Marcus Freeman Gets a Bit Snappy Discussing Notre Dame's Kicker Issues

Notre Dame might have improved to 6-2 on Saturday with its 25-10 victory over Boston College but it returns home with perhaps more baggage than it'd prefer.

One such item that reared its ugly head in what seemingly has to be a historic way Saturday was Notre Dame's kicking woes.

The Fighting Irish attempted four kicks on Saturday, three extra points and one 35 yard field goal. They missed the first three of those four kicks, finally converting an extra point to extend the lead to 25-10 in the fourth quarter.

To boot (see what I did there?), three different kickers were responsible for Notre Dame's three misses.

Notre Dame's Kicking Woes vs. Boston College:

A look at Notre Dame's kickers in the box score and one would have thought there must have been 70 mile per hour winds or something at Boston College's Alumni Field. No, not the case, just an intramural level of kicking on display by Notre Dame.

Erik Schmidt: 1 for 1 on PATs, 0 for 1 on field goals (missed from 35 yards)
Noah Burnette: 0 for 1 on PATs
Marcello Diomede: 0 for 1 on PATs

I've watched football closely for a long time and it's not just the misses, but the fact that three different guys couldn't make what should be a chip shot in today's game was nauseating.

Marcus Freeman on Notre Dame's Kicking Issues

Marcus Freeman was asked about the kicking struggles after Saturday's game and showed frustration any Notre Dame fan could understand after the troubling display.

"The issues were, every time we kicked, the ball did not go in between the field goal posts, and so that's the issue" Freeman stated. "We're going to keep putting guys in there until we consistently have somebody put the ball through the field goal posts and we have three kickers, but if you're rotating three kickers, you don't have one.

"And we'll figure out physically, what isn't right with Burnette. I mean, but we got to do what we do in practice better in the game. And so that's, that's the situation. We got to figure this thing out, because our team day, our team deserves for us to be able to make extra points of field goals, and so for us to reach the potential that we believe we have, we better fix it with urgency."

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Takeaway:

This is Notre Dame, not some Division III program that would have a lot better reason for not having a capable kicker.

I'm not asking for someone to be the next NFL kicker to come from Notre Dame, but could someone simply put the ball through the uprights on an extra point on a regular basis?

This is the sort of thing that just feels like its going to cost Notre Dame at some point this year. It may not be in the regular season, but with the margin for error being as thin as it is, you can't go into a potential College Football Playoff berth without this kicking storm at least being pointed in the right direction beforehand.

Otherwise, you're almost certainly looking at an early exit.