you look at the team number), 16th in yards per game and 3rd in yards per play.
Notre Dame's all-time record in yards per play is 7.0. It was clearly an explosive offense, but it was also an incredibly efficient offense.
Quarterback Jack Coan completed 73.7% of his passes during that stretch while averaging an outstanding 9.2 yards per attempt and racking up a passer rating o 168.19. Those numbers, if expanded over the entire season, would rank 3rd, 9th and 7th nationally.
Rees' willingness to build around the pass and how he attacked defenses opened up room for what was an abysmal ground attack in the first six games. Notre Dame went from 97.3 rushing yards per game in the first six games to 207.7 yards in the final six games.
The offensive line improved, but not that much, and its improvement was aided dramatically by the changes in emphasis and by the play-calling.
Instead of pounding his head against the wall and continuing to do the same things over and over, Rees accepted the reality of this team (and its poor line) and made the most of it, and the results were impressive.
Notre Dame's improvements on offense coincided with the defense also getting much, much better, and that's not an accident.
A great offense makes a great defense even better, and vice versa. It is that kind of complimentary football that Notre Dame needs to compete for championships, and it's something the program never had in Kelly's 12 seasons.
Rees has also turned into a very effective recruiter as a coordinator. While I still have concerns about quarterback recruiting, he has played a pivotal role in Notre Dame greatly upgrading its recruiting at running back (with a big assist from Lance Taylor), wide receiver recruiting and he played a significant role in putting together an offensive line class that is as good as anyone in the country.
Rees' age and lack of experience, in my opinion, was a negative when he was originally hired to run the offense. The experience has gained in that role, both the good and the bad, has made him a much better coach today.
As he finishes up his second season his youth has become an asset. The reason is unlike coordinators who have decades of experience, Rees is just getting started. He's only going to get better and better, and now that he has Kelly's shackles removed it can be exciting to think about what this offense will do next.
That's where Freeman needs to step in and challenge Rees to do what it takes to build an elite offense. They need to work together to formulate that plan, they need to be bold, they need to be innovative, they need to be dynamic.
Then Freeman needs to do whatever Rees and the offensive staff deem necessary to aide in making their recruiting on that side of the ball even better.
Rees is also extremely competitive, and the best thing Freeman can do is continue to crush it as a recruiter on the defensive side of the ball, continue building elite defenses and raise the stakes on that side of the ball.
If Tommy Rees is the coach I think he is, he'll take that as a challenge to make sure his side of the ball is just as good, if not better.
That's why the Freeman and Rees combination could be the final ingredient needed for Notre Dame to go from good to being a champion.
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