UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 28, 2024

Marcus Freeman

Press Conference

Notre Dame 31, Cardinals 24

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, man, great win. Obviously wasn't perfect as everybody saw, we saw, our players saw. When you find a way to get it done when it matters most. Defense had to go out there and prevent them from scoring that last drive.

A lot of confidence. I know the game gets close, but we have a lot of confidence in our defense. It's why I'm so aggressive as a coach on fourth down. You got a lot of confidence in your defense.

You know, I'm proud of them. Proud of the coaching staff. Proud of the players in terms of how we learned hopefully from the lessons this last year taught us, from the lessons of this year, and we were able to go out and perform and get the job done.

At the end of the day, we are evaluated win or no. Did you get it done? We found a way. We'll go back. We'll clean it up as we go into the bye week, look at the areas of improvement, have a plan and attack them.

We know we got to improve. Seven guaranteed games I told them. We're going to need everybody. Have to continue to get better, but it's a great feeling going into the bye week with a big win over a good Louisville team.

I'll take questions.

Q. Pretty emotional day and right out of the gate first play they get a turnover that has a big momentum swing. A lot goes on in the first minutes. What's the message to the guys when there is such a big flip of momentum so early?

MARCUS FREEMAN: You got to reload. You know, that's coaches and players and things happened within a game. You know, your frustration, you want to get mad and scream and the player feels like crap, but you got to reload and you got to refocus on the next play.

That's why this game is so important. The ability to win the plays between plays is what's really I think makes great teams great. That's a message I've always said. No matter what happens the last play, take the emotion out. You don't control probably the first thought, but you control the second thought. You first thought is to be upset and feel sorry for yourself, and the second thought is the most important, and that's to reload and refocus.

Q. Your defense forces three turnovers. Only gave up one score on a full field possession. How much does your confidence in them dictate the way you're able to call a game?

MARCUS FREEMAN: It does. Again, when you feel like -- when you have confidence, I have confidence we were going to make the fourth and two. I think we had two fourth and ones that we were successful with.

You know, we have a plan going into the game of, hey, what's the yardage that we want to be aggressive and go for it. At that moment it was two yards. I was really confident how the defense was playing, and they played well afterwards.

A guy made a 56-yard field goal. That's a heck of a kick. So, again, hindsight you don't make it. I want to continue to be aggressive. I want our team to be aggressive. We have to be aggressive, an aggressive mentality. That was a reflection of that.

Q. It's one thing to feel like you have a great call; still has to be executed. When your team goes out there and executes, especially in those clutch moments when you hadn't executed particularly well at other times, what did you take from that and what do you learn? How much confidence does it give you maybe moving forward?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, we played lights out of the first half, especially offensively. I want to go back and -- again, it's hard when you're out there trying to stay focused on every single play. I want to go back and see. It was good. We were aggressive, threw some deep balls, had success in run game and passing game.

Second half we weren't as successful. Punt, punt, turnover on downs, and then J-Love has a great play. That's something we worked on all week. That was a big screen. Then we knew after this first down after the time out we were going to call that.

Again, let's evaluate it, continue to be aggressive, both sides of the ball, but especially offensively. Riley, man, he had a great week and performed really well.

Q. Then Leonard Moore leads with tackles in his first career start. When did you know you would have to go to him and what kind of example does that set for everybody.

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah Christian was going to try to go. He had a shoulder sprain and was going to try to go. Thought he was going to be able to go.

After the pre-game warmup just wasn't ready. Wasn't going to be able to get the job done that we needed. We went to Leonard, and we have a lot of confidence in Leonard and he played really well.

Q. Max Hureleman on punt return. How did that come about?

MARCUS FREEMAN: The decision came about in practice this week when we were game planning against our punt unit. We wanted to be aggressive and we knew we could probably get the opt time to be affected by our aggressiveness, and we thought Faison would give us the best chance to maybe get back there and block a punt.

But Max has shown us that he's reliable, will catch the ball, and will be aggressive. He did a really good job stepping up today.

Q. Boubacar's status?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Lower leg, knee injury I think. Don't know. They just told me he was out for the game. Hopefully I'll have more information here soon.

Q. Beyond Leonard Moore you had some shuffling to do back in the defensive backfield. Jordan Clark looked like he was playing a different role for a while. Rod Heard. Can you speak to their readiness to be able to do that and how much of this was just today and how much have they been working on emergency Plan B?

MARCUS FREEMAN: You have to have a plan for Plan B, C, and D. We didn't have a lot of practice reps, I'll tell you that, with expecting Christian to try to give it a go. So we didn't have a whole bunch of practice reps.

It happened. You know, B-Mo goes down in the second half. We knew if that happened we were going to put Jordan Clark at corner. He did a good job. You got to have a plan. Okay, hey, we're going to move this guy. Happens to have been at corner this year, but has previous to the corner position. So here is our game plan if he has to go to the corner position.

So you have to have Plan B, C, D ready to roll. They did a good job.

Q. And then from your players' standpoint, I would imagine it's going to be a pretty busy bye week for the trainers. As far as the coaching staff, where do you want your focus to be?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, we have to get better. That's the most important thing. Part of this week will be out recruiting. You know, we have to continue to recruit and go see some guys.

But the main emphasis of this week is how do we improve. Part of improving will be to get healthy. Got to get healthy in areas that we can.

Got to look at schematically where can we continue to enhance. We have to get better. I'm confident we will.

Q. When you guys get the ball back, I believe about five minutes to go. How much did Louisville stymieing the run game with Jeremiyah influence you guys to call the three runs from Leonard and what did you see from those three plays?

MARCUS FREEMAN: I think five minutes left in the game and they had no timeouts. We said we have to be smart. If it gets to third down, let's be aggressive and try to throw it.

If Mitch wasn't open, said, hey, let's keep ball in bounds. Do not throw it away. We have to utilize those 40 seconds. Every second matters. That's the thing you learn as a head coach, is that a play that happens with four minutes left in the game is going to affect the end of the game.

Again, it wasn't beautiful because we didn't get a first down, but we ran 120 seconds off the clock, which was crucial. Then as you go to punt, you're able to take off another 40 seconds.

We would've loved to have been able to finish the game with the ball in our offense's hands, but we were really looking at time management right there.

Q. Sort of talked about this in the beginning, big picture-wise what did it mean for you guys to respond the way that the game started with the kickoff and the quick touchdown? Not just in this game but who you guys are in terms of being able to respond to that kind of adversity going forward.

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, we knew going into this game, you know, Louisville I think under Brohm is top in the country in terms of opening drives, opening drives on defense. I don't think they allowed an opening drive touchdown since he's been there.

And then on offense, they got top five in terms of scoring rate. That was an emphasis for us: start fast. Started with a fumble. It was great to see our guys reload and our offense to be able to go out there and drive 75 yards down the field and score.

It was huge. We were aggressive. We were aggressive and we handled adversity all in the first quarter.

Q. Until Riley got a little banged up in the second quarter was probably playing his best football of the year. How fine is the line between staying with him, knowing that things are a little bit limited offensively, or did a two-score lead and the defense just dictate the approach you took in the second half?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, after the first half, I think we were up 24-14. I thought our offense played lights out the first half. There was no even consideration of changing quarterbacks going into the second half.

We didn't have a lot of success in the second half, and I always say you are going to blame the quarterback. That's what you do. You're supposed to do. You're going to blame the head coach. That's what you're supposed to do. We will go back and see what decisions Riley made in the second half that weren't good.

Damn it, he played really are well in the first half. Our whole entire offensive didn't play great in the second half. It's easy to point the finger at Riley, but I'm proud of the way he performed today and led our offense to victory.

Q. Could you give us some insight as to the conversation between and Coach Denbrock as you went through the second half?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Hey, we got to get a first down. What we're doing right now is not working. Let's try something else. That's about it.

Q. Was Riley physically compromised between the second and third down? Looks like he was shaken, pretty slow moving when you guys took a timeout.

MARCUS FREEMAN: He's banged up. We ran him. We knew we were going to have to run him. Tough, tough guy. He is tough. Sacrifices his body. I think he might have got kneed in his thigh or something like that. I don't know exactly what it was. He said I'm good to go. I want the ball in my hands.

It's the competitor he is. He's a tough, tough person, man.

Q. I believe Sullivan was in it the game late. Left guard. Was that a coaching decision or injury related decision?

MARCUS FREEMAN: No, that was injury decision with Sam. He got I think rolled up on or something like that.

Q. The first drive with Riley, is that kind of the quarterback you've been waiting to see where it's like felt like he had command of the offense?

MARCUS FREEMAN: That's the offense I want to see. That's a perfect drive on offense. It's not just about Riley. We ran the ball well, too.

Thought our whole entire offense did really, really good job on the first drive.

Q. Emotions at the end of the game, I don't know if that was spillover from last year, players and Louisville going back and forth off the field. Was that the tone of the game today or kind of a hangover from last year?

MARCUS FREEMAN: I didn't see it. I just ran to shake coach as hand. I'm sure they're competitors, everybody is competitors. You know, I'm sure they talk a little mess to each other between both sides of the ball. Nothing I was aware of.