Marcus Freeman Talks Sideline Discussion, Notre Dame Offensive Line, Javontae Jean-Baptiste

The final score of Notre Dame’s regular season-ending win over Stanford glosses over a lot of little things that happened on the way. Anyone who didn’t see the game either in person or on the low distribution of the final football game on the Pac-12 Network would likely think the Fighting Irish flat out dominated the hapless Cardinal in their 56-23 victory. Anyone who watched the game knows otherwise. The Fighting Irish committed three first half turnovers and a fourth in the fourth quarter before picking up their play to pound a now 3-9 team into submission. The game was a bit of a microcosm of Marcus Freeman’s second full season as head coach. The final record says 9-3. A good season by some standards but not the standard of a program that aspires to national championships. Improvement was made over the course of the season, but too many self-inflicted steps back were also visible throughout the year.

“If you don’t look at the outcomes you say, hey this team definitely has improved tremendously,” Freeman said after the win when asked if his team has improved since week two. “There’s a couple games between Tennessee State and now that we wish we could run it back and do it over, but we can’t. But we’ve learned and we’ve grown from those mistakes and those opportunities. I’m so proud of this team. …. We’re chasing reaching our full potential. That’s something you’ll hear me say. We haven’t totally got there but dang, we were pretty close today and we’ve got a couple weeks to get ready for this bowl game, whichever one we go to.”