Entering his third campaign as Notre Dame head coach, expectations are high for Marcus Freeman. With an elite defense at his disposal and a veteran QB under center, can Freeman follow in the footsteps of many previous Irish head coaches who found championship success in Year 3?
Nobody's perfect. It's an accepted mantra spoken after a human falls short of the unfair expectation of perfection. Directly following disappointment, some say its a method used to cope with failure. Mistakes. We all make them, but rarely are we ultimately judged by them. Criticized, yes. But judged? No. We are judged by what we learned from said mistakes, and the actions we took to fix them.
As the head football coach at the University of Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman is met with the same expectations his predecessors were coarsely met with: A trophy hoisted in the middle of confetti. The glory of victory in collegiate sport's biggest stage. And even though it's been almost 40 years since Notre Dame has had a season end in ultimate triumph, anything else is considered failure.
Year Three holds a keen amount of weight in the modern era of college football. It has become the perennial "show me year" for all programs that prioritize a winning culture. But that has always been true at Notre Dame. Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine, and Lou Holtz all won titles in their third seasons in South Bend.
Following Lou Holtz, the third season for Notre Dame head coaches has been proven as a sign of things to come. Bob Davie went 5-7; Tyrone Willingham posted a 6-5 mark in the regular season only to have his contract terminated before the Irish's bowl game appearance against Oregon State (a game they lost, 38-21). Charlie Weis's third year was arguably the worst season posted in Notre Dame history, as his 2007 squad scraped and clawed to a 3-9 record. If not for facing a lousy Stanford team, a bad Duke squad at the end of the season, and a UCLA team they caught on a bad night, the Irish could have very well gone winless.
Brian Kelly's lone national championship game appearance also came in his third year. As is hard to forget, the 2012 team was drubbed 42-14 by Alabama. It was an utter embarrassment where the Irish began a sorrowful, unavoidable trend of looking as if they forgot how to play the game of football, and usually in the moments that mattered most. From there, Kelly never made it back to the big stage. The program struggled in their playoff performances in 2018 versus Clemson, and again in 2020 against Alabama. Each time looking mentally unprepared. Coached not to lose.
Thus, year three for Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman is met with a justified sense of anticipation. As we enter this pivotal season, we look forward with optimism, no doubt. But we would be remiss not to look back at Freeman's biggest public mistake thus far, and what he may, or may not, have learned from it going into the new season.
As Brian Kelly abruptly surrendered his post at Notre Dame and departed for Baton Rouge, there was a frenzy of chaos surrounding a program that was previously thought of as one of the nation's most stable. As Freeman interviewed for the head coaching role, and began to emerge as the only right choice, there was a sense that Freeman heavily suggested that offensive coordinator Tommy Rees stay at Notre Dame. Less of a want, and more of a need.
At the time, the move made a great deal of sense. Continuity is difficult to come by in the modern era of college football. Retaining Tommy Rees in the Gug was viewed as Freeman's first victory as a head coach for that reason. A brilliant offensive mind, it was easy to believe that Rees's best years were ahead of him, and that the Notre Dame faithful would be the ones that stood to benefit from said upside.
Early on in the Freeman era, before his first full season in 2022, the move looked to have paid off. Harry Heistand came out of retirement to assist in Rees's offense as the offensive line coach, something that Heistand more than likely wouldn't have done for anyone else. Notre Dame could now build off of one of Freeman's main pillars of a successful program immediately. It was a statement hire that added to the fanfare that comes with the honeymoon that is year one.
But then things got strange. At least from the outside looking in. The wide receiver coaching search was full-speed ahead. Names like Andrew Wiggins from Alabama, and Jamarcus Sheppard, began to emerge as leading candidates. Either would've been a clear upgrade from Del Alexander. Both in recruiting and development.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the staff went in a different direction. Notre Dame elected to hire a first year position coach in Chansi Stuckey. As the situation unfolded, it was unclear who made the decision. That's not the kind of public debate you want to be having as a first year head coach. Not at a program like Notre Dame. And as time made it's ever-natural progression, whispers came out that Stuckey wasn't Freeman's first choice, and that he deferred to his trusted offensive coordinator to make the decision. There's no other way to describe it other than "odd".
The leaks that were persistent in nature also gave off an energy that not everyone in the building was vested in Freeman's success. Whether or not that's true is beside the point. The perception was what it was, and there was no changing it.
The puzzling move yielded results on the recruiting trail almost immediately, and the initial worries were quelled for the moment. But then the product on the field was met with disappointment. And Stuckey's unit was far from impressive.
Notre Dame's offense looked as anemic as ever in the beginning of the season. With losses to Ohio State and Marshall breathing down Freeman's neck, it was clear something wasn't right on the offensive side of the ball. This was then followed by a less-than impressive performance in their win over California, where Rees was found screaming at quarterback Drew Pyne over the phone, stating "DO YOUR F*CKING JOB!!" It may have been the most entertaining part of the offense's performance in that three-week stretch, where they scored a mere 66 combined points, and posted 1-2 record.
The ship was righted as the season progressed, but in no uncertain terms, things didn't go as planned during the 2022 season. At times, it looked like a complete dumpster fire on the offensive side of the ball. Rees appeared to have zero answers.
There's no way to confirm, but there seemed to be some level of friction inside the building. A natural side-effect of losing. And yes, things got better. Enough to warrant Rees staying with the program. But that all changed.
Rees was seemingly non-committal even before the 2022 season. There were persistent rumors about his desire to coach in the NFL, so much so that Freeman even publicly stated in a press-conference that he asked Rees "Do you really want to be here?" Rees finally answered that question in 2023 when he left for Alabama, and took ND's starting quarterback, Tyler Buchner, with him.
This departure was made even worse by the retirement of offensive line coach Harry Heistand on Super Bowl Sunday. The Irish offense was forced to start from scratch almost immediately.
These occurrences, followed by the infamous "Ludwig Fumble," where the Notre Dame back office publicly embarrassed itself by missing key elements in the Utah offensive coordinator's contract buy out, created horrible optics. It also left Freeman scrambling once again, forced to go with Gerad Parker, a first-time offensive coordinator. Yes, he was offensive coordinator, but in name only, at West Virginia.
This experiment led to woeful performances versus the best of competition, yet again showing Notre Dame's offense was not capable of performing on the big stage. It could've been much, much worse, but the result wasn't enough for anyone to be encouraged that it would get meaningfully better in 2024.
This also meant that Stuckey was retained. That turned out to be an unmitigated disaster as well. And while there is debate regarding whether or not Stuckey was used as a scape goat for offensive troubles, some of the reports coming from the building are difficult to turn a blind eye to.
All of these developments bring us to now. While this may be skepticism, one could make the argument that if Freeman trusted his instinct and had no history with Tommy Rees, he probably would've hired Mike Denbrock as his offensive coordinator, and Mike Brown as his receiver's coach, right out of the gate his first year in charge.
One can't be blamed for believing this is the case. The respective hires were made so quickly this year, that it was obvious Freeman had his candidates in mind for quite some time. We have learned that Freeman is going to hire people he's had history with, much like his predecessor. But the difference is Freeman is hiring coaches close to him that come with a proven pedigree.
So we find ourselves right where we may have very well been in 2022, but in a round about way. Freeman has seemed to get a much-needed grip on the public narrative. He has coaches around him he can fully trust, and ones that match his coaching style.
We all learned a lot during this time period. No one learned more, or had a closer view to it all, than Marcus Freeman. And since he can't say it, I'll say it for him: hiring Tommy Rees was the biggest mistake Freeman has made in his time at Notre Dame. His hires since have proven that he's learned his lesson faster than Kelly ever could. That could make the difference of being a meme passed around in group chats like Brian Kelly, and having a statue outside of a stadium when your tenure is all said and done.
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