UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 16, 2024

Marcus Freeman

Press Conference

Notre Dame 35, Virginia 14

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, any win, you know, it was a great win. A great team victory. It's what we as expired to do all week for our seniors on a Senior Night. This obviously isn't the end of our season but this is the night we said was going to be Senior Night and our last guaranteed opportunity for our seniors to play in this stadium.

So it was important for us to make sure that we achieved the team glory that we aspired to have I told them in the locker room, we'll fix the film. There's always plays to fix. We have to evaluate it and figure out the whys, and we will.

But enjoy this victory. Heal up. We've got to continue to improve as we go throughout the season. That's going to be the ultimate challenge is we can't look at outcomes. We can't. We've got to evaluate everything and continue to find ways to improve and get ready for our next opponent.

With that, I'll open up for questions.

Q. I know you don't have a lot of time to reflect but when you think back to your first home game this season to where you are today, how do you assess the growth and development of your team?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, the first postgame press conference was a lot different than this one.

But it's just a testament to the work this group put in, and you know, the outcome of that game, you know, obviously made us feel a certain type of way in terms of what we have to do to improve.

But we've got to continue to look at the whys and what happened. That's what this group has been doing. Like trying to truly evaluate and have a sense of urgency to improve, and that's what I see from the start of that first postgame press conference to now is a group that has improved through experience, but also through intentional actions, and the result has been pretty good.

Q. Do you understand -- or what was the explanation on the fake punt?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, you know, it was really an interpretation of the rule, as I told them, obviously called down, let's just talk and get it figured out postgame in terms of how we interpret the rule. We were in shotgun, which we assume we are able to do, and they said no, you're not. You're not able to do that in the special teams formation we were in.

Listen, they have got a job to do, and you know, I might have disagreed at the moment, but I got the utmost respect for our officials.

Q. You guys forced five turnovers in the first half, one on special teams but the rest on defense. Regardless what the offense looks like in a given week or at a given point within that week, what does your defense allow you guys to do big picture?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think when you look at the big picture, it gives our entire program, all three phases, a chance to have success. When your defense is playing as well as we're playing, it allows you to still be in the game and be in a position to win, maybe when you weren't having the success you want offensively to start the game.

And so the defense is doing a heck of a job, and offense is doing a good job, man. We've just got toe eliminate some of those early game three-and-outs in situations where we are not moving chains as much as we want, and as you look at that, most of them come from penalties or negative yardage plays that we've just got to make sure that we clean up.

But yes, the defense is doing a heck of a job but I'm proud of all three phases.

Q. Do you think you'll play another game here this year?

MARCUS FREEMAN: What I think doesn't really matter, man. Like, let's go to work, right. Let's give this program a chance to play in this stadium one more time, right.

It doesn't matter what I think.

Q. When you were the defensive coordinator here and Watts made the flip over to defense, what did you see in him in those early days that led you to believe maybe he would be something close to what he is now?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I didn't know, obviously, early in that change that he would be the player he is now. But you saw some flashes with the Navy game of 2021, and you saw some flashes. That was the first week he played safety.

And tracking a ball tackler and closing space, a lot of times it's natural instincts, and he's a guy that showed in that game, man, he's a guy that can track the ball and make some plays that we didn't have. To see the development from that point to where he's at now to be one of the best players in the country, it's a testament to his God-given ability, but the work he's put into it. He's put a tremendous amount work into becoming the player he is now.

Q. I know the whys are a lot easier when you've seen film on Sundays. Weird statistical game. You guys were so good on first and second down. One third down conversion, and a bunch of penalties. Do you have any clue on the whys?

MARCUS FREEMAN: There's obviously some that are obvious, some of the holding penalties we can't hold. We have to be better. We can't put our offense behind the sticks, right, behind the chains. That's the thing that stuck out to me more than anything is that we were in a lot of third and long situations. The percentage of converting those are not good, no matter who you are.

And so what we've got to do is a better job of putting our offense in better third-down situations, and that means no penalties, and that means, you know, continue having positive plays and not negative yardage plays. That's going to be crucial as we move forward.

Q. You mentioned having to calm down after the fake punt fiasco. Have you ever been that heated as a football coach in a game, and what is it like as a relatively young coach to come down from that and keep coaching? Because obviously there's a football game left to play.

MARCUS FREEMAN: I've been heated plenty of times. Maybe not displayed it like that. You know what, it's like you tell your players, you've got to reload, right. No matter what happened the last play, you've got to move forward. And I probably took a little bit longer than I should have. It's not a great example for your players.

You've got to be able to -- you might be frustrated, say whatever you had to say. Most the time I was trying to get interpretation of, hey, this is what we did, what's your interpretation.

But you have to emotionally get yourself under control because you've got a job to do, right. We were still in a two-minute situation that do we want to call time and all those things.

So you have to make sure, man, you control your emotions and really get focused on this play because that play, they called it. You've got to move on, right. Doesn't matter if you like the call or not. You have to move forward. That's most important.

Q. For the defense to respond to that the way it did, taking the ball away, and the offense punching it in, what did that say about your performance?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Huge. It was almost a spark. I think -- I can't remember Faison or somebody had a long play on offense that got called back. Jayden Harrison, right. And then Faison goes and he scores on that fake punt. He gets called back.

You know, and it's just like a spark. Our defense gets a takeaway. I think it was Don or Leonard, we go and we score. Then we get another takeaway, and we go an we score. That was huge. That was huge to win the half.

But my message tonight, we can't wait for a spark. The sense of urgency has to be from play one to the end of the game. That's what we have to make sure we continue to do.

Q. After the pick and then you guys punch it in in that situation after the fake punt was wipe out, it felt like the crowd was really into it, too, with you guys. What's it like in a moment like that when you can maybe feel your crowd and your team really being connected there?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, it's special. That's why you love playing at home. You can definitely feed off the emotions from the crowd. I think it's contagious. I think everybody was emotional but in the right mindset after that play.

So it's contagious. We continue to feed the emotion with success, and it was a good moment.

Q. Your program right now, how connected do you feel all three phases with what you guys are doing on and off the field?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I mean, the two stats we look at most to look at how well we are playing complementary football is the battle of field position and turnover margin.

We have not lost a turnover margin other than one game a year, and that was Northern Illinois. And we've won the battle of field position I think almost in every game we play. I have to go back and look.

But we'll see what it was today, but that's what complementary football is, is turnover margin and the battle of field position because that includes all three phases.

Q. I believe today you are now No. 1 in the country in pass efficiency defense, which you were last year. You lose Benjamin Morrison; can you give us a macro sense of why the pass defense is as good as it is?

MARCUS FREEMAN: I think we do some good things schematically. Coach Golden and the defense really do some really good things with getting pressure up front. Like there's a lot of things that go into the what. I just told them before the game, we all like to look at the what. You've got the No. 1 pass defense in the country. We evaluate the whys which to me there's more than just pass rush. There's coverage, the change ups, the players that we have. All those things go into the what, right. All those things go into the what, which is having a really good pass defense.

I don't even know if we have enough time for me to list the whys. I gave you some big picture whys but there's a lot of reasons. I go back to the scout team, right. The look that our scout team gives us that challenges us in practice.

So we know if we are not exactly where we need to be, we are going to get exposed. There's a whole bunch of things that go into that but starts with really good players and a really good coaching staff.