Urgency And Intensity On Display At Team Scrimmage

By John Brice
Special Contributor

The tone for Notre Dame’s intrasquad scrimmage Thursday inside Notre Dame Stadium had been set, well, really since the onset of this preseason camp.

When first-year head coach Marcus Freeman, defensive coordinator Al Golden and myriad other Irish staffers drove home a direct, one-word message: Urgency.

So in a recent practice session, red-zone emphasis a key for both the Irish offense and defense, an intense setting defined that session.

It was more of the same on this day, as the Irish worked through what Freeman estimated as around a 90-play scrimmage that had been scripted to include two-thirds of those snaps for Notre Dame’s first and second units on offense and defense.

Ultimately, the Irish offense – with newly minted starting quarterback Tyler Buchner – carried the day, retaining the right to don the team’s traditional blue, home jerseys.

“The offense ended up winning the jersey scrimmage,” Freeman said. “They kept the blue jerseys. At the end of the day, it was because of turnovers.

“I told the guys, defensively, if you don’t get takeaways, you’re not going to win the jersey scrimmage. Offensively, if you don’t turn the ball over, you will win the jersey scrimmage. There was only one turnover. The result is that the offense kept the jerseys.”

That turnover, Freeman reluctantly revealed, came when veteran defensive back TaRiq Bracy capitalized on perhaps Buchner’s only significant miscue, an ill-advised, cross-body throw as Buchner was pressured out of bounds.

Bracy, Cam Hart and Clarence Lewis have generated the type of camp performances that place them as Notre Dame’s top three corners; Brandon Joseph, DJ Brown and Houston Griffith have been steady at the safety positions.

Mostly, Freeman shared, his team has grinded through a relentlessly intense camp with an eye on forging its identity.

Like those hyper-competitive red-zone chess matches; such as the 1s-versus-1s work inside the Irish’s venerable home.

“I think it’s the intensity; it’s the good-on-good (matchups),” Freeman said. “We’ve done more good-on-good (starters drills) probably than I’ve ever done. I think it’s what’s necessary in terms of developing an identity, developing a confidence in the things that you’re good at. That’s probably the biggest thing: ‘We’re not going to do a whole bunch of scout work right now. We’re gonna go ones-on-ones, twos-on-twos, and we’re going to be competitive.’”

Buchner made some big plays, moments that included multiple downfield connections to fast-rising freshman wideout Tobias Merriweather. The Irish’s offensive line, even not with all five of its expected starters for No. 5 Notre Dame’s Sept. 3 opener at No. 2 Ohio State, has asserted itself.

“I think it’s the ability to run the football,” Freeman said of his team’s greatest in-camp advancement. “That’s something that I’ve been really, really pushing on our offense and pushing really on our entire team, is that we have to be able to run the football and stop the run because running the football, to me, really creates so much space in terms of the pass game.

“When a defense feels like they’ve got to do everything in their power to stop the run – being on the defensive side, I understand that when you don’t feel like you can stop the run at will, you try to do different things defensively. And all of a sudden, that opens up the pass game. So to see our offense run the ball today and really do a good job of really being positive in the yardage in terms of running the ball, it was really good to see. And then again, the decision-making. We had some big plays on offense today, some, some balls downfield. Tyler threw some great balls downfield and we saw some guys make some big plays. Drew (Pyne) threw some balls downfield and made some good plays. Those are the things that, again, are always created from being able to run the ball. You run the ball and that opens up the pass game.”

The physicality is not without some risk, but the mindset Freeman & Co. are imbuing within the Irish likewise isn’t an elective trait.

“It’s called training camp,” he said. “I just told them: It’s supposed to be hard. You’re battling against each other. Now, as we are about two weeks out, we have to be really smart in terms of how we’ll prepare for Ohio State as we move forward.

“But I was really pleased with the 11 practices or 12 practices that we’ve had. This group’s competitive, man. They really don’t care how they feel. They go out there and work. You challenge them and they always rise to a challenge. I’m excited to coach this group and was really happy with what I saw today.”