P.A. Irish Guy. From the start of his tenure to now, what areas, what area or areas have you seen the biggest growth from Marcus Freeman?

Two, two. It's actually two. Number one is consistency. The understanding the need for a consistent message. It's very important.

And number two, I think a big reason is I think Marcus Freeman, the more he's been at Notre Dame is more and more comfortable in his own skin.

Meaning a lot of times when you're a new coach, you're sometimes, you know, you rely on your mentors.

Hey, Coach Trussell did this or Coach Holtz did this or when i coach for luke fickle he did this

in this situation and so you kind of you lean on that and it may not be your personality and i

remember like the first year where marcus was like very stoic on the sidelines you just showed no

emotion and because i think he felt he needed to be you know it's like it's like you ever like

if you follow politics you're like well that's not presidential well what be you know it's like it's like you ever like if you follow politics you're

like well what does that mean it's it's this well you have to do this and yet like it's

you're that's not head coachly you have to do this and you have to be stoic and there's some coaches

and then now you look at Marcus Freeman and he's a maniac on the sidelines now I mean he's just

intense he's because that's who he is and eventually he's like you know the sidelines now. I mean, he's just intense. He's because that's who

he is. And eventually he's like, you know, eff it. I'm just going to be myself. And so I think he's got a lot more comfortable like, do it your way. Now, that doesn't mean you don't take lessons from your mentors. If you don't think that you can learn something from Jen Tressel or Lou Holtz or people like that, then you're in the wrong line of work because you're not as smart as you think you are.

But what he's learned is take the lessons from them, but then apply it in a way that fits me and my program. When I've said this about like scheme, you'd go to, I'd go to these coaches clinics and these coaches are just write down what these guys are doing and then they would just try to take that playback when i would

talk i said okay well well why do you have the break at that way well because we got this real fast kid and

he was kind of getting out of his break sooner and and so we stretched the route and and so we just felt

or we felt the timing wasn't there so we'd'd push it to 15. And I said, well, we can't do that because our receivers are running four sevens. And my quarterback can't throw a 15 yard corner where a guy breaks at 15. So then I got to do a little bit differently. So do I got to then, you know, maybe do like a little pivot route with my hitch instead of a hitch?

Because if I just run a hitch on this corner route or the slot fade, that corner can play back

because he knows my quarterback can't throw the ball as far.

So we don't.

Okay, well, then I got to do something different with my combo as part of that corner route that this coach doesn't have to worry about because he has the players to do something differently. You got to apply it to what works for your personnel. And I think that's

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