Marcus Freeman Breaks Down The Bye Week And Notre Dame's Home Opener Against Texas A&M

It's game week once again for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. They're coming off of an early bye week after opening the season Sunday night down in Hard Rock Stadium against the Miami Hurricanes. The Irish had several things they needed to correct over the bye week before they host the Texas A&M Aggies this Saturday night. Today, head coach Marcus Freeman talked about some bye week adjustments and the home opener against head coach Mike Elko and the Aggies. Freeman is 1-2 in home openers as head coach at Notre Dame; Texas A&M is far and away the toughest opponent the Irish will face in a home opener in the Freeman Era.

You can watch the full press conference here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/aR1-RVhUX1M?si=zq0V_4sbLApS-B4F

Here are some of Freeman's comments from this afternoon's press conference:

Freeman On The Key Areas Of Focus During The Bye

"There was a lot," Freeman explained. "Takeaways, ball security, tackling, third down on both sides, short yardage and two minute drill are all things that we didn't really execute well in last week's game. We struggled starting fast out of each half. We didn't start fast in the first half and coming out of the locker room for the second half, we didn't start fast. How do you change that? The focus and intention is where it needs to be on that play at that given moment and the execution will follow."

Freeman On Getting The Ball To Jeremiyah Love

"There's RPO's where you're reading a defender," Freeman said. "If they're putting an eighth man in the box we have to throw it out to the perimater to take advantage of the numbers. Then there's times where it's a little grey and we have to be very clear with our quarterbacks on what we want them to do in those situations. Do we want them to hand it off? Do we want them to throw it?

We were very intentional trying to put the ball into Jeremiyah Love's hands and make him the primary target. Some of those included RPO's. We talked as a coaching staff that, at certain times, we have to take out the read. We know we want to focalize our offense around Love, he's a special player. At the same time, we have to make sure we're taking advantage of what each defense is trying to do to us."

Freeman On The Offensive Line Play

"I thought, overall, they played well," Freeman stated. "The standard is to play higher. We know that. Part of it is credit to Miami's defensive line. Sometimes you can get paralyzed because of movement. Their defensive line moved a little bit and did some different things. What we don't want to do is paralyze the velocity and aggression that our offensive line plays with. You have to be able to collect some of that movement as you move vertically. At times, I thought we got too lateral in terms of how we want our offensive line to play. I'm as confident in that group as any guy on our team. They will be fine."

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