Marcus Freeman began his weekly press conference on Monday by summarizing Saturday’s 28-3 win. He indicated the players of the game were Riley Leonard on offense, Boubacar Traore on defense, and Bryce Young on special teams. Freeman then noted that tight end Cooper Flanagan is out this week with an ankle injury, and Josh Burnham remains a question mark. Freeman then noted that cornerback Jaden Mickey will be redshirted before entering the transfer portal after this season.
The poise of Riley Leonard in dealing with the pressures of being in the high-profile spotlight was discussed by Freeman.
“As we meet and we talk, he understands what the position he holds entails, the expectations, and he’s doing a great job of handling those things.”
A few hours before the press conference, the school established a new NIL collective agency named RALLY, with Freeman explaining the concept.
“It’s great because it works as an agency for our student-athletes and it’s gonna be a great way … as college athletics change, it puts our student-athletes at a great advantage in terms of being able to capitalize off their NIL.”
Looking at this week’s opponent, Louisville, and the major challenge they present, Freeman, in comparison to last year’s meeting.
“Defensively, they’re an aggressive, attacking (and) are gonna challenge you to stop the run. That’s something that they take a lot of pride in doing and make you throw the ball over top. They give you some different looks and those were things they did to us last year. Offensively, I think they take a lot of pride in running the ball.
Last year’s loss at Louisville and how it factors into the team’s collective mindset was noted by Freeman.
“It’s not gonna be a lack of motivation … There’s a lot of great learning opportunities from that game and I’m going to preach to our team is that I’m not revisiting last year to motivate you, I’m revisiting last year to learn from those things that we have to learn from that that game presented. It’s a lot like therapy, sometimes you gotta revisit those dark places to get out of it what you need to.”
Saturday’s game will have most Irish fans clad in green for the GREEN OUT promotion, though Freeman said that captains will vote on whether to wear green jerseys.
“I’m gonna let them make the decision if they want to wear the green jersey or not … I like to leave that in the hands of our captains.”
The pending transfer of Mickey was then explored by Freeman, beginning with how it affects the remaining reserve cornerbacks.
“It will increase Leonard Moore’s role, it will increase Carson Hobbs’ role. That’s why you gotta to continue to have depth. Those two guys are definitely capable of getting the job done.”
Mickey’s situation and Freeman’s attitude about the departure came at the end of the press conference.
“Everybody’s gonna have an opinion, myself included. But it’s not our opinion that really matter. Jaden Mickey made a decision that he felt was best for him. So for me to do anything but support him, it’s selfish. I’m not in his shoes and I don’t know what’s going on in his life.”
The effective performance on Saturday by center Pat Coogan and left guard Rocco Spindler was cited by Freeman who praised the entire line’s play on Saturday.
“I think if you look at the overall performance of that game, those two played particularly well. The entire offensive line played well.”
Leonard throwing deep and his overall consistency was then a topic of discussion.
“As you evaluate the film, we actually threw the ball downfield really well, probably the best that we’ve done but we missed some layups (short passes).”
Freeman later noted how the size and speed of Leonard makes it difficult for him to be tackled.
“You might look at Riley and say, ‘How well can he run?’ and he can roll and we saw that in practice.”
Notre Dame’s continued defensive success in the red zone after struggling in 2022 was discussed by Freeman.
“I always say delayed gratification is patience plus strategy. It’s not just doing the same thing over again and expect it’s gonna get better.”
Freeman’s anger at Adon Shuler for a personal foul late in the first half on Saturday was explained.
“We pride ourselves on being a disciplined football team. Every Friday, we watch clips of other teams making mistakes and we say we gotta learn from the mistakes of others. We have a rule around here to hand the ball to the official and he didn’t do that and got called for a personal fouI. I lost my temper a little bit but the first thing he said was, ‘Yes sir, I own it.'”
