Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1482992
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM NOV. 5, 2022 7 BY PATRICK ENGEL F ormer Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel's Oct. 19 visit to see his ex- star player who is now in charge of a massive college football program him- self was a detour on a trip to Chicago rather than a dial-a-friend with the walls caving in. Marcus Freeman did not place an SOS call to his mentor after his second home loss as a double-digit fa- vorite in six games as Notre Dame head coach. Tressel — the outgoing president of Youngstown State University — planned the hour-long stop in South Bend weeks in advance to see Freeman and fellow former Buckeyes linebacker James Lau- rinaitis, a graduate assistant on Notre Dame's staff. Turns out, though, the timing couldn't have been better. "It just so happened it was a week I needed someone to talk to," Freeman said. Freeman's Irish were 3-3 and coming off a 16-14 loss to Stanford when Tressel visited. All the good vibes and the mo- mentum from a three-game win streak were vaporized on a chilly mid-Octo- ber night. Freeman thought he found a consistency in his messaging and had unlocked a steadiness on the field. He learned he had not, or at least not one that had real staying power. His refrain in the days after — publicly and to Notre Dame players — was not one he wanted to ever utter, but one he had to embrace. Somehow, some way, the Irish had to find a way to turn an- other inexcusable loss into a growth point. Three days later, Freeman pre- sented it to his players as best he could. "I said something to the team that you have to understand the road to bet- ter is bumpy," Freeman said. "It's not as smooth as we want it to be. We're going to have to go through our ups and downs to continue to improve. Our job is to try to minimize those bumps." One day later, he realized he echoed an old message from Tressel without even knowing it. Tressel asked he and Laurinaitis if either remembered the "law of progression." Neither of them did. Tressel explained it, and in doing so, basically recited the same message Freeman gave Notre Dame players. "He drew the law of progression the same as I told the team," Freeman said. "That bumpy road to better. It's a curved line. What you have to do is make those ups and downs as small as you can." The bumps are bigger than anyone in- side the Guglielmino Athletics Complex or outside it could have envisioned be- fore the season began. The loss to Mar- shall was blindsiding. The Irish were ranked in the top five of both preseason polls and had just quelled a potent Ohio State offense. The Stanford defeat was a maddening heel turn that gashed a gradual hope rebuild. Notre Dame shouldn't be in that spot. Freeman will be the first to say so. Orchestrating a turnaround, though, can be a legitimate jumping-off point for 2023 and beyond. And that process starts with lessening the vacillations in performance that defined Notre Dame's first half of the season. It has to happen eventually if Freeman wants to meet his job expectations. Rarely do the best teams get through the regular season without hitting a speed bump. Everyone plays a white- knuckler game at some point. Often, it's in an unexpected spot. Notre Dame's smallest regular-season margin of vic- tory in its 2020 College Football Playoff run, for example, was a 12-7 home win over a Louisville team that went 4-7 and allowed 26.6 points per game. That 2020 team had valleys. So did Freeman's Cincinnati defenses from 2018-20. Neither were deep enough to cause a serious stumble like the Irish's two face-plants this season, though. Notre Dame reaching that steadier point from its currently uneven state is what improvement looks like for the Irish in a 2022 season gone sideways. Getting there starts with Freeman. Min- imizing volatility is not the kind of goal the Irish wanted to set this year and not one that can become a yearly central theme. But it's what Freeman has to ac- cept and turn into better days. And it's the course his mentor backs. "Instead of being a loss in a game, maybe it's that we're down a couple points and we find a way to win," Free- man said. "There's a bumpy road within a season, a game, a series. Our job is to make sure we try to go in an upward trend and make those hills, those div- ots so small that it doesn't stop us from achieving our ultimate goal, and that's a win." ✦ UNDER THE DOME FAMILIAR VOICE A pre-planned visit from his mentor Jim Tressel came at a key time for Marcus Freeman Freeman met with Tressel, his mentor and for- mer Ohio State head coach, on campus in mid- October. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN