UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 4, 2024

Marcus Freeman

Press Conference

MARCUS FREEMAN: It's been a really good morning. Just got a call about 10, 15 minutes ago as we were coming over here that Madden Faraimo, his papers just came in and he signed. So that was a huge get for us that obviously came down to the last minute.

The rest of this class, who we feel very strongly about, we kind of knew, obviously, that they were going to sign, but Madden was a guy that came down to the last minute, and it just came in officially.

We're excited to officially welcome all these new members to our Notre Dame family. Our recruiting staff in collaboration with our coaches identified our needs, and we feel great about how we addressed them.

A lot of people contribute to the success in recruiting, and so I want to make sure I thank everybody that's involved, but especially our recruiting and personnel staff, coaches and support staff, admissions and academics, Fighting Irish media, and last but not least, this is a program built on values and relationships, and our families play a huge role in creating the atmosphere. So I want to make sure I thank all the families that were involved with recruiting.

I know you have specific questions about this class, but I'll open it up for questions from here.

Q. Marcus, how much has today's signing day changed in the short time since you took over as head coach?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that's changed is when they moved the signing day up a week and it's dead for us once the season is over, once week 12 is over, that's changed a lot because usually right after the last game of the season or week 12, you can go on the road and see all these families and see the guys that you think you're going to sign. That's made it more important than anything that we continue to have these relationships through FaceTimes, through Zooms, see the guys that you can during the season, then make sure there's no surprises on signing day.

Q. How different is it to evaluate a signing day, or how much fluidity is there because of the transfer portal, because the calendar has changed? I think a coach told me this morning the calendar has changed every single year since COVID. There hasn't been the same calendar once.

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think to each football program their own.

For us, the value of high school recruiting is of utmost importance. We're going to be a program that builds its foundation based off high school recruiting, and we will supplement recruiting with the transfer portal, but I never want to be a football program that majors in the transfer portal. We will minor in it at specific positional needs, but this is a huge day for us, and it's so important because this is what's going to be the foundation of this football program is the way we recruit in high school, the way we identify the needs that our program has and the way we develop these guys.

Q. Since you just mentioned him, can you give us the backstory on Madden signing with you here at this kind of late hour? What does it mean to have him in your class?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Well, I think it was a unique one, right, one that came down to today. We talked last night, and his mind wasn't made up. We talked this morning. His mind wasn't made up.

Sometime after his conversations with our coaching staff, myself, Chad Bowden, he came to the realization that this was the place he wanted to be.

It was funny, I was talking to him, I kept saying, man, choose hard, choose hard. That's what we use around here. He said, Coach, I chose God. I thought that was a powerful statement and speaks volumes about the young man and his family.

One of those ones that came down to the last minute, and until the papers came in, you still were on pins and needles.

He's important. This linebacker class as a whole was important. I think we ended up, we signed three linebackers. Really you look from Philadelphia with Anthony Sacca to Madden to Hawai'i with Ko'o Kia, it's coast to coast, almost worldwide; you've got to travel a lot of miles. But feel really good about this linebacker class.

Q. In terms of wide receivers, it was kind of an interesting path with the wide receivers. How would you characterize the wide receiver recruiting, and you have the number for scoring offense in the country, you have the much improved passing game. Do you think that shows up more next cycle than this cycle?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Shows up, you mean this class?

Q. In terms of wide receivers, like 2026 guys saying, yeah, I want to play there, where maybe the 2025 guys had their minds made up before the offense got in gear?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think for us, we were looking for speed. We got that, obviously, with Scrap Richardson and Elijah Burress and Jerome Bettis. We're looking for speed but also really good football players. That's what we feel like we got with this class in wide outs, and again, we're extremely happy about it, and we'll continue to recruit wide outs at a high level.

Coach Brown and Coach Denbrock have done a great job of showing how we use the wide receivers and how you're really able to reach your full potential here and reach your goals. I see us continuing to recruit wide outs at a high level.

Q. When it came to retention, how do you feel like the last 10 games sort of impacted not just retaining some of these recruits but also flipping others?

MARCUS FREEMAN: You know, with Erik Schmidt, that was huge for us, and being able to get a kicker at the last minute. I'm trying to just address your question in recruiting in terms of flipping guys or getting guys at the last minute.

But I think for us, retention, it still comes down to relationships, right, and making sure that the guys you coach and the guys that are in your program believe that they can reach their goals here, that this is the right place for them, and that the journey maybe that they foresaw on the front end isn't always how reality is.

But if they embrace the role and feel like they're a vital piece of this program, then I think that's how you retain those guys. Yes, winning matters. I think that's extremely important. These guys are all excited to really get ready to prepare for a playoff run. I think all those things contribute to retaining a roster.

Q. How much has Faraimo changed the way you view this class on the whole?

MARCUS FREEMAN: I think he is a huge piece of what we're looking for defensively. We wanted to get three linebackers. We had two for a long time. He's the third linebacker that adds a huge piece to what we were looking for defensively. I think we signed five D-linemen, six DBs, which was something we wanted to address, but we needed the third linebacker, and that was an important piece. Obviously he's a highly recruited kid, but I think he's a heck of a football player along with those other two guys.

Q. I guess I ask that more on the highly recruited part of it. It's a battle that you won, similar to Kingston last year in some ways. Does that sort of change, okay, these are battles we can and need to go out and keep winning?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think with the right guys. I'm very direct with our coaches and our recruiting staff to -- number one, we've still got to find the right fit and trust our evaluations. I don't know if you would have looked at last year's class and said that Anthony Knapp and Leonard Moore were the top-rated guys. Kingston was one of the top-rated guys. But those guys are contributing mightily for us right now. But that was an evaluation, and our coaches saw them live and in person and trusted their evaluation.

Yes, there's some truth to the recruiting rankings, but I think more important is that we still have to trust our evaluation and our eyes in terms of bringing in the right guys to this program. Obviously you've heard me say this before. We can't recruit everybody. We've got to recruit the guys that fit this place, but we want to get the best players in the country that do.

Q. I guess I can cross out this question that says do you anticipate adding anyone else to the class? That's it, just Faraimo?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah.

Q. The recruiting landscape changes, not even yearly, throughout the course of one year. I wonder if anything happened along the way during this process where you said, next year we're going to do it differently or next year we're going to do it this way?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Well, I think every year, shoot, every month, every day can change your approach to recruiting, your approach to your football program. As you said, it's changed yearly in the last four years.

But you have to be able to adapt. You have to be able to enhance because if you don't, I think you're going to get passed by.

We've got some innovative people on our staff. We try to continuously be forward thinking. Is roster limits going to happen and all these different things. You've got to have a plan for both, roster limits and no roster limits. Hey, 85 scholarships, you have to have a plan for both.

It's a challenge to all of us to continuously be forward thinking. What's next year going to look like, what's two years from now going to look like, what's our positional needs, what do we need to address in the transfer portal. I think constantly staying one step ahead or being quickly able to adapt your approach is really what's going to make people successful.

Q. In adding Blake to the quarterback room and then with everyone that you have coming back, does it feel like this is the year where maybe you decide that we have all we need and you don't need to go to the transfer portal?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah. I've said that, I think, during the season. We have no plans on going to the transfer portal for a quarterback.

Q. That being the case, like I said, adding Blake, what does he bring to the room, and with those four guys, if you get them all back, what do you have in that room?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I feel really strong about the guys we have in our quarterback room right now with Steve and Kenny and CJ. All possess different talent. All do things well. All have areas of improvement, like we all do.

But I feel really strong about the quarterbacks room as a whole. Adding Blake, really a guy that presents almost a dual threat, a guy that can extend plays with his legs, has a really good arm. What I love most about Blake in really the short time in being able to get to know each other is his competitive shirt, his leadership. You don't have to be in a room long with him to understand the leadership values that I believe quarterbacks must have, and he definitely possesses that leadership and competitive spirit that we look for.

Q. You mentioned scholarship numbers changing. When you get to 105 now in the future, what's the future of your preferred walk-on program if you're looking at guys from graduate all the way down to freshman year? It's always helped you. Are there spots for preferred walk-ons? Is the obvious answer they can be scholarship players now? And what's the future of that program?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, again, we have a plan, but it's not really -- I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about it because we don't know. I think they're going to vote on it in April to see if that's going to happen. We have a plan anticipating it does happen. We have a plan if it doesn't happen.

I value walk-ons. I've said that before. What the walk-on process and those guys have done for our program has been tremendous. The value they've brought into this current team has been tremendous.

It's something I don't ever want to totally get away from, but we've also got to look and see what's best. If they put roster limits in place, then we've got to make decisions what's best for our football program. But I never want to just truly abandon the walk-on process.

Q. Would there just necessarily be a few spots open for walk-ons in the future? Obviously if you've got 105 guys you want then there's not three or four spots open, but generally speaking.

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, there could be and should be.

Q. When you think about the overall health of a program, days like today are really big, and then obviously what happens on Saturdays are big. Could you kind of summarize how important the last four days are for Notre Dame football and just the position you feel like you guys are in right now?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Yeah, I think for us, my message to the team on Monday when we met was let's take this week to reload, recover, refocus, reenergize.

When you have an opponent on Saturdays, that drains you. That takes a lot of not even just the physical work but the mental approach because as we know, if we don't have the right mental approach, we can be beat. So you have to have the right mentality.

The thing about this week is we don't have an opponent. It's really been great as an entire football program to be able to just reset a little bit, and our guys have to focus on academics and finishing strong but also being able to physically recover.

This has been a really important week. This is our bye week. We don't have a first-round bye. So we have to utilize week 13 as our bye week. Once we hit Sunday and know our opponent, we've got to get ready to roll.

Q. You took a quarterback in this cycle. I think you've taken one every cycle so far. Do you think it's important to get a quarterback every single year, and given the reality of the portal, how difficult is it to keep four quarterbacks for four years?

MARCUS FREEMAN: You know, I think it will be difficult. You can only play one. But as you see right now, we have four quarterbacks on scholarship in our room that all want to be here. That's important, and it's a reflection of Coach Guidugli and Coach Denbrock and what they've really done with that quarterbacks room.

Yeah, every year you're going to take a quarterback, and I think with the understanding that you want to keep four quarterbacks on scholarship, but you also understand that at any moment somebody can go into the transfer portal, so at least you would have three. That's something that we in previous years and this year in continuing moving forward unless things change, we want to continue to do, take a quarterback.

Q. You guys have prioritized and had success with camp evaluations. How do those give you guys conviction on whether or not to offer or not offer someone?

MARCUS FREEMAN: I mean, there's nothing more crucial than a live eval. That's something that I feel strongly in. We encourage any guy we take to see him play live, see him practice live, see him work out live, have a camp eval, something where you can see -- you can get on a website and get times, but I think there's competitiveness that you can see in person. There's movement skills that you can see in person that tell you a lot about a prospect. So I think it's really important that we continue to get guys on campus and get live evals. We've had commits that come to camp. We want to see you compete. We want to coach you.

I think that's so important when you're looking for bringing in recruits to your program.

Q. The quality of Indiana high school football, again, you tap into that with three guys. Broadly, how have you seen it improve over your whole career in the Midwest, and maybe talk a little bit about each of those guys.

MARCUS FREEMAN: Well, I spent four years at Purdue, and Indiana football is strong. The best players in Indiana are guys that we're going to try to get to Notre Dame. We did a really good job this year, and I think we got three guys from this state that we feel really strongly about, and as you look at the Chicagoland area, that's another area that we want to make sure that we do a good job, in our state and in that Chicagoland area, and I think we got three commits out of there.

It's something we're going to continue to target, hey, let's try to target the best players in Indiana, make sure they feel like Notre Dame is their home and a place they want to be a part of, but also include that Chicagoland area.

Q. A number of guys with multisport backgrounds, some hockey, lacrosse, this and that. What's the benefit of that maybe when they give up those sports for good that they can plug into the physiological aspect, overcoming injuries along the way, just the competitive aspect of playing multiple sports at their highest level?

MARCUS FREEMAN: You know, I think there's movements that playing in different sports can really help you with in football. We can evaluate you in football. You see quite a few of our guys, Dom Hulak, James Flanigan, both are hockey players. I know Matty Augustine at one point I think was a hockey player. We've got Elijah Burress who was a track runner. I can go down the list about multisport athletes.

Yes, there's the basic athleticism, movement traits that different sports give you, but the thing I keep coming back to is that competitive spirit. It's hard to compete sometimes just going to a trainer, right, and somebody might say you're wrong because we can compete in our training session, but I want to see you go head to head in track. I want to see you go head to head in baseball, Brandon Logan. I want to see you play baseball, competitive spirit, and maybe not just look to specialize in one sport. I love multisport guys. It keeps you busy, keeps you in shape.

We've got some multisport athletes here at Notre Dame, guys that are playing football and playing -- they all play football, but playing baseball and lacrosse. We love that. I encourage that. I think it's something that we put tremendous value in.

Q. You've talked in the past about being an O-line driven program --

MARCUS FREEMAN: O-line/D-line.

Q. I wanted to ask specifically about the O-line. What stands out about the four guys you signed there?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Well, we wanted to target tackles, and we wanted a center, and that's what we got. We got three tackles that really we had them all in camp. We had Matty, we had Will, we had Owen all in camp, all live evals, offered them probably early before they kind of blew up.

Cam was a guy, he came to camp, we really liked him. We said, man, can we take a center, can we take a center. He's a center, maybe a guard, and he just kept playing and getting better and better and better, and then Coach Rudolph saw him live, and it's like, he's in our state, man, I do not want to play against this guy one day. We need him a part of this team. Really like what he brings to our offensive line room.

Q. You've also talked in the past about how team speed is really important. You mentioned it with the wide receivers. Where else do you feel like you've improved team speed with this class?

MARCUS FREEMAN: Well, I think you look at our DBs, we've done a really good job with recruiting DBs. It's probably our biggest DB class. As you look, we took six total in JaDon and Brandon Logan who's a guy we had in camp. JaDon came here and competed. Ethan Long is another guy that came to camp. Dallas Golden is extremely fast, can play both sides of the ball, one of the best that I've seen in high school, man. Really, really special player. Cree Thomas is another guy that we have live evals on, runs track, decathlete.

You look at that, and Mark Zackery, another multisport athlete. He's one of the few football players that can truly play basketball. Most of our guys that play basketball are football players just on the basketball court. He's a basketball player like when he's on the basketball court. He is a unique talent.

All those guys provide speed. All those guys provide a benefit to what we're looking for when we were looking to add to this recruiting class.