Even In Defeat, It's Obvious Marcus Freeman Has Notre Dame Back

ATLANTA - You’ll see it multiple times every day during College Football’s regular season.

A head coach will come sprinting down the sideline in full panic mode, repeatedly screaming “Timeout!” as their headset tugs them in the opposite direction and their call sheet goes flying onto the field. 

They’ll yell at the official one last time before turning their wrath on their assistant coaches.

In those moments, they look more like raving lunatics than the CEOs of multi-million dollar corporations they actually are. 

Yet in the immediate aftermath of Notre Dame’s loss to Ohio State in 2003, the first thing I thought was that maybe you need that raving lunatic in you to reach the pinnacle as a CEO in this sport. 

You’ve certainly seen that side of Nick Saban, right? 

You’ve seen it from Urban Meyer. You’ve seen it from Kirby Smart. Heck, you’ve even seen it from Dabo Swinney. 

Replaying the sequences that led up to Notre Dame only having 10 players on the field in the immediate aftermath of last year’s game against Ohio State, I thought to Marcus Freeman on the sidelines before the final play; hands on his knees, leaning forward intently.

What must have been going through his head?

Maybe, “One more stop…one more stop…one more stop.” Basically the same exact thing that was going through every other sane Irish fan’s mind at the time. 

That’s when it hit me, maybe a truly sane person can’t reach the top of this game. Maybe you need at least a touch of insanity.

The next thought was even more disheartening. Say what you want about his predecessor, but he certainly had that.

But almost every day since Sept. 23rd, 2023, Freeman has proven that’s not true.

A normal person cannot have accomplished what Freeman did this year - Monday night’s loss to those same Buckeyes in the National Championship notwithstanding - but he’s certainly shown it doesn’t take a psychopath to get to the top.

Monday night’s loss was severely disappointing. There were many decisions that will be second-guessed and some that were questioned in real-time without needing the benefit of hindsight. 

But those were strategic miscalculations, the kind that are covered up a bit more if things go just a little differently. 

It’d become so clear during Notre Dame’s playoff run that saying Marcus Freeman has made the Irish more likable is now borderline cliché.

Most impressively, he’s done so by being himself. 

There’s a reason you hear so many outsiders rave about Freeman, even those who are rooting for his opponents. 

Talk to even the most casual observer about Notre Dame over the last month and at some point - usually at the start - you’ll hear some version of “That coach...”

He’s genuine and they can see it. 

He isn’t putting on an act. 

He doesn’t come across as if he thinks he’s so much smarter than everybody else that nobody will recognize attempts to throw shade if they’re done with a chuckle like the coach he beat in the Semifinals. 

He doesn’t come across as forced like the coach he just lost to in the National Championship, who constantly seems to be asking himself, ‘What would a big-time coach say right now?’ before he’s called on to speak in an important moment.  

And while that’s gone a long way toward allowing Notre Dame to pick up a lot more fans over the past few months, the Irish have always had plenty of fans and if they truly want more, they can task Shane Gillis with doing that.

None of that matters, though.

What does matter is where Freeman’s authenticity comes through most. With his players.

It’s why we repeatedly said recruiting would improve when he was named head coach.

In the end, you cannot fake those relationships. You have to be yourself or you will be exposed. People will see through you. 

“He's just an extension of the team,” quarterback Riley Leonard said of Freeman earlier this week. “He seems like a veteran teammate in my eyes. Before we hit the field when he's hyping the guys up, it feels like it's just a senior captain talking to you a little bit.

“He does a good job of balancing the hierarchy of things. He does understand that he has to carry himself as a head coach, and we obviously see him as our head coach, but we feel him in a different way. He really does a good job of resonating to us as players.”

You can see it in how he interacts with his players. You can’t fake that. 

Consider just what we’ve seen publicly from his relationship with Christian Gray. 

The cornerback was picked on by opponents late in the season, especially in the regular season finale against USC, although Gray responded with a pick-six to seal that win. Shortly afterward, Freeman kidded that if Gray hadn’t been getting “bombed on” earlier in the game, that play would have been unnecessary.

That’s the kind of busting some people wouldn’t be able to do with their truly closest friends. 

During the Orange Bowl’s postgame press conference, Freeman was applauding Gray for his overall play and wanted to make sure a tackle Gray made didn’t go overlooked. He was being very serious, but when he saw an opening to give Gray, who was seated five feet away from him, a hard time, he could not pass it up.

“How much do you weigh?” Freeman asked Gray in front of assembled media and all the diehard Irish fans who were still too jacked up to go to sleep.

“190,” Freeman started, giving him one measly pound on top of Gray’s listed 189 pounds before really going in on him. “180…170.”

As Freeman, Gray and Leonard cracked up from the podium, Freeman returned to his answer, “He put all 175 pounds into that tackle, man.”

You cannot fake that.

Now, it’ll be “too soon” for a long time to joke about Gray’s performance against Jeremiah Smith, but if you don’t think having that kind of relationship with his head coach is going to make Gray a better player next season, then I don’t know what to tell you.

As for his predecessor, he couldn’t even pull off cracking a joke when a reporter’s cell phone went off once during a media gaggle. To this day, I’m still not sure if he really expected The South Bend Tribune’s finest to pay a $5 fine for that or not. 

Yeah, the pregame speeches provide motivation, but those probably don’t matter as much as even the players think. One well-placed source chuckled when he learned the players were fired up because Freeman was angered by his pregame press conference with Penn State’s James Franklin.

“They weren’t that mad or they would have come out fired up in the first half the way they did the second,” the source said.

If you don’t believe the Irish will ever be able to get another natty, would you have believed me on Sept. 9th if I told you’d be this upset on Jan. 21st? Of course not because what they accomplished this season was truly unbelievable

But this season wasn’t some longshot, underdog story season.

The players will tell you they would “run through a wall” if Freeman asked. But that stuff wears off.

What doesn’t wear off is the faith they put in him each and every day. They believe in what he’s telling them and trust him enough to put the necessary work in to constantly elevate their game.

So, yeah, Notre Dame is likely to have more fans going into the 2025 season thanks to Freeman.

Yes, the players will be motivated by Monday’s loss each game next year. 

And, Freeman will continue to build genuine relationships with top recruits across the country and help bring them to South Bend.

But what will really matter - and will last - is the culture he’s built in South Bend, the trust he’s earned - and will continue to earn - from those players.

Plus, talk to anybody close to Notre Dame and you’ll learn they’re actually way ahead of schedule.

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