Notre Dame Exits Spring with Momentum: Marcus Freeman Lays Foundation for 2025

Notre Dame appears poised to exit the spring transfer portal window in a strong position.

Marcus Freeman has watched his program add key pieces, get through spring football without major injuries and avoid significant departures (to this point) with less than 48 hours remaining to enter the portal.

In fact, Freeman was quick to say he believes the program is in a strong spot following the completion of spring practice, as the Fighting Irish executed one of his core pillars of success.

“I'm really pleased with how the spring went, big picture-wise,” stated Freeman. “Chasing our full potential, but that goes down to us as individuals, truly chasing our full potential. When you don't have an opponent, it's hard to measure that, right? I consistently reminded the entire program: It's an internal battle. Your opponent is yourself, and I thought they did a good job. We all did a good job at really focusing on that.” 

Freeman was also pleased with what he saw develop on and off the field within his program. There are new faces at key positions on the field, but also within his own staff. Building rapport and trust was a specific emphasis and Notre Dame took advantage of its 14 opportunities on the practice field to grow in those areas.

"The second thing, we have to continue to build and elevate the trust that we have, coaches to players, players to coaches, and then players to players,” explained Freeman. “I think that was extremely important to elevate the trust. I truly believe great teams have a trust amongst each other, a camaraderie amongst each other, and that was something we wanted to be intentional about doing.

“The football aspect of it, you build trust through consistent consistency. You build trust through doing your job or doing what you're supposed to do over and over and over. But there's also a choice to trust those around you that you have to make every day to have success. I thought we did a really good job there.” 

Notre Dame also accomplished one of its immediate and long-term goals by narrowing the three-man quarterback competition down to CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey.

Steve Angeli, the odd man out, will head to Syracuse as a graduate transfer

It’s a bit risky for Notre Dame to enter the season without a quarterback with meaningful game experience, but both Carr and Minchey showed encouraging growth this spring when given more reps.

“It’s going to be great because you talk about two guys that don't have much, if any, real-game experience,” Freeman said. “The thing you can create when you have a competition — a true competition, where it's 50-50, you have to battle it out — is you try to put some of that pressure that a real game presents. You have to perform in practice because you understand, if you don't perform consistently, that other guy's pretty good, and he might take off with this race.

“I'm pleased that we're going to have a true competition that we bring into fall camp and try to create some pressure situations for those guys that they have to perform, so that the first time they feel that pressure isn't going to be when we play Miami.” 

Outside of the quarterback spot, Notre Dame returns a wealth of experience and potential, which had Freeman grinning when asked about the ceiling of his program.

Yet, Freeman knows something this year that he didn’t necessarily know last year at this time. He knows what it takes to get to not only the College Football Playoff, but the biggest stage in the sport. 

“I really like this team that we put together and I think it has a lot of potential,” Freeman explained. “We have to expedite that elevation to reaching our full potential, but outcomes are driven from a lot of different things. There's so many things that determine that, but when you talk about this team being a really good football team, we definitely have the ability to do that and just got to continue to develop. 

"We'll see what the outcomes are. If you had asked me after Week 2 last year, 'What's the outlook of this season?' 'Whoo, I'm just trying to get ready for Week 3.' We'll let the outcomes kind of happen when we get to season. I do believe we have a high ceiling and we just gotta continue to elevate to reaching that level that we aspire to reach."

How does Notre Dame reach its full potential? 

If you’ve followed Freeman’s tenure, you know it starts with physical preparation. He has made it a priority to foster competition in every area of the program, and physicality on the practice field is one of his non-negotiables.

The summer will be just as important as spring. Significant strides can be made in the coming months and Notre Dame players should prepare for another extremely physical fall camp in August.

“As I look to this summer, you can’t cheat the preparation,” said Freeman. “There is a physical preparation into making sure your team is ready to go week one. You guys heard me say this enough, the future is uncertain, so for us to preserve for an uncertain future is crazy - a future that you might not ever get. We have to make sure we are ready to go the minute that first game and there’s a physical preparation that you have to go through to make sure you’re ready. 

“Our guys are going to work their tails off. They have to. You can’t be ready to play this physical, demanding game of football without being prepared the right way.” 

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