Can Marcus Freeman Restore Dilapidated Notre Dame Offense Ahead of No. 10 USC?

After a promising start, Notre Dame’s back is against the wall under offensive coordinator Gerad Parker.

The Fighting Irish offense flourished through their first four games before floundering in their last three. During the most recent span, the offense has been significantly less efficient, resulting in 27.7 fewer points per game. 

The last three games came against teams ranked by the Associated Press with top-25 scoring defenses. 

With that perspective, a drop in offensive efficiency is expected, but it's still alarming how much worse the Irish are performing against ranked opponents compared to the other 84 programs to face one.

*Parenthetical information indicated national rankings against unranked opponents (first four games) or versus AP top-25 opponents (last three games).

The most disheartening trend is that the offense actually hit a low point against No. 25 Louisville on Saturday, producing 298 yards and 4.52 yards per play. 

Based on the latter metric, Saturday marked the seventh least efficient offensive performance of the last seven years, but the others at least came against a top-12 defense. 

Louisville ranks 40th after allowing 5.1 yards per play. Indiana (2-3), Boston College (3-3) and Georgia Tech (3-3) each performed better against the Cardinals’ defense than the Irish. 

There’s no justification for such lousy execution.

“What we can’t do is make excuses for why the outcome was what it was,” coach Marcus Freeman said. “We can’t let others make excuses for us. It’s my job to make sure this team is ready to perform on the stage that being part of the Notre Dame football program presents. Every week is going to present this stage and opportunity.”

Several offensive failures from Saturday stand out. 

Freeman is a glass-half-full kind of guy, and he sees this weekend’s matchup with No. 10 USC as an opportunity to prove his team can address those mistakes in front of a national audience. 

“We’re fortunate,” Freeman said. “We get four primetime games and that’s how we have to look at it. We get another primetime vs. USC in Notre Dame Stadium. If you don’t have the bubbles in your stomach, then you’re not the elite competitor we need you to be.”

Five Hartman Turnovers

Before Saturday, the offense had committed one turnover all season when quarterback Sam Hartman fumbled on a strip-sack against North Carolina State in Week 2.  

The sixth-year man under center turned the ball over five times against Louisville, throwing three interceptions and fumbling the ball twice. 

“You can't turn the ball over five times and expect to win a game versus a good opponent,” Freeman said.

The first turnover ended the game's first drive when Louisville defensive back Quincy Riley picked off at his team’s own 35-yard line. 

While the throw may have been ill-advised, at worst, it should’ve fallen incomplete.

“Sam will tell you he wished he threw a better ball, but Rico (Flores has) got to do a better job of not letting that ball get caught,” Freeman said. “You turn into a defender. So, it's not pointing the finger at anybody. It's pointing a finger at everybody, and that's what we have to do.”

To take a step further, if Flores turns his body and adjusts to the ball, he might’ve shielded the defender and had a chance to make the catch on the under-thrown ball. 

Is that asking a lot of a true freshman against a redshirt freshman? It sure is, but if Flores makes a play on the ball, Notre Dame’s opening drive continues on 1st and 10 from the Louisville 49-yard line.

It’s also likely neither fumble would have occurred had the play been blocked properly upfront. 

Does Hartman need to protect the football better, no matter the circumstance? Damn straight. 

Still, yelling at him to hold onto the ball isn’t a reasonable solution, especially for someone who set a program record by starting his Notre Dame career with 148 pass attempts without throwing an interception.

“In each play, there can be a different reason for why we didn't execute, but that's the reality of it,” Freeman said. “Instead of just saying, 'Hey, we can't have five turnovers.’ Yeah, that's everybody knows that, but how do we continue to make sure that we don't do it?”

The Irish will look to clean up those costly turnovers just like they did after committing nine pre-snap penalties at Duke the week prior. 

The refs flagged Notre Dame just once for a pre-snap infraction at Louisville. 

“We’ve got to continue to figure out why and have a plan to address those things,” Freeman said, “so the same thing will happen this week.”

3rd-and-Implausible

Notre Dame has converted on 6 out of 28 (21.4%) third-down opportunities in the last two games.

Part of the problem is that 21 of those attempts come with at least five yards to go. 

“You're putting yourself in third and long situations, which are really hard to execute in college football,” Freeman said. “So, I think we have to do a better job of putting our guys in place to be able to run the ball with more efficiency.”

The Irish averaged 4.2 yards per first down rush attempt compared to Louisville’s 8.0 yards. 

“We want to be more effective on first and second down,” Freeman said. “I don't want to spend more time saying, 'Let's get more in third and long calls.' I would rather spend more time saying, 'Let's be more effective on first and second down.’”

Of course, it hasn’t been much better on third-and-short, with the Irish converting on 1 out of 7 attempts with four yards or fewer to gain.

Grounded to a Halt

Perhaps the most perplexing failure was Notre Dame’s inability to run the ball early in contests. 

In the last three first halves, the Irish recorded 52 carries for 152 yards (2.9 YPC). This forced Notre Dame to throw the ball against top-tier pass defenses with a depleted wide receiver room. 

“To me, you have to establish the run game, and we have to find different ways to do that,” Freeman said. “So, that's to me why we haven't been as effective as a complete offense.”

The Irish were exceptionally bad against Louisville, rushing for 22 yards on 17 carries in the first half. They struggled on early downs and in short-yardage situations. 

“Offensively, if you're not able to run the ball the way we want to,” Freeman said, “then we didn't dominate the line of scrimmage, and that's what we have to improve.”

Negative Plays

Against Louisville, 16 of the 65 plays (24.6%) Notre Dame ran resulted in a turnover or lost yardage, which excludes Hartman taking a knee with one second left in the first half.

Of those negative plays, 14 occurred on 1st or third down, either starting the Irish off in a giant hole, preventing them from moving the chains when it mattered most or even going for it on fourth and short. 

“I'll tell Coach Parker that 'hey, this is a four-down situation. You've got to plays to get the first down here,”' Freeman said. “But then all of sudden, twice it happened where we got to tackle for loss. When we get tackles for loss, then I have to decide to punt or take a field goal. So, what we got to do is figure out why those tackles for losses happen and that's what I told Coach Parker and the staff.”

Negative plays correlated with offensive failures.

The Fighting Irish experienced a negative play on 12 of 14 true offensive drives. The two without a negative play resulted in their only two touchdowns of the game.

Parker’s play-calling has been criticized over and over again. At times, the criticism is fair.  Notre Dame ran right into a stacked box. Still, other plays failed because the running back failed to recognize an obvious blitzer who ended up sacking Hartman or an offensive lineman was blown off the ball.

“It's not as much the play call. It's how do we make sure that if we call this play, we can execute it?” Freeman said. “Because if we can't, if we don't have an answer for what they're doing, then we probably shouldn't call that play.”Either way, it’s on the coaches to fix.

“We can blame it on a call,” Freeman said. “We can blame it on anything we want, but the reality is if we feel strongly enough to call that play, then we have to have answers for why it did or doesn't work.”

One solution may be to trim the offensive playbook and employ fewer personnel groupings, similar to what defensive coordinator Al Golden did on the other side of the ball in the offseason.

That’s allowed his players to think less, become more assignment-correct and play faster. 

After struggling last year, the Irish defense currently ranks 10th in ESPN’s SP+.

“We have to simplify so our guys don't make mistakes, right?” Freeman said. “To make sure that our guys, when we have mistakes, you got to look at yourself as a coach and say, 'Why are guys having mistakes?' And if we have to simplify, we have to. That's the biggest thing. 

“You talked about the difference between two weeks ago till now is like, 'Okay, we're making mistakes IDing in the run game, and why aren't we blocking this guy? So we have to simplify to make sure there is crystal clarity on what we need to do.”

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