SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman didn’t like what he saw.
Three days earlier, Notre Dame’s head coach watched his program clear a path to the College Football Playoff by winning at Texas A&M. The Irish were everything Freeman wanted, winning on the lines of scrimmage, dominant on defense, leaning into quarterback Riley Leonard’s strengths.
But that team didn’t travel back from Kyle Field.
“Not the best Tuesday we ever had,” Freeman said, captured in the docuseries “Here Come The Irish.” “But I don’t want to lose my mind because I don’t know exactly what the issues were. We’ll see on film. But we’ve got to have urgency to fix ’em.’”
Sometimes an observation can become an omen.
Four days later, Notre Dame had neither urgency nor fixes. And what the Irish put on film was arguably the worst loss of the college football season.
Favored by four touchdowns, Notre Dame crashed to earth in a 16-14 upset by NIU. Leonard threw two interceptions. Notre Dame’s immovable object of a defense let a MAC offense become an unstoppable force in the fourth quarter. The game ended with Mitch Jeter’s 62-yard field goal prayer going unanswered as the Huskies blocked it.
Northern Illinois rushed the field. Notre Dame was booed off it. NIU coach Thomas Hammock publicly offered to help Freeman in the aftermath, a charitable indignity that made it all feel worse.
A season in which hosting a College Football Playoff game had been baked into expectations seemingly careened off the rails by Week 2. A first-time head coach in a make-or-break third season didn’t look much different than the guy who lost to Marshall or Stanford or Louisville during his first two years.
Shouldn’t the program have been beyond this by Freeman’s third year?
“Absolutely, absolutely,” Freeman admitted. “I felt the preparation was exactly where we needed.”
Three months and 10 wins later, maybe Freeman was right. Just not how he meant it at that moment.
No. 7 seed Notre Dame will host No. 10 seed Indiana in the first game of the new 12-team Playoff on Friday night, a return on investment into the program beyond the new indoor practice facility that arrived just before Freeman or the 150,000-square-foot operations building going up across the street.
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Notre Dame’s path to the postseason strained the program, but that route also validated its head coach and the growth mindset he’s applied since accepting the job at age 35 when Brian Kelly left for LSU.
After inheriting a coaching staff in his first season and tweaking it in his second, Freeman has nearly perfected it in his third with one of the country’s top coordinator pairs in Al Golden on defense and Mike Denbrock on offense. After gambling at quarterback in his first season (Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne) and making an educated guess in his second (Wake Forest transfer Sam Hartman), Freeman played to his convictions in his third (Leonard, a transfer from Duke).
Freeman likes to paraphrase his old college coach at Ohio State, Jim Tressel, by saying that progress is never a straight line. And they’re both right. It hasn’t been.
Yet with Notre Dame both in the Playoff and positioned to make a run — and Freeman now locked up with a new long-term deal — here’s no longer a question if progress has been made.
Aaron Taylor sat with Freeman in the Notre Dame locker room the week before the regular-season finale at USC. The former Notre Dame All-American would be an analyst in the studio that Saturday for CBS, which carried the game. As a former Notre Dame player, Taylor wanted to bear hug the coach. As an analyst, Taylor wanted to pick Freeman’s brain about what had gone wrong before it went right.
“First two years, when I’d listen to him speak, I felt like I was almost listening to somebody who was saying what they thought they should say as a head coach,” Taylor said. “What I saw and what I heard face to face was a head coach speaking about what he knew and believed. That’s the confidence piece that he couldn’t have had.”
A week earlier, Taylor brought a couple of his sons to Yankee Stadium to catch the middle quarters of Notre Dame’s 49-14 blowout of Army. He saw Freeman smile on the sideline, though he didn’t hear the head coach call for “violence” against the Black Knights before the Irish started their stampede. If Freeman sounded different during the interview between games, he looked different that night in New York, too.
“I felt like there was a little glint in his eye and I asked what made him smile,” Taylor said. “He said he finally felt like he saw it all coming together. That was the first time he really felt like they played near their potential. It’s all coming together at the same time.”
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Notre Dame had been building to this before last season ended, when former offensive coordinator Gerad Parker left for the head job at Troy and was replaced by Denbrock, who coached Jayden Daniels to the Heisman Trophy at LSU. Taking Denbrock away from Kelly created easy material, but his reunion with Freeman had more substance: The two worked together as coordinators under Luke Fickell at Cincinnati for four seasons. Denbrock being on his third tour of duty at Notre Dame didn’t hurt, either.
Finally, Freeman had an offensive coordinator who’d solved problems over the headset in real time. He’d coached a Heisman winner and made offenses work with redshirt freshmen. And he’d worked with the majority of Notre Dame’s offensive staff already, as quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli and receivers coach Mike Brown were also on staff at Cincinnati with Denbrock.
“I try to be intentional about who we hire and there’s also an understanding of you know somebody through consistency,” Freeman said. “That’s what I’ve learned over my time as a head coach. Probably the greatest thing I learned is the hiring process.”
Notre Dame invested in two coordinators with four-year contracts that are among the most lucrative in the sport. The 60-year-old Denbrock was a finalist for the Broyles Award given to the nation’s top assistant last year, and the 55-year-old Golden is a finalist this season. Not only did Freeman, now 38, find the coaches he wanted, but Notre Dame backed its head coach in getting the deals done.
Notre Dame is the only program in the country ranked in the top five of scoring offense and scoring defense. It’s one of four schools ranked in the top 10 in yards per play on both sides. Freeman has said more than once that this year’s roster is his best since taking the job. There’s no doubt it’s his best coaching staff, too. And that created connective tissue within the program when it could have come apart after Northern Illinois.
As much as that game shouldn’t have happened, Golden and Denbrock had been through worse and come out the other side. They’d seen stuff hit the fan before. They also knew how to clean it off and get it running again.
“I think it’s made all the difference in the world because of the thing Marcus lacked when he took the job: experience,” Taylor said. “If you don’t get the staff right, nothing is right. I don’t think people appreciate how nuanced that is.”
Leonard gritted his teeth and bulged his eyes while still in his pads after Notre Dame’s 49-35 win at USC.
Asked about his arm punt of an interception in the third quarter, Notre Dame’s quarterback had to get his bearings before answering. He’d missed Kris Mitchell by almost 10 yards, a miscommunication based on coverage. When Leonard returned to the sideline, somebody joked that USC defensive back John Humphrey could have fair-caught the pick.
“To be able to respond is what coach Freeman talks about all the time,” Leonard said. “Reload, reload, reload, win the interval, reload, win the interval, reload, win the interval, reload. Early in the year, if I threw a pick, I’m sure the next drive didn’t turn out to be what we wanted.”
At USC, the story read differently. Notre Dame’s defense forced a four-and-out after the interception. Then Leonard led a three-play, 62-yard touchdown drive that ended with a 23-yard jump ball to tight end Mitchell Evans. It was all evidence of how far Leonard had come this season. He’s not the quarterback who played too tight in September. He’s not the quarterback who missed all of winter conditioning and spring practice recovering from ankle surgery.
The Leonard experience at Notre Dame has been about what the Irish expected and probably something different, too. The Irish knew Leonard had the wheels to make Denbrock’s offense go. They knew he’d be able to command a locker room in ways previous quarterbacks did not. And that’s all happened. It’s just that Leonard’s passing probably needed more time to get in sync with Denbrock’s play calling than Notre Dame could afford early.
“It’s the confidence,” Freeman said. “I think going from where you were Week 1 to where you were Week 2, and in realizing, ‘OK, this is the best it’s going to be, and this is the worst it’s going to be,’ and understanding if I can put that stuff behind me and really focus on enjoying and maximizing this opportunity as a quarterback at Notre Dame, then I should. And that’s what he’s done.
“His confidence has grown. His understanding and knowledge of the offense, but also, the understanding and knowledge that coach Denbrock has in Riley and saying, ‘OK, how do we do what your players do well, right?’”
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In the preseason, Denbrock corrected a reporter who asked about Leonard as a “running quarterback” by backing him as a “dual-threat.” But it took four games for Leonard to throw his first touchdown pass, and he’s yet to throw for 250 yards in a game. Still, he’s accounted for 30 total touchdowns. And he’s led the most prolific offense in modern school history, averaging 39.8 points per game.
Leonard and Denbrock meet weekly, a routine typical for a quarterback and offensive coordinator. But when there’s just one season between them, with Leonard a senior, the whole thing can feel a bit microwaved. Leonard and Denbrock will share coffee and bagels. Sometimes they talk football. Sometimes they don’t. The time matters more than the subject.
“They had to figure out who Riley Leonard was,” Taylor said. “There’s choreography between Denbrock and Leonard that they figured out. To be a downhill run team that is going to try to control the line of scrimmage and we’re going to help our quarterback beat you with his legs … They turned that corner and they haven’t looked back.”
Notre Dame just needed a head coach to stitch all this together — the staff, the quarterback, the defense with NFL talent on all three levels. And Freeman had to do it with history against him, trying to lead a program that had spit out every first-time head coach for more than a century.
Gerad Parker texted his old boss but didn’t need a response.
Notre Dame’s former offensive coordinator, whose roots run 10 years deep with Freeman to their time as assistants at Purdue, understood what Freeman was going through after Northern Illinois. He was on staff at Notre Dame for gut-wrenching losses to Marshall, Stanford and Ohio State. He’s fighting his own battles at Troy now, but Parker let Freeman know he was thinking about him.
“He was in fight mode,” Parker said. “Not to be dramatic, but that’s where he lives. That’s him. It’s hard for him to give a compliment. It’s hard for him to say, ‘I love you.’ He’s a hard ass. He was raised that way. And he’s at his best when it’s fight or flight.”
For all of Freeman’s polished edges, he’s most authentic when that roughness shows. Screaming into the void at Kyle Field before kickoff. Ripping players on the sideline after personal fouls. Tearing into officials after a fake punt touchdown gets called back. And finally letting everything go after Notre Dame finished off USC to clinch a spot in the Playoff. There’s a kinetic energy about Freeman that’s easy for players to follow, just as long as the head coach knows what direction to take them.
Two years ago after losing to Marshall, Freeman changed up the messaging that Notre Dame needed to attack every practice like it was a Saturday afternoon. The Irish steadied that ship, even after losing their starting quarterback. Last year after an embarrassing home loss to Ohio State when the defense got caught with 10 men on the field for the final two plays, Freeman swallowed the responsibility.
“Everyone can do the ‘woe is me’ thing, but he puts that stuff on himself,” Parker said. “And he wears that s— pretty well. You don’t hear one thing in the press conference and another in the locker room.”
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This year’s pivot was to never look away from the carnage of Sept. 7. Northern Illinois became a constant talking point. Team meetings, postgame, halftime, pregame — Notre Dame was never absolved. The sin remained. It might not have been how Freeman wanted it, but it was what Notre Dame needed. And so Freeman delivered.
“Misery wants company, but I don’t during those tough times,” Freeman said. “You’ve got to take a hard look at yourself and figure out what it takes to get your program where it needs to be. That’s what I was able to do as an individual, and the program itself did that, too.”
Notre Dame has done nothing but win since NIU, Freeman carving a straight path to the Playoff. The Irish are now where they expected to be all along because of how they lost three months ago.
“When you push all your chips in like that — and I can only imagine what it must have been when he went to bed that night after NIU — you’re on shaky ground,” Taylor said. “You’re in uncharted territory; you have to be able to rely on your beliefs and instincts.
“And he did that. And it paid off for him.”
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(Top photo: Melinda Meijer / Getty Images)
