As Notre Dame’s spring practices begin, Marcus Freeman continues to say all the right things
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Notre Dame officially started the spring football season on Wednesday with a combination press conference, which of course, had Marcus Freeman front and center taking questions from the media. Either sometime durong or shortly after, I received a DM from a colleague simply saying this… “Marcus is so good man.”
Obviously, he’s right. Marcus is very good. The unfortunate situation from last season was something that programs could either die on or build on, and Freeman has decidedly BEEN building on it since the day it happened.
While Notre Dame’s detractors cited a “missed opportunity” for Notre Dame to get more practice time at the end of the season had they gone to a bowl, Freeman flipped the script, and found a way to begin to get his team prepared for the 2026 season rather than a meaningless bowl game in December of 2025.
“Yeah, are there benefits? Absolutely. And I probably got up here last year after we played the national championship game, and you would ask a similar question. I would’ve said, ‘Yeah, the benefits of playing that late in the season because of the practices that you go through.’ But this has been a unique offseason for me to see, because we’ve never had this much time. We’ve never had this development, that full eight weeks of being in the weight room, the meetings, the football schools, the individual drills. We’re at a different level than I’ve previously seen us at.”
“But, one of the discussions we have amongst coaches is, are we looking at shifting the calendar? Is there a way to shift the calendar so we all get those eight weeks of winter conditioning, and don’t feel like you’re not as developed all year if you make a playoff run? And so, we’ll see what the future holds in terms of the calendar, but there’s been a lot of benefits for this group to have those eight weeks of uninterrupted training.”
And that brings us to an interesting point in the difference between meaningless bowl practices, and what the Irish have done since — Notre Dame brought in 30 new players this spring via early enrollee recruits and transfer portal players. This time has been spent well getting news guys to adjust, and preparing them for whatever role they are to play in 2026.
“Yeah, I think the leadership has been tremendous. This is the first time for me to have two returning captains. We’ve got a bunch of guys that have played that are leaders, that wanna be leaders and understand those expectations. As far as the new additions, I think we have to be very intentional to start, to separate the new guys from the guys that have been training in your program, because you have be able to evaluate where they’re at.”
“Whether that’s college transfers or it’s high school guys, they need they need individual time or their own group with our strengths staff, with our medical team, and our nutritionists and all those different areas. When you feel like they’re ready to join the guys that have been here, the veterans, you integrate them.”
“For some guys, it might have been a week or two, and for some guys, it was three or four weeks. But you have to be intentional about, we can’t train these new guys the way we train guys that have been here right away until you know what their bodies can handle. I’ve been very pleased with how we handle that, and everybody has obviously transitioned to one group now in terms of the way we train and the way we run things.”
We’ve already heard Freeman preach about “Choose Hard,” and “Leave No Doubt,” but it was an answer he gave about getting the new guys to buy into the pain that the team felt at the end of last year to help motivate them towards reaching their goals in 2026. It was my favorite answer of the press conference — mostly because as a husband, it’s too relatable.
“I’m sure when you heard that, I used the example of my wife. It’s how do you relate the things we ask you to do in the game of football to real life. Because there’s so many parallels. There’s so many parallels.”
“Using that example into a marriage. There’s expectations in relationships. At least that goes for my house, me and my wife. I’ve often said if she does not like somebody, I might not dislike that person, but I can’t be friends with them. I have to go home and see her every day. No, I can’t. There’s expectations here.”
“So, we have to get the new coaches, the new players, the ones that weren’t here to understand that relationship. We’re in a relationship. This is a family. This is a brotherhood. So certain things that have happened in our past, they happened to you too, right? You have to be able to keep that pain. You have to feel that pain that we had when they told us that we didn’t make the playoff.”
“You can’t sit here and go, that was them. No, that was us. When you come here, I don’t care if you’re here for a year or for five years or six years. You’ve joined. You put everything in the past and said I’m joining this family and this brotherhood. That’s what I mean when I say it.”
“It’s a way of getting them to say, you know what, I’m choosing to put Notre Dame in front of myself. My journey to Notre Dame might have been different than Coach Freeman’s journey. But we’re all in this thing together now. So, some of the traumatic things that have happened in the past, they happened to us. We have to use that in certain situations when we talk about motivating, we talk about choosing hard and those type of things. We have to use that. I think more than anything it’s to get them a way to say, you know what, put self away. I’m putting family and putting Notre Dame in front of myself.”
So yeah — once again, Marcus Freeman is saying all of the right things as the head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football team. The thing is though, he’s not just saying the right things — he’s making it happen. Notre Dame’s roster is incredibly stacked, the staff is top notch, and they are primed to be a major contender for the foreseeable future — as well as being the odds favorite to win the national championship next season.
Freeman has said the right things, and now we continue to see the actions materialize from those words.
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