SOUTH BEND — For the second time in Marcus Freeman’s three seasons at the helm for Notre Dame football, a nighttime road date with a traditional power awaits on the other side of fall training camp.
In 2022, it was a high-stakes trip back home to face Ohio State that opened the first full season of the Freeman era. Fifth-ranked Notre Dame was competitive that night against the second-ranked Buckeyes, but the Irish wilted late and lost 21-10.
This time, with fall practice set to open on July 31, it’s a trip to Texas A&M that looms. The Aggies will open the Mike Elko era on Aug. 31 with a night game at raucous Kyle Field, where the seating capacity of 102,733 makes it the largest venue in the Southeastern Conference.
“It will be a hostile environment,” Freeman said during an offseason visit with beat reporters. “We get it. We understand that. Our guys will be prepared. That’s the last thing they need to focus on.”
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Instead of fretting about the noise and the 12 th Man and “Gig ‘em” pouring from the stands, Freeman wants his coaches and players to be solution-oriented.
“What we need to focus on is, ‘OK, if we’re going to go on silent count, let’s do it. If we’re going to go on the clap, let’s do it,’ “ Freeman said. “Let’s prepare for the noise and not just sit here and talk about it over and over and over. Let’s prepare for it, have an actual answer for it.”
This is the voice of a third-year head coach as opposed to a first timer taking over a program that was coming off five straight 10-win seasons but hadn’t visited Ohio Stadium in more than a quarter century and hadn’t won there since 1935.
“I think probably going into that first year, I spent a lot of time talking about it. ‘Oh, we’re going to Ohio State and this is what it’s going to sound like. Let’s play crowd noise (at practice),’ “ Freeman said. “What are the answers? What are the answers? That, to me, is the difference in my mentality going into year three and hopefully the same thing with our program.
“What positive things can we learn from these experiences that we have from the first 24, 25, 26 games we’ve had. There are a lot of really good things we can learn from and take with us as we progress into year three.”
Leaning on the familiar
Familiarity, with the moment and the principals, can only help as Notre Dame football prepares to head to the Lone Star State.
Geographically, the Irish finished off 2023 in El Paso with a 40-8 blowout of Oregon State in the Sun Bowl. Schematically, Freeman’s club pulled out a last-minute, 21-14 win over Elko at Duke last September.
The Blue Devils’ quarterback that night, of course, was Riley Leonard, now set to assume the controls of the Notre Dame offense as a senior transfer. Facing his former head coach, who also ran the Notre Dame defense in 2017, only adds to the tastiness of this matchup.
While Kevin Johns, Leonard’s former offensive coordinator, didn’t follow Elko to College Station, new Irish OC Mike Denbrock had to game plan for the ear-splitting din of Kyle Field in 2022 with LSU. The sixth-ranked Tigers entered 9-2 for that late November matchup but exited with a 38-23 loss against an unranked A&M team that had dropped seven of 11 games to that point.
LSU committed just one turnover with Jayden Daniels at quarterback but never led against the Jimbo Fisher-coached Aggies. No doubt Denbrock, who previously worked with Freeman at Cincinnati, gleaned valuable insight from that experience, insight that can only help when kickoff arrives on the last night of August.
Besides that setback at A&M, Denbrock’s two-year run in Baton Rouge saw the Tigers win SEC road games against Auburn, Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Missouri.
Additional losses came last season at Mississippi and Alabama when both were ranked in the top 20.
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Leonard, meanwhile, went 13-8 as Duke’s starting quarterback, but that included a 4-6 mark on the road. The wins came at Northwestern, Boston College, Miami and Connecticut, hardly a gauntlet that would register a peep on the Richter Scale.
The losses came at outposts that included the noise factories of Virginia Tech, Louisville and Florida State as well as Kansas, Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech.
“I want to focus on the real things that can make us better,” Freeman said. “Confidence is important. Our players need confidence. Our players need to believe they are prepared. Not scared, not worried about going to Texas A&M or Ohio State: ‘Oh my god, it’s a big environment.’ “
Freeman’s first two editions have gone a combined 5-4 in true road games with the losses coming at Ohio State and USC in 2022 and Louisville and Clemson in 2023.
“I want those guys so confident they’re ready to go when we take the field,” Freeman said, “that they truly in their hearts believe they can get this job done.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for NDInsider.com and the South Bend Tribune. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Heading into fall camp, Notre Dame football focuses on solutions before opener at Texas A&M
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