During a recent conversation with college football analyst and former quarterback Greg McElroy, Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman touched on several topics, mostly about last season, easily his best in South Bend.
Among the topics he touched on was what he took away from Notre Dame’s loss to Ohio State in the national championship game. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his absolute biggest takeaway was that his team simply didn’t play all that well to start the game, and that things could have gone very differently if they had.
Marcus Freeman opens up on Notre Dame’s missed opportunity vs Ohio State in title game
“I think in those biggest games, those biggest moments, you gotta play your best. You can’t make mistakes, not vs. a team like Ohio State,” the Notre Dame football head coach said on the podcast episode. “You would think about the first drive on offense, I think it was about a 19-play drive. We execute, we’re physical, we go down, we score. Defensively, we didn’t play our best. And trust me, credit to Ohio State. They had some elite playmakers. They played really, really well.”
Freeman was very careful to say that even if the Fighting Irish had played better, they still might have lost. But it’s clear that the game has haunted him, and he’s replayed situations in his head and wondered if one thing or another went differently.
“It’s something I’ll always remember,” Freeman added. “Made some changes, already debriefed from that game, and hey, if we’re in that situation, here’s some different things we’ll do as we prepare for it. But at the end of the day, you gotta play your best when you’re playing the best.”
While the Notre Dame football coach won’t get a chance to stage a do-over, he could of course take on Ohio State in this years’ College Football Playoff.