You're listening to Irish Illustrated Insider. I am Tim Priest with Tim O'Malley from Irish

Illustrator, joined by John Bryce, also by Illustrated and the Football Scoop and Pete Samson of the

Athletic. It is Stanford Week, Notre Dame, a 23.5 point favorite over the Cardinal in Notre Dame Stadium this weekend.

We had an opportunity to talk to Marcus Freeman for a little bit.

We're going to kind of meld it all together, some comments from him, some commentary from

Mike Denbrock earlier in the week.

Emil Wagner, I think, is topical.

But, Tim, let's start with you.

Like, from our interviews with, we had four players, we had the coordinators on Tuesday.

What's at the top of your mind from those interactions?

Well, I think the Riley Leonard stuff, as we discussed, pre-podcasts with Dembrock, is worth exploring. In fact, I think the Riley-Leodard stuff, as we discussed pre-podcasts with Dembrock,

is worth exploring. In fact, I explored it in a story today looking at, and I tied it in with

like, I asked Marcus, can you keep running Riley Leonard? And I mean, I guess that goes into strategy.

And he's not going to say the real answer there where he said well he's a weapon with his legs and we need to use that weapon of course you do you need to you need to be careful

how you use that weapon um i did look back at duke and both his half year and his full year

about half of his yards rushing were designed at Duke.

86% are designed at Notre Dame as opposed to scrambles.

I just think he's being overused.

But I think when Mike Dembrose, as Pete pointed out, when Mike Denbrock says,

I really like his last two weeks of practice, almost ebullient over the situation.

You could use Riley Leonard as a passer and less is a runner and running backs more as runners.

I think that is what I take away from Mike Denbrock is if he's actually looking good,

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