Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1540095
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 11, 2025 5 T here are two things we learned about Marcus Free- man during his Sept. 29 press conference. He doesn't take a liking to the term "gar- bage time," and he can't fully wrap his mind around calling anything in the game of football "close to perfect." The former was more of a trivial realization. Blue & Gold Illustrated's own Jack Soble asked what Notre Dame's head coach takes from players who perform well at the end of games when a result has already all but been decided — also com- monly known as garbage time — and Freeman responded with, "Please don't call it garbage time to me." He said every play is im- portant. Every single play, in his own words. He's not wrong. Every play — every single play — is important, indeed. As soon as one of them isn't executed properly, perfec- tion is thrown out the window. Notre Dame scored touchdowns on its first six possessions in the game against Arkansas, for example, but the Irish of- fense squandered its chance of going seven for seven because of a failed con- version on fourth down on its first drive of the second half. Re d s h i r t f re s h m a n q u a r te r b a c k CJ Carr was pressured to the point of throwing the ball into no-man's-land and out of bounds. He was flagged for his fourth intentional grounding pen- alty of the season, and Notre Dame turned the ball over on downs. That is not perfect. "We've got to get that fixed," Freeman said. "If we would have got that one and scored that drive, we would have scored on every drive except for the last one. Then I would have said it was probably close to perfect, but it wasn't." The last drive Freeman referenced was a possession spanning eight plays and 27 yards that effectively ran out the final 5:19 on the game clock. Notre Dame wasn't ever going to score on that one unless someone busted a lengthy touchdown. Which, for this group, isn't out of the ordinary. The Irish had three scores of 20 or more yards versus the Razorbacks one week after putting up four touchdowns that fit that description in a blowout of Purdue. In that game, Notre Dame scored a touchdown on seven of eight drives excluding a kneel-down before halftime. The reality is, the Irish went on a two- week stretch of essentially scoring at will. The quality of opponents played a large role in that, but touchdown drives aren't a given against anybody. There is so much more that can happen out- side of getting the ball across the goal line. But for eight quarters, Notre Dame made it look easy. Hence, press conference questions about perfection. Freeman side-stepped them with an emphasis on X's and O's. "We've got to know what our strengths are," he said. "And our strengths are the ability to hand the ball off to [Jeremiyah Love] and [Jadarian Price], let our O-line grind it and get bodies on bodies. If you're going to put an extra guy in the box [to stop the run], we have to be able to go over the top. "We have to be able to take free access if you're going to give it to us, give it to our quarter- back, and we do that." These are all areas Notre Dame has improved drastically upon since the season opener at Miami, when the Irish only scored 24 points and were play- ing catch-up for most of the game. Notre Dame has been much better at them since scoring 40 special teams-aided points against Texas A&M in Game 2. Multiple prominent Irish play- ers, including Carr, admitted they left points on the field in that one-point defeat. As more tape gets out on what Notre Dame does well, more schemes on how to stop it will be thrown at the Irish from vari- ous opponents. Something is bound to throw Notre Dame off course at some point. Miami and A&M did it to varying degrees. Why can't someone else? That's why perfection isn't possible. Football seasons are long, and bad days and miscues are inevitable. That's why Notre Dame must focus more on itself as opposed to others in order to achieve an optimal level of progress. Control what you can control, which for this Notre Dame offense is a lot even if it's not everything. Nobody can control everything anyway. "They have to understand there are areas of improvement all over the place," Freeman said. "We played really, really well. "But we weren't perfect. If they're honest with themselves and they feel like they have that need to improve, and say, 'Coach me, help me get bet- ter,' that's the discomfort that will help them improve." ✦ Notre Dame's offense is humming with redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr at the controls, scoring 112 points in wins over Purdue and Arkansas, but the Irish still have much to iron out. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Elite Notre Dame Offense Still Isn't Close To Perfect Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA