How Marcus Freeman Evolved to Lead Notre Dame on the Biggest Stage

The Fighting Irish coach went from a rising defensive assistant to building a team on a path to consistent national relevance.

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman has been the right man for the Fighting Irish job. / Matt Cashore-Imagn Images

College football coaches always have a story about how they got their start. 

Some were pulled into it like a gravitational force, as much a calling as an occupation. Others were pushed into donning a headset and a whistle, needing something to pay the bills after playing. 

For Marcus Freeman, it was a little bit of both. 

Nearly 15 years ago, the current Notre Dame Fighting Irish coach was mostly known as a former star Ohio State Buckeyes linebacker whose career had not gone according to plan in the NFL. The Chicago Bears drafted him in the fifth round in 2009 but cut him before the season started. He spent time on the practice squad with the Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans. 

When trying to catch on with the Indianapolis Colts, team doctors discovered he had an enlarged heart valve during his physical. The diagnosis effectively ended his career as a professional player. 

It was devastating for Freeman. It also underscored the old adage that all coaches seem well acquainted with in such a transient career choice: When one door closes, another one opens. 

“I called Coach [Jim] Tressel, who was my college coach, and I said, ‘Coach, I want to get into coaching.’ And there was an opportunity to go to Ohio State and be a GA,” Freeman said. “I wasn’t looking to just say, ‘Coach, hire me at Ohio State.’ It was just, ‘Coach, I need your wisdom, I’m looking to get into coaching.’ And there happened to just be an opportunity available at Ohio State. I think I started off actually as like a quality control and moved into the GA role sometime during that first year.”

Freeman is still calling Tressel for his wisdom, even this week as his team prepares to take on the No. 2 seed Georgia Bulldogs in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday night. It’s a remarkable path for the 38-year-old, who has gone from a rising defensive assistant in his first full-time role with the Kent State Golden Flashes to captaining one of the sport’s biggest brand-name programs. 

Along the way there have been plenty of bumps and bruises, including losses in his first three games in charge. 

There have been plenty of forks in the road, too. He was offered the opportunity to follow predecessor Brian Kelly to the LSU Tigers three years ago. He also had to make the decision to leave the Cincinnati Bearcats’ staff of his former OSU position coach, Luke Fickell, to join the Irish. 

Through it all, Freeman has learned hard lessons. He has evolved how he runs his program. He has hired and fired good friends and made necessary changes on and off the field in the ongoing pursuit to better himself as a coach. It’s not been a straightforward path by any means, but it has been an impressive one that now finds him and his team in the thick of the national title chase.

“The resources you have when you’re in this position are humbling, to be able to talk to some of the greats, the current coaches that are coaching, the Mike Tomlins of the world, the Tony Dungys. I can go on and on about coaches that are willing to be a sounding board to give you their advice,” Freeman said. “But I think, at the end of the day, you’ve still got to be yourself. I can’t be anybody other than Marcus Freeman, but I can take wisdom and bits and pieces from everybody that’s had an impact on my life.”

Much of that past knowledge was needed when Notre Dame was upset by the Northern Illinois Huskies in one of the season’s most stunning results in September. 

The Irish were thoroughly outplayed by a MAC squad and had a resume strike unlike any other CFP hopeful. The selection committee could have disqualified them.

Instead of wallowing in the wake of the 16–14 stunner, the Irish used it as a constant reminder of what happens when they don’t give their best. The approach has worked to an impressive degree. Notre Dame turned into one of the hottest teams in the country. It made the playoff and notched a convincing first-round victory over the Indiana Hoosiers to advance to the quarterfinals.

“The message he relayed to us throughout the week was that our season wasn’t over, we had so many more games left. Only the second game of the season. So we could have gone downhill—or continued to improve,” safety Xavier Watts said. “Relaying the message that the season isn’t over, and we have so much to get better with, that’s what we did.”

While it has not been the only message Freeman has delivered, it has been a consistent one over the course of 2024. The coach has rounded off some of the previously sharp edges in his personality and style. It’s all part of a continued development for a still-young practitioner of the craft. 

This past offseason, that included heavily pursuing Duke Blue Devils quarterback Riley Leonard in the transfer portal and working with the administration to restructure the school’s NIL efforts to remain competitive. Just as notable were the slew of major staff changes Freeman oversaw with the hopes of elevating the program further. He lured back offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock for a third stint with the Irish.

“This is my first opportunity to be with him as a head coach, but obviously, our relationship goes way back,” says Denbrock, who worked with Freeman at Notre Dame under Kelly in 2021 and as a fellow coordinator at Cincinnati a few years prior. “He’s just an incredible leader of men. The way he addresses the team, the discipline that he brings, the accountability that he brings to the football team as a whole—he’s so relatable to players and they play their tails off for him. That’s because of the leadership he provides.”

The school rewarded Freeman with a long-term contract extension two weeks ago, including a hefty pay raise and increased resources for the coaching staff. 

A new football facility is on the way, too, complementing the existing setup at the Guglielmino Athletics Complex, which should more than double the footprint that Freeman has dominion over at Notre Dame. 

That kind of momentum could lead others to double down into the control they had accumulated, yielding such power that only entrenches the head coach in a way detrimental to the program. That hasn’t been the case with Freeman, who has remained the constant team-builder.

“Marcus has a really, really good pulse of what the team needs to hear and what direction he wants to take the team. He’s a guy that everyone wants to work for and play for, and that’s a powerful thing,” defensive coordinator Al Golden says. “He’s created a culture here. What is culture? Culture is your collective capacity to create value, and that’s what he’s done here. He’s created a system, an organization, where ideas matter and your contribution is heard. It’s awesome to be a part of.”

Winning helps, too. 

Notre Dame is 31–9 overall and an impressive 12–5 against ranked opponents under Freeman. The Irish are fresh off their first marquee postseason victory since 1993. If they can get past Georgia this week, their third CFP appearance offers the most favorable path yet to national relevance. 

What’s more, they aren’t done yet. Recruiting is going as well as ever, the team is likely to start next season ranked in the top 15 and the new playoff structure offers a chance to keep the current momentum going with even greater consistency. 

Freeman, it seems, has things rolling at the program he initially may have been too inexperienced for, but has eventually grown into the right person at the right time for a job unlike any other. 

Based on the way he talks, there doesn’t appear to be any signs of slowing down either.

“I think it’s normal for the normal person to wake up and just go in and say, ‘Let’s get my job done and go home.’ I want our guys to be misfits and to find a way to push yourself outside your comfort zone every single day, to look for the hard and to run to the hard and to choose hard every single day. I think that’s the mindset we as a program have to have,” Freeman said. “I want misfits. We want to be misfits. We don’t want people to look at us and go, Oh, yeah, you’re just a normal coach, you’re a normal football player. We want to be a little bit of a misfit and embrace that and do the things that misfits do. That’s kind of that misfit mentality that I believe we’ve got to keep and we’ve got to be.”

Freeman may want misfits within his program and may cast himself as one too, but based on the way things are going so far at Notre Dame, he seems to tailor fit for the team as head coach.