6 Thoughts on a Thursday

Marcus Freeman is a busy man. Between recruiting, spring ball, working out with the team, and his family, it’s amazing that he has time for anything in addition to that.

He has found the time to meet with Notre Dame’s quarterbacks once a week. As ISD’s JOHN BRICE wrote about last week, it’s been a way for him to get to know these players who play the most important position on the field. His previous role as a defensive coordinator wasn’t set up for him to create a relationship with them and it’s great to see him taking the initiative to change that.

The connection with the players is important. I don’t want to take anything away from that aspect of it for Freeman and the quarterbacks. However, I’m equally as interested in how his perspective from the other side of the ball can help the quarterbacks on the field.

Bill Belichick built his coaching reputation on the defensive side of the ball, but he’ll forever be linked with Tom Brady with all of the success they had in New England. Back in 2009, NFL Films put out “A Football Life: Bill Belichick” and that show went behind the scenes with him, which included a look at his weekly meetings with Brady.

The most famous part of those meetings that was shared was a discussion between Belichick and Brady on Baltimore Ravens’ safety Ed Reed.

In ESPN’s recent “Man in the Arena” series on Brady, he talked about how much those meetings meant to him when it came to his growth as a player.

“When I look back at that time (in New England) it was a really growth stage part of my career,” Brady said. “It was a development of myself as a player but also a person off the field. I was soaking up all the information. Even today I look at some of these young players and they’re like, ‘What do you think of this guy in his third year or fourth year?’ In my mind I’m thinking, OK he’s talented, but who is going to teach him how to evolve and grow? Who is going to assist him in learning what football is all about? What his knowledge is?

“I had Coach Belichick there to teach me. Every Tuesday we would meet and go through the entire defensive starting lineup and their strengths and weaknesses. What we could attack. What he was watching and how I could see the things that he saw so I could gain confidence and anticipate.”

I don’t know if the inspiration from these meetings came from the Brady-Belichick dynamic or if the main goal was to better connect with the players as individuals, but the advantages of having these meetings with a defensive minded head coach is obvious. While Tommy Rees will be the one most responsible for developing them, Freeman can offer a different perspective that should be extremely valuable.

What will be interesting to see is how much these meetings will evolve from what they started out as in January to what they can be during the season. Not only that, but it’s exciting to think that this could go even further with the quarterbacks in the room currently, all of whom have multiple years of eligibility left.

Freeman isn’t Belichick and none of the quarterbacks at Notre Dame are Brady. I don’t know if this is going to propel any of these players to incredible heights like it did with Brady either. I just know that these meetings can help expand the knowledge of those players on top of building a better relationship with their new head coach. On the football side of things, this may be the best thing Freeman has done so far since taking over his role.

2. I knew Notre Dame had plenty of talent on their roster at linebacker this season and got an infusion with four freshmen already enrolled this spring. Still, I was a bit surprised that out of the 11 scholarship linebackers on the roster, nine of them were blue-chip recruits (ranked as 4 or 5-stars).

The only two that weren’t? That would be Jack Kiser, who just finished with the 8th best PFF grade for a Power 5 linebacker in his first season as a starter, and Marist Liufau, who is projected to be the best linebacker on the team.

They certainly aren’t going to be less talented in future years with another pair of 4-stars committed in Drayk Bowen‍ and Preston Zinter‍. They’re very likely going to add to that in this recruiting cycle as well.

Al Golden walked into a pretty nice situation at his position. It’s not quite what Georgia had with Nakobe Dean, Quay Walker, and Channing Tindall, but it could be on its way to getting there.

3. I certainly want to know more details about Adidas’ intention to open its NIL network to every athlete at schools with Adidas contract, but it definitely sounds like this is going to be the start of something for these companies.

I have to imagine that Notre Dame’s partner, Under Armour, will do something similar in the near future.

The details do matter with this, especially when it comes to what athletes can make from it, but I do wonder if this is something that could influence Notre Dame to finally move away from their UA deal. It’s pretty clear that they lag behind Nike, Jordan Brand, and Adidas in terms of popularity and in the grand scheme of money made from NIL, I don’t think it helps to be partnered with the least popular of that group.

4. Kirk Herbstreit is going to be announcing Thursday night NFL games with Amazon as well as his regular college football duties for ESPN. It’s tough to blame him for striking while the iron is hot and getting a double pay day, but I can’t see this making him anything but worse at his college football gig.

There’s no question he is polished enough to go in and be fine at both jobs. I thought Drew Brees did a solid job with Notre Dame games on Saturdays and then covering the NFL for Football Night in America on Sundays. But Brees has the advantage of having the Irish week after week and then only having to learn about new opponents a half dozen times during a season. It will be much different for Herbstreit who will be calling different NFL teams each week and then traveling across the country to do College Gameday…and then doing the Saturday night game involving two different college teams for ABC.

I know there are plenty of college football fans who don’t like him. I’m not one of them. I don’t think he’s the best college football game analyst overall, but he’s better than most. I just don’t see how this in any way makes him better at what he’s already doing now and I’m sure that anyone can really be great at analyzing NFL and college games with the amount of preparation it takes to do both.

5. Most people might be focusing on Kyle Hamilton’s 40 at Notre Dame’s Pro Day on Friday, but I’m really interested to see how Kyren Williams tests. His NFL Combine numbers were underwhelming. They also weren’t entirely unexpected.

He’s always been a better football player than an athlete. That doesn’t typically translate well in these testing situations and even with plenty of time to prepare, it would have been surprising if he put up freaky numbers.

He ran a 4.65 and had a 32 inch vertical in Indianapolis. Theo Riddick, who measured in an inch shorter and seven pounds heavier, ran a 4.68 and also jumped 32 inches when he was at the NFL Combine after his career at Notre Dame. I know Williams wants to prove he can be more than a 3rd down back and his college film suggests he could be more than that. Then again, his testing numbers and his strengths as a player suggest he could very much be a Riddick type of player in the league. He played seven years at the next level and was very productive in his role.

I bet a bunch of running back coaches will want Williams and a bunch of scouts are more lukewarm based on his athletic profile. We’ll see if he can put together a day on Friday that wins over some scouts and has those RB coaches fighting harder for him.

6. I’ll be in town for Pro Day and the open practice on Saturday. I’ll do my best to not overreact to one day because it’s just one practice. It will be hard, though, because that’s the most we’ll get to see until the Blue-Gold game.

It’s going to be unfair for probably a few players who are criticized because they didn’t show enough during the brief time the media gets access to (think Isaiah Foskey last summer) or those who may garner too much hype based on one big day (think Kevin Bauman last summer, whose season was derailed by an injury).

The reality is that there are very few players who don’t have good and bad days. Even All-Americans experience ups and downs, much like Julian Love did in the summer of 2018. If we only saw a practice at the beginning of camp, we might have thought he was set up to take a step back as a junior. We got to see several practices during that year and by the end of it he was as good as everyone expected him to be.

So with everyone getting ready to hit refresh to read practice reports on Saturday, remember the disclaimer to not overreact too much to someone having a great day or someone else struggling. It might swing the other way in their next practice.