Execution and Bad Habits at Forefront of Notre Dame's Defensive Issues

Notre Dame’s defense has consistently attacked during Marcus Freeman’s tenure as head coach. 

Through two games in 2025, the Irish defense has played on its heels, looked lost, and has resembled anything but an aggressive unit under defensive coordinator Chris Ash. 

There was always going to be an adjustment to whoever Freeman hired to replace Al Golden, as the defense would have new tweaks to it. 

Notre Dame’s defense has failed to adjust to Ash’s tweaks, but issues of giving up 41 points to an average offense run much deeper than scheme. 

“The only way to become more consistent is we have to refuse to tolerate habits and bad performance that isn't to the standard that we've set for our program,” explained Freeman. “It's always gonna start with me and making sure that I have to always evaluate the things that I tolerate as the head coach and what we all tolerate from each other in terms of our habits and the way we practice and the way we prepare.” 

There’s a long list of bad habits Freeman has identified in practice that the staff has tolerated in recent weeks. 

Some aren’t overly concerning, while others are eye-catching and make perfect sense on why the Irish defense gave up 12 big plays to the Aggies. 

“If you look at some of the explosive plays defensively, you got to look at yourself and say, OK, you can say this guy didn't have his eyes where they needed to be,” said Freeman. “Well, you can say it's the player's fault, or you can say, okay, are there times in practice that maybe your player didn't have his eyes in the right spot and the outcome might've been different, but we tolerated it, right?” 

Freeman continued. 

“If a guy had a mental error on a play, he went the wrong way, you can make yourself feel better and say, well, that's his fault,” Freeman stated. “We did it right one time in practice, or you can say, did we do it enough till we couldn't get it wrong? That's what I really am talking about when I say tolerating different things. If a guy gets beat deep on a big play pass, if he's not playing with the proper technique, did we stress him enough with speed in practice so that he understands the velocity that you have to be able to play with the proper technique?” 

Some will blame the scheme, but when Notre Dame’s defense looked as bad as it did on Saturday, it’s everything involved. 

Freeman made it clear that Ash hasn’t changed too much of the overall structure of the defense, but the execution has failed the Irish through two games. 

“The Notre Dame defense that I hear you say looks different, it's the execution of what they're being asked to do, right?” stated Freeman. “The overall output is what you see that's different. It's not the structure of the defense, it's the execution of what we're asking our guys to do.”

There are noticeable changes in the lack of subpackages compared to Golden, and the blitzes are failing to get home, which leads to a lack of creativity and the opposition knowing what’s coming. 

When it comes to coverage, yes, Notre Dame is playing more zone this year, but it’s hardly what some are making it out to be. 

2024 Man Coverage Percentage 
Christian Gray: 64.8% 
Leonard Moore: 61.4%
Jordan Clark: 61.2% 

2025 Man Coverage 
Christian Gray: 54.5%
Leonard Moore: 58.1%
Karson Hobbs: 63.0% 

In fact, most of the explosive plays Notre Dame has given up have come against man. 

A&M dialed up several man beaters and Miami took timely shots. 

How does Notre Dame fix the secondary play? It starts with figuring out what they can or can’t do and then finding ways to maximize their strengths. 

And yes, that’s the downside of playing two ranked teams to start the year. There was no grace period for inexperienced players to figure out before being thrown into the fire against top competition. 

“There's some new players that we gotta get them to the point that they can execute what we're asking them to do,” Freeman explained. “But I don't think you're seeing a big change in terms of the structure of the tactical aspect of how we're playing defense.

“What we gotta do is evaluate what we're asking our guys to do and then say, OK, if they can't do what we're asking to do either we gotta change it or we gotta address it in practice in a way that they can execute exactly what we're asking them to do at the level we're asking them to do it.” 

Sophomore cornerback Leonard Moore might have seen the bad habits forming last week as he stressed the importance of showing up to practice last week. 

“I feel like I can start practice just having a sense of urgency from the jump from period one,” Moore stated. “Whatever we're doing in practice, whether it's an indy drill or whether it's a team drill, just always coming in full speed and not warming up to it, but just starting fast.” 

Notre Dame’s failures on defense aren’t all on the secondary. The defensive line has failed to impact the quarterback in both games. That’s a surprise as the talk of camp was how the Irish defense was flying around and owning the offense at times. 

Freeman believes he has the right pieces on the defensive line to have success, but even he’s noticed the group doesn’t look like the group he saw last month in fall camp. 

“I didn't see them playing Saturday with the velocity that maybe I saw during fall camp,” Freeman said. “It's a discussion that we've had. Are we asking them to do too much where they're not playing fast? At the end of the day, we gotta get those guys to play fast because we have the talent for sure. 

“We gotta make sure that they're executing with the velocity that we believe it takes to make the plays that we demand they make. I'm very confident in Coach Wash (Al Washington), I'm very confident in our defensive line. We just gotta get them to a point where they're playing fast and playing the way that I believe they can and will play.” 

One bright spot on the defense has been safety Tae Johnson. The redshirt freshman finished with six tackles and one PBU on Saturday, but Johnson was also playing fast and making good reads. 

Now, he wasn’t perfect, but with safety Adon Shuler gone for the first half of Purdue, Johnson’s role will become larger this week. 

“I was pleased,” said Freeman. “I thought Tae did a good job being out there, made some plays, some really good open field tackles, made some plays on the ball. 

“He's a talented individual and he was gonna get more no matter what, but especially with Adon being down a half, like he's gonna have more on his plate and he'll do just fine with it.”

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