SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When Marcus Freeman stepped to the podium inside Notre Dame Stadium on Wednesday, he was there to end one season as much as look forward to the next one. Maybe Freeman didn’t offer closure on the painful ending to 2025 that few saw coming, but the Irish head coach at least gave the program a path beyond it.
Here are eight final thoughts on Freeman’s re-emergence this week and what they mean for Notre Dame’s future.
1. Can we be adults about Freeman and the NFL?
If Notre Dame keeps winning, Freeman will keep getting calls from the NFL. He even said he’d welcome that perpetual interest from the next level. And at some point, maybe Freeman reciprocates, applying his “challenge everything” motto to his career, deciding he wants to work at the highest level. So be it. But staying or going doesn’t need to be a loyalty test. It doesn’t need to be a referendum on Notre Dame’s commitment to football or its head coach. Every NFL opening doesn’t need to generate fan base-wide panic. And can we stop putting Freeman atop watch lists for other college searches?
Freeman is just 40 years old. He’s been in this job for five seasons. That already puts him among the 20 longest-tenured head coaches at the Power 4 level. He’s actually tied with nine other Power 4 coaches at No. 20, including Brent Venables, Lincoln Riley and Dan Lanning. Put another way, of the 12 teams on next year’s schedule, only BYU’s Kalani Sitake has been in his job longer than Freeman.
College football is a year-to-year sport now. It’s the world we’re living in, like it or not.
If Notre Dame makes another College Football Playoff run, Freeman will again be at the top of NFL coaching lists. And that’s OK. Notre Dame is giving him every reason to stay, but ambition can be a hell of a drug.
2. Turns out, Notre Dame knew what it was doing in the transfer portal despite some early false starts. It was interesting to hear Freeman describe general manager Mike Martin as sort of the adult in the room, while the head coach seemed to get sucked into the transfer window panic of Notre Dame missing out on receiver Nick Marsh (Indiana) and defensive lineman Mateen Ibirogba (Texas Tech). The Irish needed talent infusions at defensive tackle and wide receiver. And they were failing to get them.
Until they weren’t.
Notre Dame finished with eight portal pickups. It filled its needs. The group should produce at least three starters. Seven of the additions have multiple years of eligibility. A source close to Ohio State said Notre Dame got into a bidding war for receivers Mylan Graham and Quincy Porter … and won them. Does that feel like something a disorganized operation could do?
“I’m an aggressive person. You know that in terms of I want to go a thousand miles an hour,” Freeman said. “Mike Martin continued to reiterate to me, he said, Marcus, let’s run our race, run our race. He has a lot of experience with free agency from his NFL time, and I trusted him. And again, I didn’t hear, I didn’t read all the noise, but I’m sure, listen, I don’t have to be on Twitter to know what the noise is.”
Notre Dame needed somebody to cut through all that noise. Usually, that’s Freeman. This time, it was probably Martin.
3. If the portal were a box score, Notre Dame was down 10-0 midway through the first quarter.
And it won the game 42-13.
Freeman talked about re-evaluating the portal plan next cycle, which needs to include hosting visitors on opening weekend. That’s just operationally good business. Maybe next year’s roster needs more of a finishing piece that could cost at the level of Marsh or Ibirogba. Maybe Notre Dame will have to go for a $4 million quarterback. Sources close to Notre Dame indicated the program has those resources to burn when needed. That doesn’t mean Notre Dame will spend just to prove it can.
4. The most interesting part of Notre Dame’s class is how the university (not the football program, necessarily) let it happen. Undergraduate transfers have been problematic since … forever. And suddenly they’re not, with Freeman lauding vice president for undergraduate enrollment Micki Kidder on Wednesday for the assist.
In the past, the football program struggled to get answers on undergraduate transfers — combing transcripts, deciding what credits would count at Notre Dame, etc. Even Riley Leonard said much of his academic work at Duke didn’t follow him to Notre Dame because Notre Dame didn’t have his major. He was at Duke! When Brandon Joseph transferred from Northwestern four years ago, Notre Dame almost lost him because it couldn’t get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down fast enough.
If Notre Dame continued to operate that way in this condensed two-week portal window, it would have made Freeman’s job brutally difficult. Instead, Notre Dame is approving potential transfers on the front end, essentially getting football an answer before it absolutely needs one.
Like most success stories, this one has multiple authors. But the fact that it’s been written at all is a game-changer for the football program.
Keon Keeley (31) could prove to be the most interesting incoming transfer for Notre Dame when paired with new defensive line coach Charlie Partridge. (David Leong / Imagn Images)
5. Keon Keeley probably won’t be the most impactful of Notre Dame’s incoming transfers, but he’s the most interesting when paired with new defensive line coach Charlie Partridge. Because if Keeley still has the athletic potential that made him the highest-rated defensive prospect to commit to Notre Dame in the history of Rivals.com, Partridge should be able to get it out.
It’s good for Notre Dame and good for Keeley that no one has to rush this. The Irish don’t need Keeley to be more than the third end this season. He can start the year after that. Can Keeley be a better version of Josh Burnham or Junior Tuihalamaka? That’s all Notre Dame needs from the 6-foot-5, 282-pound athlete.
6. Among the bows tied Wednesday was the merciful end to the he-said, he-said drama between Notre Dame and USC about the rivalry ending. When Freeman talked up Notre Dame playing USC anytime, anyplace, it turned out he had limits: The Irish didn’t want to play the Trojans in Week 0, assuming they could through an NCAA rule exception. And so USC pounced on that language, plus the implications involving College Football Playoff selection, as reasons to end a series that it wanted to end.
“You know me, I’m a competitive individual. And I want to go and go play anytime, anywhere,” Freeman said. “But at the same token, it’s important that I make decisions, too, that are best for the program. And to move a game that we were pretty sure was going to be Week 12 to Week 0 isn’t what’s best for our program.
“And they had to make decisions that were best for their program. I don’t blame them. They had to make decisions. We had to make decisions. And so blame me.”
7. Of course, Notre Dame did not want to play “anytime, anywhere” after not making the CFP on Selection Sunday. In the “Here Come The Irish” docuseries, Freeman said he was proud of the captains for opting out of the bowl game. But Freeman also said he challenged them on it, basically asking if they were sure they wanted to do it.
“Maybe the first time was, ‘I don’t know,’ but I challenged them again, and I challenged them again, right up till we had to make, ‘OK, we have one minute to make this decision. I’m going to ask you one more time, and I’m going to talk to the leaders. Are you guys sure this is what we want to do?’” Freeman said. “Because I didn’t want them to regret it, and they were convicted in their decision, and I fully support them.”
Of course, a head coach can support his players’ decision without agreeing with it.
8. Oh yeah, next season. About that …
“Moving forward, we can’t blame it on somebody else,” Freeman said. “Although I may be confused about some of the criteria and the committee’s rankings and all those different things, it’s our job as we move forward to make sure we leave no doubt.”
That’s exactly what Freeman needed to say and what Notre Dame (not just inside the football program) needed to hear. Yes, Notre Dame got unfairly bounced from the CFP on Selection Sunday. Yes, the criteria used were logically inconsistent at best. Yes, Notre Dame had won 10 straight games, all by double digits. Yes, Notre Dame would have been favored against most of the CFP field.
And none of that matters now.
It’s easy to pick up the “Leave no doubt” theme and think Notre Dame will play to blow the doors off teams next season. But that’s not really the point. There can’t be doubt in the defensive call sheet. There can’t be doubt at quarterback. Notre Dame had more questions than it realized at the start of last season. Or maybe it had too few answers. Either way, that’s the doubt Freeman has to eradicate during the next eight months.
“It’s my job to make sure we’re ready,” Freeman said. “And as you look at last year, I don’t care what the score was, we weren’t prepared to go out and win that game (at Miami). We didn’t win it. And so, I’ve really self-evaluated the entire program. How can we tweak certain things to hopefully produce a better outcome Week 1?
“I hate looking so far down the road, but again, it’s our job to make sure that we take care of what we have to do to get and reach the goals that we have.”