Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 28, 2023 7 UNDER THE DOME That falls on what Notre Dame is do- ing — or isn't doing — on first and sec- ond downs. "You have to establish the run game, and we have to find different ways to do that," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. "That's, to me, why we haven't been as effective as a complete offense because you're putting yourself in third-and-long situations, which are really hard to execute in college football. So, I think we have to do a better job of putting our guys in place to be able to run the ball with more efficiency." "We didn't execute some of our base plays that we feel strongly about," Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker added three days after the loss to Louisville. "And when you don't do that on critical downs, or downs that lead up to critical downs, you get results you all don't want to see and we don't want to see." Freeman attempted to make clear on the Monday after the Louisville loss that this is not a play-calling problem. He gave full support of Parker. Freeman instead said he has issues with Notre Dame's execution. That statement was enough to raise some eyebrows from folks who watched Notre Dame go 3 of 13 on third down against Louisville. On third-and-1 from the Louis- ville 45-yard line, Hartman and senior wide receiver Chris Tyree botched a fake-toss counter handoff, resulting in a Cardinals fumble recovery. There was an awful lot going on with Notre Dame needing just 1 yard, and Freeman and Parker both said they were think- ing about four-down territory at the time. Thinking ahead to fourth down on third-and-1 shows just how much confidence the Notre Dame coaches had in their offense at the time. Little to none, it seems. Perhaps Parker went to a gadget play because running the rock convention- ally surely wasn't working. Estimé got swallowed up at or behind the line of scrimmage on a good chunk of his 10 rushing attempts, which represented a season low. So did his 20 rushing yards. Estimé often had nowhere to run against a box loaded with Louisville de- fenders. That makes the question Free- man posed a couple days later all the more confounding, because the answer seemed pretty obvious. "Why didn't it work?" Freeman said. "If this guy was supposed to do that and he was supposed to do that, then that's the issue. We have to make sure our guys are crystal clear on what they need to do and don't make mistakes." Freeman said Notre Dame has not concerned itself with mapping out extra plays for third-and-longs, either, even though the Irish faced plenty of them versus Duke and Louisville. Instead, the Irish are fully committed to being better early in series. "I don't want to spend more time say- ing, 'Let's get more in third-and-long calls,'" Freeman said. "I would rather spend more time saying, 'Let's be more effective on first and second down.'" With the way Notre Dame is strug- gling to run of late plus the way defenses are lining up, it could call for more first- down passing plays. Notre Dame ranked 44th nationally in first-down passing attempts through Week 6, and the Irish have played one or two more games than almost every team in the country. Freeman pushed back at the idea of Notre Dame's "predictability," though. He didn't sound like someone ready to overhaul what he wants his program to be; a ground-and-pound, line of scrimmage type of team. He sounded like someone who is going to stay com- mitted to the run, even on first down despite the lack of recent success. "If we're going to call a play, there's a reason we call it and we feel like it can have success," Freeman said Oct. 9. "We have to execute it. A lot of offenses are predictable, but you can't stop them. We can say we know what USC is going to do, but you have to stop them. "The same thing with us. We have to find ways to continue to get the ball in Audric's hands. What we can't do is put our team and our offense in a position where we feel like we have to throw the ball all the time because we're down 10, 14 or down 21. We can't do that." ✦ Graduate student quarterback Sam Hartman completed 55.1 percent of his passes and averaged 217 passing yards per game with 3 touchdowns and 3 interceptions against Ohio State, Duke and Louisville. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER