No More Mulligans for Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame

When Notre Dame hired Marcus Freeman as a first-time head coach three years ago, everyone knew there would be bumps along the road. It was inevitable. After the latest embarrassing loss for the program – loss to 28-point underdog Northern Illinois at home – under his watch, though, there can be no more mulligans for head coach Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame. This has to be it before we start to have a serious conversation.

In 29 games as the head coach at Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman has watched helplessly as his team lost to an opponent that was a 16-point or greater underdog, all from the sidelines of Notre Dame Stadium. If we filter out just the home games, Freeman has lost 3 of 13 games from inside Notre Dame Stadium as a more than two-touchdown favorite. Some coaches go an entire career without losing that many home games as a two-touchdown favorite.

Two of these three losses came within the first seven games (including the Fiesta Bowl in which Freeman’s team blew a 28-7 lead), which were at least somewhat understandable even if they weren’t acceptable. Freeman was in the first year of being a head coach and still learning on the job. Yesterday’s loss, however, was in year three and just a week after one of the best wins the program has had in years. It was neither understandable nor acceptable. It also has to be the last time we describe a home loss in such a way with Freeman in charge of the program.

Freeman himself had no answers for why this keeps happening under his watch. “Absolutely.  Absolutely,” Freeman answered when asked whether he felt the program was past this point after previous failures. ” I felt the preparation was exactly where we needed.”

That doesn’t instill much confidence if the head coach thought they prepared well and didn’t know why his team looked like they wanted to be doing anything but playing against a hungry Northern Illinois team that was the antithesis of the Irish yesterday. They played hard, they executed, they played thru the whistle, they hustled. You could say about three or four players with a gold helmet yesterday. And when the issue is that widespread, it’s a coaching problem, not a player problem.

What is more worrisome, however, is that Freeman doesn’t know why this keeps happening or seems to have an answer for how to fix it. “We’ve been here before, right?  We’ve been here before,” Freeman said, likely without realizing how damning the admission was for his failures as a head coach.

“Now it’s time to get it fixed,” Freeman stated. We’ve got to get it fixed and get back to playing football the way we know how to play. We’ve played before, and we can, and we will.” Great, but the only problem is Freeman offered no real plan for fixing it. And considering we’re now in the middle of a season, it’s fair to wonder if he can fix it before the end of the year if he figures out why it keeps happening.

Former Notre Dame assistant coach brings Miami of Ohio, a better MAC team than the one that just bullied Notre Dame, in two weeks and will come into Notre Dame Stadium thinking they can do the same thing Northern Illinois just did. Will Freeman have an answer by then? He better because this can’t keep happening at this point in his tenure without a serious conversation about his long-term viability as the head coach of the program.

Notre Dame has given Freeman everything he needs to succeed as the head coach of the program. They locked in Al Golden to an extension and opened up the checkbook to lure Mike Denbrock from LSU, although after yesterday’s “gameplan,” it’s fair to wonder if LSU is missing Denbrock right now. Notre Dame has greenlit expansions of support and analytics staff for Freeman. They’ve even embraced NIL, which has allowed the program to be competitive in the transfer portal and recruiting trail. Again, after yesterday’s performance from transfer quarter Riley Leonard, it’s also fair to wonder if embracing the portal has been a positive thing for the program.

Freeman does not need to win out to avoid the hot seat at this point, but he absolutely has to avoid another disaster loss that makes the program the laughing stock of college football again to do so. A week ago it looked like the Irish were set up to make a run at the playoffs after walking into Kyle Field without flinching. A week later, it’s hard to look at any game as a gimme after losing at home to a four-touchdown underdog.

Tyrone Willingham, Bob Davie, and Charlie Weis combined to lose four games to unranked teams while being ranked in the top 10 in their combined 13 seasons. Freeman has done it twice in 29 games (the Irish were not ranked when losing to 16-point underdog Stanford in 2022). All three of those coaches were eventually fired by Notre Dame.

Freeman can avoid a similar fate if he fixes whatever he is failing to do to prepare his team for these games because, despite a growing list of inexplicable losses, he has done a lot of good as well. A road night game in a place like Kyle Field used to be a recipe for disaster for Notre Dame, but Freeman had his team more than ready to tackle the environment. That is part of what makes his inability to have his team prepared to tackle anything a week later all the more perplexing.

He’s also elevated Notre Dame’s recruiting to levels we haven’t seen since Lou Holtz’s days. Several players on this year’s team wouldn’t have been at Notre Dame had Brian Kelly remained in charge because he bought into the “shopping down a different aisle” mantra and didn’t challenge his staff the way Freeman has.

This year’s squad features one of the most talented and deepest rosters that Notre Dame’s had since Holtz. Again, though, that makes yesterday all the more maddening and unacceptable at this point in his tenure. Bob Davie was a pretty good recruiter, too, and that alone couldn’t save him when his teams continued to underachieve. Davie, like Freeman, was a first-time head coach with a defensive background whose teams always struggled offensively.

One interesting dynamic in this is that the AD who hired Freeman is no longer in charge. Freeman was Jack Swarbrick’s hand-picked successor to Brian Kelly and was still AD for those first two inexplicable losses in 2002. Freeman has to answer to a new boss this time. Will Pete Bevacqua be as patient as Swarbrick, who had to know that there would be some potentially embarrassing moments for a first-time head coach, or will he deliver an ultimatum to find a solution immediately since hiring Freeman wasn’t his decision?

Every loss does not have to be a referendum on a program and a head coach, but one as bad as yesterday’s most certainly is. Freeman doesn’t have much time to figure out what exactly he is doing wrong in these situations, but it’s painfully clear that Notre Dame can’t afford another one of these losses anytime soon.