Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman spoke with members of the local media in a roundtable discussion Tuesday afternoon.
Marcus Freeman Summer Update Notebook | Part I
On what he’s been able to take away from winning 10 games in a row last year that can help this team:
“We still have to evaluate what we're doing. I think as you look over the four years, we've improved as a team as the season goes on. There's something that we're doing in our process that is helping us improve and play better at the end of the season. How do we make that better? How do we evaluate it through practice scripts and through what we're doing through science to make that better? But also, how do we fix the way we started?
“I think it's a fine line, like we don't wanna blow it up. We're doing something that's right, but there's a way to get better and we just gotta find it.”
On finding a way to start the first month of the season better:
“The focus has to be how do we become a better program at the start of the season, right? We'll evaluate it based on outcomes, I'm sure. How do we become a better program? You have to evaluate, again, for us, it went back to January. What did we do from January to spring ball and is there a better way to do that? Maybe do we need more lifting and conditioning in what we're doing in spring ball? But then even going into fall camp, like how are we gonna do fall camp?
“We made some slight adjustments. We ran fall camp very similar the past two years. We're gonna have a little bit of slight adjustments. When the off day is and stuff like that. And again, it wasn't just some off the wall thing, it was just change. It's OK, give me your expertise, give me your expertise. What have you done when you were here or there? Let me look at your training camp schedule. I took some of those different calendars and thoughts and we kind of came up with ours for this fall camp.”
On the growth of the WR room:
“There's certain guys that have been here but still haven't had a lot of reps with CJ. What you've seen from spring till now, they're doing some seven-on-seven routes. They're watching film together. It's just that timing and that trust. Everybody runs certain routes. It's the same route, but they run it a little bit differently. So the timing is important.
“I've seen CJ really work on that timing with a lot of those guys. It's just continuously just stacking those reps and building that trust so that he knows how each guy that he is probably gonna play for is how they're gonna run that route.”
On defensive back DJ McKinney:
“He started going this summer. We've seen him in underwear, as we'll call it. We've seen him out there working out and doing different skills. But until you get the pads on, we'll figure out exactly what his role will be. His film from Colorado, he's gifted, he's a talented individual, smart, he prepares. I'm excited to see what he does as we get into fall camp, but there's high expectations for him.”
On retaining assistant coaches Jevaughn Codlin and Tre Reader and the value they bring to the program:
“J-Cod, he's valuable. He's valuable in recruiting. He's valuable in the development of helping the safeties. He's valuable in terms of what Coach Ash needs him to do, special teams.
“When we had opening, we know how much value he can provide. Is there an opportunity to bring him back? There was, he was interested in coming back and we were able to do that and bring him back, but he showed the value he had when he was here, right?
“The same thing with Tre Reader. Not only is Tre valuable, but he's a Notre Dame guy. He played. He's great. He makes the room better. He meets with a lot of our linebackers and he speaks from experience. Tre is a heck of a coach. And again, he's a guy that has a lot of value.
“When I say your role determines your value, if you don't do a good job in your role, you're not gonna have much value. But those two guys did extraordinary in the roles that they were given and their roles have increased.”
On expectations for Mylan Graham, Jaden Greathouse and Quincy Porter:
“Mylan had a really good spring. He improved tremendously. He had to continuously learn our playbook and all the little details of it, but he's gifted. He's really good, and I've seen him continuously improve over the summer.
“Jayden Greathouse, he's finally healthy, how do we keep him healthy? We have to be intentional about certain things to make sure that we have him when it matters, and so every individual's not the same. And so what we're gonna ask of Jayden Greathouse might be different of what we ask of Jordan Faison at fall camp. We've gotta make sure that he's ready to go as we get into a game, and so there's a lot of confidence in him. He's been having a good summer.
“Quincy Porter, he's doing more. He didn't do anything in the spring. He's starting to do more. He's still not 100 percent clear to do every single route, and so how do we keep progressing him? We can't pick and choose routes when we get to the game, so we gotta keep progressing him through the end of July and August.”
On what his trip to Korea was like this summer:
“Amazing experience. I felt a sense of guilt that I hadn't done that before. My mom came to the States in 1976 and the first time she went back was 2017. She went with my brother and my oldest son, Vinny. She'd been back probably two or three times before we went back that I wasn't able to go.
“You meet family, like blood family that you've never met. I'm four years old, and we met these, my family members. So there was a sense of connection, right, man, you're family. Not just Korean, you're my family. And to meet them, to learn my culture, it was a great experience to do that with my mom.
“We didn't actually go to her hometown, we went to Seoul, which is kind of like New York, like it's crazy, it's busy. But at some point, I thought I wanna come back and go see her hometown. They treated her the right way, and I'm grateful I could do that with them.
“Now, after a week of Korean food, I needed a break and probably the other thing is just that I learned that communication, the ability to communicate is so important. When you can't communicate, it's so frustrating. I can look at you, we can hang out, but I can't communicate with you. It's very frustrating and I gotta learn how to communicate or have a better translator.”
On where he sees the backup quarterback job going:
“They've all improved, but that's gonna be an important battle, right? That's just as important as every other position battle. Number one, how do you make sure your starting quarterbacks prepare? We can't cheat his reps to get prepared, but how do you give these three guys opportunities with the twos to perform? And with the threes to perform and how do we move them around to make sure they're all getting equal amount of opportunities?
“Then you have to make a decision who's the backup for week one. That doesn't mean they're backup for the season, right? How do you then progress from that? And who's going to scout team? How do you rotate guys on scout team? Those are all logistical things that Coach Guidugli and Coach Denbrock and I have to figure out. But number one of most importance is how do you continue to evaluate those guys with the twos and the threes, and keep track of them, and make sure they're all getting a fair amount of reps.”
On what he learned from Brian Kelly and what he hopes to get out of Kelly’s potential return visit for practice:
“I thought he did a great job of just leading this big, huge program, right? Making sure people are aligned and he did a great job of that. He did a really good job of expressing his beliefs and his standards that he had for our program. They were very clear.
“When you talk about his years of experience as a coach, I'm sure he could come here and evaluate and give me feedback from things that he saw. I know he's talked about coming to practice. He texts back and forth, and he wants to come around. If he does, then I'll tell him, hey, I want you to evaluate. I want you to give me some honest feedback because there's very few people that will give you honest feedback, I hope that you'll be willing to do that, because it can make us better.”
On the tight end room and freshman Ian Premer:
“He (Premer) looks ready. Right now, I haven't seen him put pads on, I haven't seen him put his face in there, but he's smart, he looks ready. You gotta continue to grow into this body that he has and be able to function with it, but it'd be interesting to see him in fall camp. I like what I saw so far.
“Number one, it's great to have Coop (Cooper Flanagan) back. We needed to get Coop back. He brings an element. There's an element in the past game, but he brings an edge. He brings a toughness, he brings a physicality that we need in that room. Then you got your James Flanigan, Ty Washington, Jack Larsen. Somebody's gotta emerge now.
“We know what Cooper can do, right? Let's see that next guy or two. We’re not going to be 13 personnel, maybe in a goal line. How do we continue to develop these guys and see who's the most consistent at what we're gonna need them to do? I love the depth of room, as you mentioned. We gotta figure out who we can rely on consistently.”
On making sure the Leave No Doubt messaging doesn’t create pressure:
“That message can be received differently by each and every individual. I wanna make sure the guys in our program receive it with clarity and what does leave no doubt mean? Leave no doubt means leave no doubt with what you've given us today, right?
“We can use the lesson of last year, but leave no doubt with what we're given. Every single day, but right now, and then we'll look back at the end of the season and say, did we leave doubt? That's what our guys have to continue to remember. It's not, okay, we gotta make sure we leave no doubt for this season. That's too big. Leave no doubt with what you're guaranteed, and that's today. Did you leave no doubt that you took advantage and you got better today? That's what I want that trigger to be when they hear that.”
On how much the Jack and Kathy Shields Family Hall can enhance the program:
“I think tremendously. The resources in that building. Recovery. I've already mentioned nutrition. The teaching, the space. There's the weight room. I mean, it's all to serve our players. I was very intentional about it. That was one of the strong inputs that I have, is that I don't want anything that's just for recruiting or that doesn't serve our players. Make it multi-purpose and it can help them if they utilize it the right way. If it helps you as individuals, it can help our program.”
On if there were red flags last year during fall camp with the defense:
“There weren’t issues in fall camp. Our defense played really well in fall camp, but it can be so different when you play yourself, you play your team. At some point, you gotta get away from each other.
“When I look at the plays in Miami that maybe we gave up defensively, it's execution. As we look back, did we practice that call versus that concept or not? That's my way of saying, don't just say it was a great play on our part, no. How can we self-evaluate and say, did we practice the plays that they made enough? And the answer might be, coach, we've never seen them run that. Let's be more creative, let's find a way to create plays.
“The thing I look back is, did we have injuries in fall camp? Did we have guys that couldn't make it through the entire game versus Miami? Why? Let's evaluate what happened during fall camp, where they were at physically, so that we can make sure we have them for the entire game. Those are probably more important to me, like, that we can really utilize to help us as we move forward into how we practice.”
On what he’s learned about CJ Carr outside the facility:
“He's learning. He's starting to be a chameleon. He can turn it on when he's in front of the camera and say the right things, and then off the camera, he's a competitor now.
“It might be him and Leonard (Moore) talking about the last workout and who won the offensive or defense. He is a competitive person in everything he does. He's learning to be able to be that person when cameras and people that he doesn't know aren't around and then when the cameras are there, he's able to be the representation of the quarterback in Notre Dame in the right way.
“He's a great kid, man, he's a great young man. Everybody respects him, they like him, but he doesn't care. He was surrounded by three defensive dudes. They kept saying four, like you're a defensive guy too, but he doesn't care. He's a competitor, man, he's cool.
“When you're arguing with somebody, at some point, you just go, all right, I'm done arguing, whatever, we can agree to disagree or you can win the argument. If he believes in something, he'll go until I jump in and say, all right guys, can we move on? Or if the car ride stops or train stops or the plane lands, but he's just a competitor. He is a competitive person, and he uses that.
“The one thing that people understand is not only is he blessed with competitive trait, he uses that to prepare. It's one thing to be competitive when it's a one-on-one situation when I go against an opponent. It's another thing to use that to prepare for the next opportunity that's coming. He knows there's an opportunity coming. As a football player or in practice, he uses that competitive spirit to prepare, to make him better and more prepared for that opportunity.”
On if anything surprises him that pops on his plate at this point:
“I think you don't know what you don't know as you begin this journey. I'm not talking losses in the game, I'm talking failures. They don't get any better. They don't hurt any less. But I think you can have a maturity and mindset to say, OK, how do we use this to get better? Not just dwell on it and say, I'm gonna wait for the next opportunity. I think that's probably the way I've grown.
“You realize what needs your energy and focus more important than others. You try not to let things that really shouldn't impact you, impact you, right? There's certain things that are maybe out of your control that you probably in my first year I would let impact me greater than it should have. I think that's it, that's probably more than anything. It's just going into year five, you have a different maturity to handle the failures and to handle the different changes, but they're a surprise all the time. I mean, commitments, decommitments, in seven days and stuff like that. There’s a lot of surprises.”
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