Freeman, Irish Building Culture To Withstand Tough Times

By John Brice
Special Contributor

Urgency, not panic, was there as Saturday night dissolved into Sunday morning; Notre Dame had absorbed another stunning setback, this one to longtime rival Stanford, and players hardly were content to catch a sleep before they turned the page to the second-half of this 2022 campaign.

Redshirt-freshman defensive lineman Gabriel Rubio had just generated the most productive performance of his young Fighting Irish career, part necessity after Jayson Ademilola’s injury and part progress from Rubio’s practice-field work that coaches had praised for several weeks.

So players immediately began discussing how to make the necessary corrections; the defensive line fired up their group chat.

They refer to themselves “with something pretty bland,” Rubio said, and he revealed the group messages are either labeled “D-Line Gold” or just “D-Line,” pending the presence of coaches in those chats.

More than a name, Rubio said the players generated a digital brain-storming session to seek improvement.

“That night, we have a group text message and we sent in all of our ideas, and everything on what we need to work on,” said Rubio, the gritty, 6-foot-5-.25-inch, 295-pound second-year player from St. Louis. “What time we were meeting the next day, so that we could get in early, get to work and things like that.

“All the d-linemen (participated).”

Ownership has emerged from players young and old. Tailback Logan Diggs, like Rubio, has never performed better in an Irish uniform than in recent weeks.

And like Rubio, Diggs has vowed improvement – for players past, present and future.

“This culture and this program are built on winning,” Diggs said this week, “so when you feel like you’re letting down this team, and everyone who came before you, it’s super-personal.

“Everybody on this team is ready to get after it, ready to go.”

That Notre Dame has experienced growing pains under first-year coach Marcus Freeman cannot be considered overly shocking; with Drew Pyne forced to start at quarterback due to injury, the Irish have deployed their fourth full-time starting quarterback since the onset of the 2020 season.

The Irish roster, as Freeman has implored since his introductory press conference last December, also has had its need to be enhanced revealed as additional holes have been exposed.

A 12-game season, with both injuries and natural attrition, has underscored Notre Dame’s lack of depth at quarterback and wide receiver, most prominently.

“We’re always going to look to enhance our roster and be the best recruiting staff and get the best recruits in the country,” said Freeman, who has challenged his coaching staff to find ways to better position the players for success. “There’s no better way to continue to improve than to get the best talent that you can find.

“I don’t want the result of a game to impact the way we recruit and how we evaluate. I don’t care if we’re 6-0 or 3-3; we better recruit at the highest level, and we better be evaluating the guys we’re recruiting, the current guys and where we need to go to enhance.”

What the struggles have laid bare, however, has been the fabric of Freeman’s program. Coaches have pointed fingers at themselves; players have spoken of their need to consistently execute and perform to their capabilities.

No one has indicated this program has fractured.

“You’re going to have to be able to really stand your ground during these tough times,” said Freeman, who’s guided the Irish to impressive wins away from home at North Carolina and against BYU in Las Vegas but managed just one home victory in three contests moving into Saturday’s matinee against UNLV. “There’s been change. Our program is different this year than it was in the past. To really establish something that’s special, you’re going to have to go through some challenges and difficult times.

“I’ve been through them. I’ve been at new places. I’ve been in new situations where you have to hit these tough times. Again, nobody wants to go through them, but I know we’re going to be better because of it.”

And …

“As I told the team, you have to understand you can’t always win it easy,” Freeman said. “Nobody wants to lose a game, but this is going to build this program and our foundation to where it needs to be. They’re encouraged. We’re going to be OK. We watched the film and evaluate and say we did not play to our standard. We know that. We have a good football team.”

If success can obscure flaws, Notre Dame then has been unveiled as “The Masked Singer” in this season of change.

It’s a third different system in as many years for the Irish defense, which has seen injuries and an untimely departure impact a half-dozen players in just the first and second levels of the defense.

Multiple tight ends have been injured, and four first- and second-year wideouts have emerged into prominent roles for the offense. That’s in part because of Avery Davis’s season-ending ACL injury in August and also because Notre Dame has just Braden Lenzy, Joe Wilkins Jr. and Matt Salerno as veteran pass-catchers listed on its two-deep.

These are not excuses, and Freeman has not sought to make any.

“The culture of this program is we’re going to have to embrace these tough times,” Freeman said, “and these growing pains of getting this program to where we want it to be.

“How do you get it there? We have to do a better job of executing. We have to do a better job of preparation and on Saturday, we have to make sure we execute the things we really worked at.”

Rubio has an idea.

“When the going gets tough, we just lean on our brothers,” he said. “Our culture is embedded deep within our team. So it’s up to us as players to keep each other accountable.

“Since we’ve been young, we’ve been trained to handle adversity with courage and poise and stepping into this new role, I feel like it’s a great challenge. I’m ready to step up to it and destroy it.”