Fighting Irish Must “Improve Faster" to Withstand Four Straight Ranked Opponents

The Fighting Irish lit the college football world on fire to open the season, dismantling opponents with a 34.3-point average margin of victory.

Notre Dame climbed to fourth in ESPN’s SP+ with an offense and defense that ranked sixth and seventh in the nation.

Fast forward two weeks and the Irish are .500 in their last two games against top-25 opponents, thanks in part to a myriad of mistakes in both contests. That includes defending Ohio State with 10 men on the field and racking up 12 penalties against Duke. 

Notre Dame must sort itself out fast to return to early-season form with back-to-back upcoming matchups with No. 25 Louisville and No. 9 USC.

“How do we improve faster than our opponents?” Freeman said. “That's what I just told the coaches, that's our challenge. Every college football team will improve throughout the season. The ones that are improved fastest are the ones that usually play for championships and are playing at the end of the year for things that are extremely important.”

It’d be easy for Freeman to blame his players' age or experience or say that they should know better. 

At least publicly, he doesn’t care to make excuses. All that matters to him are the solutions. 

“It’s so easy to say, ‘Ahh, we know that. He should know that.’ But there’s a cause and effect for everything,” Freeman said. “That’s what I’m trying to prevent is just saying, ‘Ahh, he should know that. We know he should get aligned. We know that we should have 11 guys on the field.’”

The referees flagged the Notre Dame offense eight times on Saturday. Six of them were thrown before the snap, including five false starts. 

The first two were on fifth-year center Zeke Correll. Sure, it was loud inside Wallace Wade Stadium, but that decibel of crowd noise is certainly something he’s overcome before. 

“Why did Zeke flinch? The first thing is we didn’t practice it enough,” Freeman said. “We have to practice it better. We have to be able to create — we had crowd noise last week. We knew it was going to be loud. But did we ever shift on Zeke? Did we ever do the things that caused him to jump? Let’s first figure out, 'Hey, Zeke, what did you hear? What made you flinch?’”

Three Notre Dame defenders received offsides penalties for lining up inside the neutral zone, including fifth-year cornerback Cam Hart.

Do the referees often warn outside defenders that they’ve lined up offsides? Sure, but Notre Dame can’t rely on the discretion of an official. 

“Every single play, you’ve got to go through your checklist, and it starts with making sure you're aligned, not across the ball,” Freeman said. “So, we have to fix that. We can't just say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to be better.’ We have to have a plan to fix that and address it, and we do.”

Freeman is also taking some of the responsibility for Chris Tyree’s muffed punt early in the third quarter against Duke. On the play, Tyree tried to dive for the ball amidst heavy traffic and never had a real chance to secure it.

Tyree signaled for a fair catch on a punt in the second quarter, and Freeman told the wideout to return it in the future.

“Sometimes I’ve just got to be quiet, as the head coach,” Freeman said. “I go over there and say, ‘Be aggressive, now. If there’s space, be aggressive.’”

If Ramon Henderson hadn’t recovered it, Notre Dame would’ve missed out on an offensive drive that produced three points.

“We obviously don't want him to do what he did on the muffed punt,” Freeman said. “His reasoning was that, ‘Coach, I was trying to save us yards. I thought the ball was bouncing up, and I was just going to go grab it and get down and save us yards.’ So, his intent was correct, but obviously, we do not want to make that decision. So, it's a great teaching opportunity for me to shut up.”

Of course, there are much bigger questions to address in upcoming matchups. 

Why has the Irish defense given up 10 plays of 20 yards or more in the last two games? How come the offense is only averaging 17.5 points against ranked teams?

It’s impossible to fix the macro-level issues without first drilling down on the numerous micro mistakes that led to poor results against Ohio State and Duke.

If the Irish can do that, then there’s a chance they’ll return to high-level football in the second half of the season. 

“You’re not really going to improve unless you figure out why each individual that made a mistake,” Freeman said. “Why they did, and then what do we have to do to have a better process to get the outcome we want.”

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