What Marcus Freeman Must Do To Get Notre Dame a National Championship

Year Three was the key

In three short years, Marcus Freeman has accomplished a lot in his Notre Dame tenure. Under his leadership, the Irish have compiled a 5-3 record vs top 10 teams, culminating in a playoff run to the College Football Playoff National Championship.

While Notre Dame is undoubtedly on solid footing and in healthy shape as a program, it fell short of winning it all, and now it's time to get greedy.

There's still room for growth for Freeman and his Irish program - and it is his Irish program now - to reach the promised land.

With this in mind, let's examine three areas that Freeman must excel in if he hopes to claim Notre Dame's next national championship.

What will #NotreDame’s record be this year? 👀

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Stop getting upset by huge underdogs

Freeman's regular season record of 28-8 is terrific, but it could've and should've been stronger.

If not for inconceivable upset losses at home to Marshall, Stanford, and Northern Illinois, that record would be an electric 31-5. To put a positive spin on that, the losses served as fuel and focus, but that shouldn't be needed.

Last year, that NIU loss meant the Irish were playing with fire - they needed to be perfect the rest of the way.

It's so hard to make the CFP.

Notre Dame cannot afford to lose many games, most especially ones in which it's favored by four scores or more in South Bend.

This trend has to end moving forward. These losses don't preclude title runs, but they certainly make the road unnecessarily tougher. This year, the Irish almost certainly can't afford a misfire.

Recruiting classes inside top ten yearly

College football recruiting is hard, and it's even harder at Notre Dame.

Freeman has taken things to a whole other level over the last few months, and it has to keep rolling.

Wide receiver and defensive line are still position groups that need annual boosts in talent. Another issue that must be resolved is Notre Dame losing top verbal commits near or on Signing Day.

That's being fixed. The talent is signing on, but that's for the future. That doesn't help when the Irish make the trip to Miami in late August. But it's still a massive help.

Notre Dame doesn't need top-five classes to win the title. Stringing together well-rounded classes that end in the 6-7-8 range rather than 12-13-14 in the rankings is a perfectly reasonable and attainable expectation moving forward.

Recruiting success doesn't ensure on-field results, but it doesn't hurt.

The young QB must hit

As good as Notre Dame's program was through the Brian Kelly years and into the present day Marcus Freeman era, and as many areas of strength as there are and have been, a key piece has been missing.

As good as Sam Hartman and Riley Leonard were, the Irish were missing a truly dangerous downfield passing QB to force defenses to play the Irish fair, and not simply sell out to stop the dominant ground game.

If CJ Carr shows great upward potential and growth in 2025, he'll be the face of the program once star running back Jeremiyah Love departs.

Having a quarterback star on top, who could play at a national title level, would provide stability after years of living through the transfer portal.

This is the one element Notre Dame has been lacking; with this feature added to present strengths, the Irish would be hard to beat.

And after all of that, really, what does Marcus Freeman have to do to win a national title at Notre Dame?

Keep doing what he's doing, and eventually, it'll happen.

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