By John Brice
Special Contributor
No more sleeping in, such as it was.
Marcus Freeman said goodbye Friday to the 30 extra minutes he had afforded himself in the summer, when a “typical day in the offseason was in the weight room by 6 and getting a workout in, just so I can not be interrupted during the day,” he had earlier shared.
More than an hour before Friday’s 6:43 sunrise – 73 minutes, to be precise – Freeman was tracing a route around campus, dialing in his focus and preparing for his first-ever first day of fall camp as a head coach.
Nearly seven hours, multiple meetings and a foundation-filling practice later, Freeman concluded his first media session of preseason, 29 days in front of his inaugural Fighting Irish squad’s visit to Ohio State in a primetime, national television affair Sept. 3 that’s part of college football’s 2022 opening weekend.
“I got here at 5:30, went on a run, went to my office, prepared for our morning meeting,” Freeman said of the opening half of his Friday. “Had a staff meeting, then had a team meeting, then had a special teams meeting. Went back into my office and prepared for some of our night meetings and things I want to do tonight.
“Practiced. Now I’m here.”
Here inside the ever-clean chambers of Notre Dame Stadium after two demanding hours of Day 1 work across campus on the LaBar Practice Complex fields.
The Irish worked good on good, pitting the earliest iterations of their top offensive units against their explosive defensive counterparts.
They worked misdirection plays, drag routes and back-corner fades during repeated red-zone competition. They saw both Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne have highlight-worthy touchdown tosses.
They saw the defense, particularly on a dazzling interception from D.J. Brown that likely would have been a pick-6, oftentimes assert its will.
And Freeman, in a constant quest to grow both as a coach and in service to his players, saw the early benefit of a practice structure borrowed from Al Golden, he of the Super Bowl runner-up Cincinnati Bengals prior to being hired earlier this year as Freeman’s defensive coordinator.
“We started in red zone, because it was very intentional,” Freeman said. “And, really, I think Al Golden was the one who said in the NFL they kind of did that to really work the long running of the skill guys. I’m not trying to take it easy, but it’s a progression in terms of how long our wideouts and our DBs are running. So that’s kind of where we started in the spring, we’re going to start in the red zone and then we’ll work our way out to the middle of the field.
“It went back and forth, it was really good to see. I think the defense has depth. That’s something to me that was noticeable. The offense, we’re not as deep as we want to be yet. We’ll continue to progress to that point. It was good. Saw some good things from the offense, good things from the defense.”
Sleeker versions of sophomore linebacker Prince Kollie and tailback Audric Estime both flashed at times for the Irish; rookie wideout Tobias Merriweather immediately stamped his arrival.
Above all, however, it was a foundational element in the building of Freeman’s program.
Piped-in game day noise with players forced to execute. Next-man-up demands from the coaches when a couple players fatigued a bit before practice’s end.
“You know, I don’t think this is going to be a longer practice than any other practice that we have in fall camp,” said Freeman, who noted it was perhaps a slightly longer opening session than in the past. “It’s just really evaluating what we feel, and we have a committee of guys and we meet, we say, ‘Hey, let’s look at the GPS numbers. Let’s look at the length of practice. Let’s look at all these different variables and say, ‘What do we feel is best in terms of how we’re going to structure our practices?’ So that was how myself and those other people came up with the length of practice.
“But to me, this is where we start. There were a couple of guys who couldn’t finish practice. So, we have to get into a position where our guys aren’t being pulled for practice. We have to condition our body.”
Thus, Freeman & Co. initiated camp by conditioning the bodies and minds of their players.
“The beautiful thing about it is that I’ve been around different places where you really start slow and then you build up and that second and third week is the hardest, longest practices,” he said. “But the thing about it is right now we’re starting out at Ground Zero. Long practices, tough, hard practices. Because we have to develop fast. We’ve got to be ready to roll right out of the gate. So it’s very intentional of how we practiced.
“The crowd noise is not about anything other than I want the coaches to let the players play. That was really a trigger. When you’re inside, you can’t hear anything. When you’re outside, you know, (hear) a little bit. But I want the coaches to let these guys start from Day 1 to learn how to communicate with each other. How to problem-solve without the coaches on the field.”
In other words, an early wake-up call. The same one Freeman delivered to himself on Friday.