Notre Dame has the No. 6 scoring offense in the country. Yet head coach Marcus Freeman knows the performance against BYU wasn’t good enough. He knows that there’s room for improvement, and the Fighting Irish need to get better. It’s all about how they do it.
Chris Ash has taken most of the blame for Notre Dame's loss to the Cougars. But Mike Denbrock’s unit was also a big problem.
Notre Dame went just 8-of-19 on third down and 3-of-5 in the red zone. Their foibles included a lost fumble and settling for two second-half field goals when they could have run away with the momentum.
Even worse, while Freeman is an aggressive coach who isn’t afraid to go for it on 4th down, the Irish's struggles on 3rd down severely limited what they could do and how aggressive they could be.
Marcus Freeman rejects conservative label for Notre Dame football offense after BYU loss
“We've been pretty good in two-down situations to at least have an efficient amount of yards on that third-down play if we decide to run,” Freeman said during his Monday press conference. “But those ones that you don't, I gotta make a decision that's best for the team. That might be punt or that might mean kick a field goal and take points. We just gotta make sure if we decide to run the ball, we prevent one-yard or negative-yardage plays. That can't happen.”
“Let's just make sure if we decide to run the ball that it's efficient,” explained Freeman. “I don't think it's conservative. It's more just like, what happened? Why do we only get one yard here? Where was the misexecution in terms of blocking or in terms of checking versus a certain look?”
When asked whether he felt Denbrock’s play calling was too conservative, he reiterated that Notre Dame couldn’t execute the plays called, rather than the OC handcuffing the unit.
“I don't think we're being conservative. I think that's just part of these two-down situations, if we feel like we got a good enough look at a run, let's run the ball and go for it on fourth.”
Over the last week, Freeman's message has centered on accepting responsibility for the loss and finding ways to make Notre Dame better moving forward.
Against Navy, the Notre Dame offense has a chance to look much better. Unless they struggle even more against a weaker defense, Irish fans won’t have any idea what they’ll get in two weeks against Miami. It’s safe to say the coaching staff needs to use this time to figure out what went wrong and how to avoid it going wrong again.
Add us as a preferred source on Google