How Marcus Freeman will help Notre Dame close the gap on the elite

How Notre Dame can bridge the gap with Freeman

The difference between Alabama and Notre Dame, when it comes down to it, is that Alabama is always recruiting a top-class, while Notre Dame usually ends up between 10 and 15 or so. That doesn’t sound like a major talent gap, but it is.

That talent gap is seen on the field when Alabama has four wide receivers who will be first-round picks and Notre Dame only has one first-round pick in the secondary, and maybe a couple of mid-round guys, to cover them. The talent doesn’t add up, and strategy doesn’t matter at this point.

The same thing can happen when you deal with injuries, like say Julian Love missing a quarter of the Cotton Bowl, and don’t have anyone at a similar talent level to fill in for him, and you get exploited for it.

If Notre Dame truly wants to close the gap with the elite programs, they need to do it on the recruiting trail and Freeman is the perfect defensive coordinator to do that. He’s an elite recruiter, who proved that at Cincinnati. He’s also a career Midwesterner, which is important to recruiting too.

His knowledge of Ohio, Indiana (from his time with Purdue), and the Midwest, in general, will help recruit players from these key states to Notre Dame, which constitute one of the major pipelines the Irish can draw from. It also will put them toe to toe while recruiting with Ohio State, who picks the twenty-five players they want as it stands now.

So, while it is interesting to see how the Freeman defense differs from the Lea defense strategically, it’s worth pointing out that defense is often reactionary to what the offense is doing anyways, and it’s more important to be able to cover and beat blocks one on one, which comes down to who is more talented.

Marcus Freeman is a rising star in the coaching ranks, who easily could have found a head coaching job instead of coming to Notre Dame as the defensive coordinator. He probably won’t stay long, but in the meantime, he should be able to boost the Irish through recruiting above all else.