Notre Dame Notebook: Marcus Freeman Talks Ohio State Disappointment

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman shares his thoughts on key points in Saturday's 17-14 loss to Ohio State
Notre Dame Notebook: Marcus Freeman Talks Ohio State Disappointment
Notre Dame Notebook: Marcus Freeman Talks Ohio State Disappointment /

Notre Dame and Ohio State played a classic Saturday night at Notre Dame Stadium. The predicted “red wave” of Buckeye fans never came and the glowing green atmosphere in the September night was a true home field advantage for the Irish. Notre Dame did many things right over the course of a game that was never separated by more than four points in either direction on the scoreboard. The game went right down to the final second, allowing the visitors to escape with a 17-14 victory – a hard pill to swallow for the head coach of the home team.

"As I told the group of guys, man, we got a good football team and at times, we showed it today versus a really good football team,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said after the three-point loss. "To be on the losing side, it hurts, it stings. But we got to own it and we got to learn from it and we got to get back to work on -- as coaches tomorrow and as a team on Monday and use the pain of a loss to really help us find a way to get better. As I told them: We're always chasing, reaching our full potential every Saturday and there was, at times today, we didn't do that, and we (have) to figure out why and make sure that we attack it and don't let it happen.

Decisions, Decisions

Freeman faced a handful of decisive decisions over the course of the game. The first one came on the very first Irish possession of the night when he opted to go for it on 4th and 1 at the Ohio State 18 rather than have Spencer Shrader try a 45-yard field goal.

Sam Hartman scrambled to his right and raced forward toward the sideline. Officials on the field ruled he picked-up a first down, but Ohio State head coach Ryan Day asked for a replay review, the call was overturned and the Buckeyes took possession.

“Any time we're across the 50, I mean, it's -- I'm probably going to go for it on fourth and one,” Freeman explained. That's -- you play the percentage. You're either going to be all in and do it or not and, obviously, when you don't get it, it's terrible. But the percentages show you, man, fourth and one, you have to -- across the 50, you have to go for it because of the percentages of getting that. The call was getting big personnel in and, really, trying to get them to think we're going to run and take a shot and be aggressive and it was a play action pass and they covered it well. Sam knows he's got to make that first down. We knew, hey, if they cover the pass, Sam would be able to scramble and we just came up a little bit short there.”

It was one of two times Hartman ran on 4th and 1 at the Buckeye 39 and was stopped. He tried to go around the left side of the Irish line on Notre Dame’s first drive of the second half, again in Ohio State territory, and didn’t pick up the yard.

Too Much Time Left

The Fighting Irish offense took over its final possession of the game at its own 11 with 4:12 to play and a 14-10 lead. They picked up 12 yards on a pass to Rico Flores, Jr on the first play of the series, then Audric Estime ran for 11 yards on the next play. They lined up with the intention to pass on the next two plays, only handing off to Gi’Bran Payne on 3rd and 15. The two plays before that were an intention to pass that resulted in Hartman being dropped for a five-yard loss and a near interception by Ohio State on a short pass intended for Jadarian Price.

Notre Dame punted, giving Ohio state 1:26 to engineer its 15-play, 65-yard game-winning touchdown drive.

"I'm always in communication with - I didn't - there wasn't a way to just run the ball and the game would be over, right,” Freeman said of the decisions to throw instead of pass on the drive. "What I didn't want to do is concede to say, Okay, let's just run the ball three times, make them use two of their time-outs, right? Then all of sudden we're just punting the ball and just giving them a chance to come down the field with the same amount of time they had and so, as I told them, I said, Hey, let's be smart. Let's play to win this. Let's play to win this game. So, that's what we did and a second down screen is almost as good as a run. But, obviously, it was tipped and the kid made a great play and the clock stopped and we ran it on third and made them use a time-out.”

In The Trenches

Saturday’s game was one that most observers thought would be decided in the trenches on both sides of the ball. Notre Dame had an average running game against the Buckeyes with 39 carries for 176 yards and a 4.5 average. Hartman was never sacked and was hurried just three times. The Irish sacked Kyle McCord once and was hurried just twice.

Freeman’s Irish design is an offensive and defensive line driven team, but against one of the premiere teams in the Midwest the results were mixed in the narrow defeat.

"I thought it was up and down,” Freeman remarked. "I think there was times we were controlling the line of scrimmage offensively and big plays were happening. But the times that we weren't, they were getting tackles for loss. And you could just watch it on the video board and say, okay, that guy beat one of our players and it was a tackle for loss. But when we were really controlling the line of scrimmage defensively, we were able to move the ball rushing, especially late in the game. Defensively, I got to go look and see. I think we did a good job stopping the run. I don't know how many rushing yards -- they had the long run. I know that.

"TreVeyon Henderson had that long (61-yard) run. But other than that, I thought we did a really good job stopping the run,” Freeman continued. "We just didn't get enough pressure. I just felt we weren't getting pressure. I wanted to hit him more until probably the last series. I think we got a little bit more pressure the second-to-last series, but we got to find ways, as y'all brought up many times, of getting pressure on the quarterback.” 

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Sean Stires
SEAN STIRES

Sean Stires is a staff writer for Irish Breakdown, where he covers the Notre Dame Football beat. A long-time radio host at WSBT, Sean is also the host of the IB Nation Sports Talk Show on the Irish Breakdown channel. He is also the play-by-play announcer for the Notre Dame women's basketball team. Sean has also called games for the Fighting Irish baseball team. You can email Sean at seanstires@gmail.com. Become a premium Irish Breakdown member, which grants you access to all of our premium content and our premium message board! Click on the link below for more. BECOME A MEMBER Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time! Follow Ryan on Twitter: @SeanStiresLike and follow Irish Breakdown on FacebookSubscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channelSubscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes Sign up for the FREE Irish Breakdown daily newsletter