After a bye-week hiatus, Marcus Freeman resumed his Monday press conferences and began by reviewing the Louisville win. He announced the selections for Player of the Game, with Jeremiyah Love winning offensively, Xavier Watts winning defensively, and Max Hurleman winning special teams accolades.
Freeman then delivered a sobering update on the team’s injuries, beginning with the season-ending ACL injury for Boubacar Traore. The status of Cooper Flanagan, Gabe Rubio and Billy Schrauth remains questionable, while Jordan Faison, Josh Burnham and Christian Gray are probable. Finally, Freeman noted that Sam Pendleton’s recovery from a concussion against Louisville is far enough along that he’s also probable.
Asked what the team worked on during the bye, Freeman indicated that simply improving and looking ahead to future opponents were part of the process:
“Our focus for the bye week was, number one, we have to improve … improve at the fundamentals, improve at the tactical execution we’re doing and improve on some of the unforced errors that we’ve committed. The second thing I wanted to do was make sure we prepare for our upcoming opponents. Offensively, we prepared for Stanford, defensively, we also prepare for Stanford but also took a minute to work on some triple-option stuff as we know we have Navy in a couple weeks and Army following that.”
Freeman offered explanations for the rash of injuries suffered. However, he offered his full support of the team’s strength and conditioning program.
“I think you always gotta look for cause-and-effect but you also can’t make something up. Our sports performance team is a team I have so much confidence in terms of the way we prepare, the way we get our athletes ready to go. This is just part of the game and injuries happen, but you always look for ways to prevent injuries (and) you also have to make sure you’re prepared. There is no perfect formula.”
The loss of Traore and Jordan Botelho at defensive end was the basis for a question about that position’s depth. Freeman pointed to a quintet of players when noting it: Burnham, R.J. Oben, Bryce Young, Junior Tuihalamaka and Loghan Thomas.
“You have five quality individuals who can play the end position for us and we have to have guys step up, just like Junior has done.”
Freeman stated that there was no particular reason for the team’s recent success after a bye week and cited a variety of factors.
“I think every bye week is different. Where it occurs in your season, what injuries you have going on, your upcoming opponent. There’s a lot of different things you have to focus on during that specific bye week.”
Riley Leonard’s big game against Louisville was discussed by Freeman.
“I thought he did a really good job in terms of his preparation, in terms of his execution in the game and we’re going to continue to build on that.”
Addressing the Irish’s problems on third down is something that Freeman believes can be fixed by improving on the earlier downs.
“It’s mostly down and distance-driven. It should be common sense but the longer the third down yardage is to convert, the less percentage you have at converting them … How do we make sure we put our offense in better situations to have a shorter conversion on third down … Most important, we have to be better on first down.”
Preparing for Stanford presents some challenges, with Freeman indicating some of the issues from last year’s meeting against the Cardinal.
“They did some unique things in last year’s game where they gave us extra-wide splits … they utilize different personnel. They have some injuries, so we’re not 100 percent sure what we’ll see.”
The continued development of tackle Anthonie Knapp was hailed by Freeman.
“What he’s done is constantly improve from week one to week five and there’s a lot of confidence we have in Anthonie Knapp.”
Freeman indicated that no defensive line shifts to bolster the injury-depleted end unit are contemplated.
“There’s injuries that can happen. You have to have a Plan B and a Plan C and we do have that ready to go if something unforeseen happens.”
The realities of his busy home game day process was discussed by Freeman:
“There’s certain things you have to do as the head coach of this program on home games that are different than you do on away games. You can’t cheat that. You can can’t cheat meeting recruits because that’s the future of your program. You can’t cheat going to Mass, that’s the most important, that’s more important than anything. You have to talk to the officials and some other things you have to do. I’m intentional about my mind being in the place it needs to be before I take that field.”
