Postgame Transcript | Notre Dame Head Coach Marcus Freeman
Transcript of Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman’s press conference following the Irish’s 56-3 win over Tennessee State.
“We finally we got a chance to see Bryce (McPherson) punt. Again, I'm extremely happy with the victory. As I say this to you guys, I say it to myself, you have to enjoy these moments. They're hard. They're hard, and we only get 12 guaranteed opportunities and so you have to enjoy them. And so with that, I'll open up the questions.
Was there any explanation to you on the Devyn Ford kickoff play? And how is he doing?
“I saw him in the second half and he said he's OK. He said his head hurts a little bit, but they said he did not hit with the crown, he hit with his forehead. And I can agree to disagree, but it is what it is.”
How would you assess how Steve Angeli did in the second half?
“Good, man. I was proud of Steve. He made some good decisions. It wasn't perfect, which it's never perfect, but I thought he did a good job of keeping drives going, making big plays on some third downs and obviously putting the ball on the end zone.”
This is second week in a row where basically you've gone into a game, it's the season opener for the opponent. You gave up 55 yards on that first drive then I think it was just a shade over 100 the rest of the way. Was it kind of like last week where maybe you saw some looks that you hadn't seen before?
“Yeah. Same thing. Coach Golden and I were laughing. It's just like, 'Man, every team we play is coming out with things we haven't seen.' You do as good of a job as you can researching your opponent and really preparing. But our opponents, they're creative too and they're going to come out with new wrinkles. The game of football, the great teams are able to adjust and you have to be able to get plays drawn up, communicate from the press box down to the sideline and make sure your players can understand what they're seeing and what they're getting and adjust to it. Now you can recognize it. As a defensive guy, you can recognize formations and say, 'OK, here's what they did on the last formation. This is the play they ran on the last formation when they were in that formation.' That's the challenge. If we want to be a great team, we are going to have to continue to be able to do that; see something new on both sides of the ball because they did stuff differently defensively too. So the ability for us to get it adjusted and corrected and then go out and execute.”
Do you come into a game like this with some benchmarks you're looking to hit as you start making substitutions?
“No. My coaching point to the staff was, 'Our job on Saturday is to reach our full potential. Whatever the score is going to be if we do that is going to be what the score is. If we have the opportunity to get some guys who don't play in the game a chance to play, I want to make sure we give them a chance to succeed.' My only communication was, 'Let's make sure if we get a chance to get twos and threes in the game, here's the game plan. Because what I don't want to see is us looking foolish because of coaching.' So I was just hard on the coaches, 'I want you to have a plan for guys that are going in there that haven't been in the game.' I thought they did a good job at doing it.”
This was kind of the debut for a lot of your defensive rotations and your defensive packages. How would you evaluate how those went before you got all the way down deep on your depth chart?
“I thought it was good. We started slow. There was a couple uncharacteristic MAs (missed assignments) and one play, we had 10 guys on the field. I don't want to make excuses, but part of that is the ability to really adjust from preparing for the triple-option over and over and over to now you're playing normal defense. That's a little bit of it. I didn't want to use that as an excuse, but I understand that. But I thought after that first series, they were able to really just settle down, stop making the careless mistakes. I always say, 'Don't beat Notre Dame.' And there was a couple times in that first series we were beating Notre Dame and I thought they were able to really settle down and go and do a better job.”
When you look at a game like this, what are kind of the things that you zoom in on and measure whether your team made improvement since it was a big margin last week?
“I haven't watched it. The one thing that sticks out is I'm pretty sure we didn't turn the ball over...”
There was the kickoff...
“To me, that's a little different. But it was a challenge right? Hand the ball to the official and do not turn the ball over. I thought our offense did a really good job at that. And defensively, they were so close last week at getting takeaways and this week I think we had two, we had two takeaways. Trying is great, but we're evaluated on did we do it or not. They had two takeaways, obviously one went to the house for a touchdown. That's where I saw a major improvement. I have to go back here after this and go watch the film. On Monday I'll give you some more answers.”
How close to perfect was Sam Hartman today?
“He was really good, not perfect, but the thing about Sam is the ability for him to come over to me and say, 'I'm good.' He made maybe an error or two, a bad read. And he looked at me and was like, 'I'm good.' Six years, man, that experience is so important. He's a heck of a football player, but the ability to handle the elements, maybe not playing perfect, big games, maybe a game you highly favored. He is a very experienced player and I'm sure glad we have him.”
Could just kind of put in perspective how much different you feel right now and how far you think your program's grown in a year?
“We're getting better. We're getting better. As I said, there's no substitution for experience and you can give me every blueprint from every head coach and you still have to learn through experience. I hope next year at this point, I'm going to say, 'Man, I'm so much further along as a head coach after year two than I was year one.' The comfort man, the understanding of what to expect, the understanding of really not being so emotional every moment you have to pull back and look at this program in a macro picture. That can be in terms of a week, that can be in terms of a season, but in terms of a game. I told Coach Parker, I said, 'Hey, keep our composure. We're good.' I was laughing about it because as a defensive coordinator, I would want to be so perfect and 'I can't believe they gained the yard and what are we doing?' But I think with experience you realize mistakes happen. Let's keep our composure, let's get to the next play and go out and execute.”
You use timeouts there at the end of the first half to try to set up your offense. Can you just talk to me about managing that as a head coach? Is that a growth point for you and just what that felt to see it pay off the way that it did?
“I saw on the clock as we were going out there, I think it was between two and three minutes. I said, 'If we can get a stop here, I want to have a two-minute drive.' I was really calculating when we're going to use those timeouts and the ability to hold them as long as we could. After first down, we used and after second down, we used two of them there. And I wanted to keep one time out for our offense to have a two-minute drive and obviously they didn't need it. It's so crucial to have those type of really situations. We do them in practice, but to have it live, I was so proud of where they executed. I love the communication. I was able to communicate with Coach Golden and say, 'Hey, if they run the ball and we keep them bounds, we're using the timeout...Coach Parker, I'm going to save you one timeout. I don't want to use the timeout until we're past midfield.' All those things, man, you can practice them all the time, but there's so much value using them in the game.”
After Ramon Henderson had that pick, you came over to DBs and said something that didn't look like it was super complimentary. What message were you trying to get across there?
“We have a saying and it says, 'Hand the ball to the official. And that's after every play.' It's for multiple reasons. One is it ensures you have the ball. So when we say, 'Hand the ball to official,' it ensures you have possession of the ball. There is no confusion over has the ball. Two, I think it's respect for the game of football. I don't want to see guys throwing the ball down after a touchdown or an interception. 'Hand the ball to the official because you respect the referees, but you respect the game of football.' A couple guys needed that reminder today and you caught the one that I said to Ramon.”
Going back to that timeout called at the end of the first half, you did the same thing last week. Could you speak to the luxury of knowing that you have a quarterback, it doesn't matter if the field's 150 yards long, he's probably going to be able to take you downfield.
“Yeah, he's pretty good. I don't want to tell him that too often. But man, again, it's a level of comfort...sometimes when you don't have that confidence in your quarterback, you're not going to call timeout. You're going to say, 'Let the clock run out. Let's get out of this half and go to the locker room.' But I wanted to get the ball in Sam Hartman's hands to run our offense in that two-minute situation because I've seen it over and over, him go out and execute. He did it last week. He did it again this week. I have the utmost confidence if we have probably at least 20 seconds, 20 to 30 seconds on the clock beforehand half, I'm going to call timeout and try to get the offensive ball.”
Were you bound and determined to get Steve Angeli in the game early?
“I wanted Angeli to get some meaningful reps. I didn't want to put him in in mop-up duty when the game's already out here. I wanted a little bit of pressure on Angeli and our offensive staff to say, 'OK, hey, we have to score. We have to be efficient on offense here. We can't go three-and-out.' I thought they did a really good job of really going out there, having a plan for Angeli, being able to adapt for some of the mistakes that were happening on our offense. I'm glad we protected him for the most part. He got hit once or twice, but I think we did a good job protecting him too.”
Eight different players scored touchdowns. How much does that help your offense to have those type of options and how much does Sam help make those options be a possibility with the way he runs the offense?
“Sam's a big part, but I think we have some talented individuals. And Jeremiyah Love scored the first touchdown running the ball, so credit to our offensive line and Hartman TD run, (Chris) Tyree scored a touchdown from Hartman. Audric, TD run, Holden Staes. Yeah, having Sam Hartman helps, but I think the depth on our offense and those skill positions show up when you see eight guys score a touchdown. Credit to our offensive coaches and the job they've done in those rooms.”
What was your reaction to Sam's front flip touchdown?
“Kind of don't want to see him do that, but more than that I said, 'Was this planned? You kind of did some gesture to the fans.' I said, 'Have you done that before?' He is like, 'No, I was just thanking the people for coming,' or something like that. I'm like, 'Alright, you might've had that one planned, but yeah.' Keep your feet on the ground.”
Coach with teams ahead like Ohio State and Clemson, how do you keep your players focused on right now and not looking ahead and I guess yourself for that matter?
“As I told this group, we work really hard for 12 guaranteed opportunities. Of these 12, the next Saturday is what's most important. And it's a personal challenge that for us, this is about Notre Dame's football program reaching its full potential on that Saturday. If it's good enough to win whatever the score was today, whatever it was last week, great. If it's not, then we've got to go back and fix it and say, 'Why didn't we play at our full potential?' Or if we did and we didn't win, OK, we better recruit better. And so that's my challenge, man. We work so hard for 12 guaranteed opportunities. Think about that. That's 12 days in the year that you get a chance to go play this game that we love. So be grateful for the opportunity and I'm sure when we turn on the film for NC State, we'll understand the challenge we have ahead of us.”
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