Marcus Freeman Knows That Notre Dame Must Get A Lot Better

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman knows his team must bounce back and better after its loss to Oklahoma State

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said out loud what the Notre Dame faithful is thinking.

It’s time to move into the reality phase for the new head coach after a 37-35 loss to Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl on Saturday.

Freeman has a difficult task ahead of him that hasn’t been fully acknowledged — perhaps because of the way former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly left for LSU.

Kelly is the all-time winningest coach in Notre Dame history. It’s always hard to follow a successful coach. It’ll be the universal question for Freeman.

Can someone as likable and respected as Freeman be personally tough enough to get Notre Dame to a New Year’s Day Six bowl victory? After that, how about a national title?

The loss hit Freeman hard, and it inevitably showed his inexperience. The defense gave up 604 yards and Notre Dame couldn’t run the ball. It finished with 51 yards rushing and it all but abandoned the running game.

It was clear in the first half that this was going to be a shootout, but Notre Dame was playing without one element of its offense that could’ve helped.

An effective running game. Freeman opened himself up to second-guessing by not using Tyler Buchner for a series or two in the second half when Notre Dame’s offense stalled.

That was one proven way to try to get yards on the ground.

“For me obviously, as the leader of this program, again, it's a pit in your stomach, as I told the group a minute ago, that you want to bottle it up and you want to remember how this feels,” he said.” The honeymoon stage is over. The whole, new head coach, it's a great story, but now it's about having a great product and it's about having a great team. We have to make sure that it's about developing this team for next year. This year is over, so everything we do from now moving forward is going to be development and making sure we're prepared to have success.”

Freeman, at least, struck the right tone after the loss.

He knows it has to get better.

“They (the fans) deserve a winning product,” he said. “They deserve a team that every week goes out there and wins. It’s our job to make sure we prepare and we do everything necessary to give this team, the fan base, the university, a really, really good product on that field,” he said. “We’ll get back to work. That’s the only thing we know how to do. We’re going to get back to work and we’re going to find ways to improve and make sure that we’re even more prepared and have a better opportunity to have success next time we’re on the field.”

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