Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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32 MARCH 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY TYLER HORKA M ore times than not, teams need special coaches to get to the very last game of the year. Very rarely does a squad reach the championship game in any sport without a galvanizing leader. Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman checks the box. Chicago Bears legend Brian Ur- lacher, father of Notre Dame freshman safety Kennedy Urlacher, is biased, but he knows ball. And he knows there is something about Freeman that onlook- ers can't turn away from. "He's the face of college football right now," Urlacher said on ESPN1000 in Chicago in mid-January. "You watch their games, he's all they show. You look at the sidelines, it's Marcus all the time. It's amazing how far he's come. His as- cent to the top has been quick." Without a doubt, Freeman's rise was one of the top storylines of the 2024 Notre Dame football season. This is a head coach who became the first in Fighting Irish history to ever begin a tenure with an 0-3 record. Three years later, he's the first in program history to ever win 13 games in a single season. Or 14, for that matter. He even let Notre Dame lose a game to a Mid-American Conference opponent for the first time ever just a few months ago. But he also righted and steered the ship to safer wa- Senior quarterback Riley Leonard and the Fighting Irish suffered an inexplicable 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois Sept. 7. Instead of letting that define their sea- son, they used it as a driving force that helped propel them to the national title game. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER OFF THE MAT Notre Dame overcame an inexcusable defeat and the loss of numerous starters to injury to reach the national championship game