Notre Dame Offense Wins The Final Spring Scrimmage Ahead Of The Blue-Gold Game

Fighting Irish football coach Marcus Freeman gave some insight into a scrimmage his team held Saturday afternoon

With one week to go until Notre Dame plays its annual Blue – Gold Football Game, the Fighting Irish took the field inside Notre Dame Stadium for a dress rehearsal of sorts. Head coach Marcus Freeman and his staff put the team through a live scrimmage on a beautifully sunny afternoon that saw temperatures hit 80 degrees in South Bend. Freeman shared some thoughts on the scrimmage afterwards.

"It was a great scrimmage,” Freeman said following the practice session. "The offense ended up winning to keep the blue jerseys. It was actually a two point game, it’s a unique scoring system, but a two point game going into the last series. I was going to go twos and ones to finish, but I think we were at 80-something plays and I kind of wanted to finish with the 1s so we cut that last set of 2s.

"Really it came down to execution after that,” he continued. "There was a big play, I think second down, (the) offense hit probably a 20-yard gain to (Chris) Tyree to really seal the deal. I don’t know the final score. I think (Sam) Hartman ran in a touchdown at the very end. It really was a good game.”

Freeman also detailed some of his notes from the game, which saw the offense dominate early before the defense made a comeback.

"The offense came out early and really did a good job,” Freeman explained. "They were really doing a good job of executing, getting first downs and they were up by a significant amount of points and then you almost saw this lull a little bit. I don’t know if it was the heat, I don’t know if they felt complacent. Then all of the sudden the defense came back and surged back with some negative yardage plays. Again, it was a two-point scrimmage with the last series as they took the field.”

Notre Dame was one of the least penalized teams in the nation last season. The Irish tied for No. 20 nationally with just 60 penalties committed in 13 games, but Freeman was not happy with that aspect of the scrimmage.

"We’ve got to continue to improve on penalties,” said Freeman. "We had too many penalties. It’s the difference between undisciplined penalties versus aggressive penalties. We’ll take aggressive penalties all day long. We can’t be perfect, but if you’re undisciplined and you’re getting penalties. I don’t know who, I think we had one personal foul and a couple holdings, the defense aligned offsides. Those are penalties we have to be more disciplined. It can’t happen.

"But it was really encouraging to see 88 plays, 90 plays battling,” Freeman continued. "Guys stepping up, making big plays today. You try to create this environment where it’s almost like a game. Listen, we can’t get 80,000 fans in here but you try to build this thing up that, hey man, this is for the jerseys. Like, you’re going to go into Notre Dame Stadium. It’s a sacred place, you’re got to understand that and then really be able to see who can execute. Who can just do their job every play where you try to build this up, because it’s natural when we get during the season, when this place is filled up, there’s going to be pressure. 

"They’re going to feel it, then how do we get them focused on doing their job. So, it was good. It was a good scrimmage.”

With a game-like simulation in mind, the Irish had referees for the scrimmage. They also had the play clock in operation, which is different from what has been the norm this spring.

"We didn’t really use play clocks many practices before today,” Freeman offered. “There were times in practices before today where you’re like, ok hey you’ve got to be aware of the play clock. I know we’re not using the play clock right now. There was no play clock issues. It was good. The quarterbacks had great awareness. 

"So the communication from Coach (Gerad) Parker down to the signalers was really clean, just from my perspective," continued the Irish head coach. "Obviously, we’ve got to go back and watch film, but it was really good to see the communication really from the press box down to the signaler to the quarterback. Sometimes we huddled. Sometimes we didn’t. We did a lot of different things and so it was really, really good to see.” 

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