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https://theathletic.com/2858878/202...path-to-notre-dame/?source=emp_shared_article
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“He was in a really tough situation because some of the people that I put around him made it very difficult on him,” Fickell said. “You put a Jon Tenuta in the same room as him, who’s been the defensive coordinator for a number of years, then Willie Martinez, who’d been DC at Georgia, and then you’ve got a really young kid who’s never done it and he’s thrown in a room with not only a bad defense, but he has to stand up every day and lead.”
The Bearcats went 4-8 and allowed 31.8 points per game. They allowed 569 yards rushing to Navy in a blowout loss and got torched by UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton’s 374 yards passing and five touchdowns three weeks later, a game mercifully called in the third quarter due to lightning. If sharing a staff room with Tenuta and Martinez didn’t make a first-time coordinator question his coaching acumen, these results would.
“Great coaches recognize when they have to adapt and change,” Fickell said. “And I think for Marcus, looking at what we tried to do the first year and what we had to do moving forward really challenged him to have to adapt.”
Freeman did. He crafted a 4-4 front to handle Navy. Cincinnati shut out the Midshipmen 42-0 the next season. He customized a 3-3-5 scheme to handle UCF’s never-ending RPOs. The Bearcats knocked off the Knights in each of Freeman’s final two seasons running the defense. That first year at Cincinnati also taught Freeman about staff chemistry, part of the reason why he took Notre Dame’s defensive staff on a retreat this summer to a Cincinnati Reds game and to a workshop with Pro Football Focus.
A 30-something coach who had spend his career listening was now ready to speak for himself. He just had to convince himself to leave Fickell.
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“He was in a really tough situation because some of the people that I put around him made it very difficult on him,” Fickell said. “You put a Jon Tenuta in the same room as him, who’s been the defensive coordinator for a number of years, then Willie Martinez, who’d been DC at Georgia, and then you’ve got a really young kid who’s never done it and he’s thrown in a room with not only a bad defense, but he has to stand up every day and lead.”
The Bearcats went 4-8 and allowed 31.8 points per game. They allowed 569 yards rushing to Navy in a blowout loss and got torched by UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton’s 374 yards passing and five touchdowns three weeks later, a game mercifully called in the third quarter due to lightning. If sharing a staff room with Tenuta and Martinez didn’t make a first-time coordinator question his coaching acumen, these results would.
“Great coaches recognize when they have to adapt and change,” Fickell said. “And I think for Marcus, looking at what we tried to do the first year and what we had to do moving forward really challenged him to have to adapt.”
Freeman did. He crafted a 4-4 front to handle Navy. Cincinnati shut out the Midshipmen 42-0 the next season. He customized a 3-3-5 scheme to handle UCF’s never-ending RPOs. The Bearcats knocked off the Knights in each of Freeman’s final two seasons running the defense. That first year at Cincinnati also taught Freeman about staff chemistry, part of the reason why he took Notre Dame’s defensive staff on a retreat this summer to a Cincinnati Reds game and to a workshop with Pro Football Focus.
A 30-something coach who had spend his career listening was now ready to speak for himself. He just had to convince himself to leave Fickell.
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You mean to tell me he makes adjustments based off of the team he's playing each week???
huh?....how about that....
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bucknut502
Hall of Fame
Wait...I was under the impression that the same defense worked against every offensive scheme? Who knew that adjustments needed to be made from a triple option to an air raid to RPO's?
Maybe Coombs thought Alabama was going to run a triple option last year with Mac Jones and Davonta Smith?
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I know, right? That article is just chock full of incomprehensible gibberish. I mean, get a load of this witchcraft:
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Four games into his Notre Dame career, the Freeman following has only grown. On top of the recruiting success and relations built within the program, Freeman has molded Notre Dame’s defense in his own risk-taking image. The Irish lead the nation in interceptions. They’re on pace to smash the Kelly-era sacks record. This is all a departure from Lea’s rule-bound schemes designed to keep the points down, a concept that was good enough to make the College Football Playoff twice.
Still, the investment Notre Dame made in a new version of defense has begun to pay dividends. Freeman has done all this his way, which is to say he’s taken parts of Fickell, Wood and Tressel and made them his own. The result gave Notre Dame a modern defensive coordinator with vintage sensibilities. By listening to his mentors, Marcus Freeman has found his own voice.
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But he goes out and tells everybody which defense he's going to run before the game, and then never changes that.....right?
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