Notre Dame football head coach Marcus Freeman recently sat down with Joel Klatt to discuss all sorts of different topics that have to do with the program. One of the chief things they discussed was what he had to change once he took over in South Bend from his predecessor, Brian Kelly.
Freeman was quite forthcoming, first crediting Kelly and his operation and then clearly stating that he knew the program took a step backward in his first season. However, the Irish head man also said that he felt the team might have to take a step back to get better and move forward.
Marcus Freeman reveals what had to change at Notre Dame after Brian Kelly
“You’re always trying to improve talent,” McElroy told the Notre Dame football head coach. That’s any company, any organization, how do we continue to improve the talent and personnel that we bring in.”
“That doesn’t always mean athleticism, that doesn’t always mean personalities and mental capacity — it’s a lot of different things that go into increasing your talent. But the next thing was, how do we continue to develop the talent that we have?”
Finally, Freeman made it clear that he felt like they did need to build their own culture. He didn’t blame Kelly for that, but he simply needed to get his culture and build from there.
“How do we continue to enhance our culture?” Freeman added. “The culture is what they feel, what they believe, every time they walk into that building, and what is that output. Those are things we spent constant amounts of time, trying to continuously improve the talent, the development and the culture.”
It certainly seems as if he found the magic answer for that question. The Notre Dame football team is not only talented, but there seems to be a culture that almost took them from a Week 2 loss to Northern Illinois, to the National Title.