Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman met with the media after the Blue's 76-31 victory over the Gold in Saturday's 94th Blue-Gold Game at Notre Dame Stadium in an intrasquad scrimmage that used a concocted scoring system.
Here's everything the fourth-year Irish head coach had to say. Answers are largely verbatim. Questions may have been edited for brevity and clarity.
OPENING STATEMENT
“Really pleased. A lot of good from that scrimmage. We had close to 100 plays between both groups, including some of the 7-on-7. For the most, it looks like no injuries. I’m sure there’s some bumps and bruises, but it’s good. There’s a lot of good on both sides of the ball. I told them in the locker room, I need to fix the scoring system a little bit and find a way to get the defense some more points. Both sides of the ball did a lot of good.
“Offensively, the ability to the run the ball, drive. Early in the scrimmage, every drive that didn’t result in points, there was some type of negative play. It was a penalty. It was a tackle for loss. Great teaching opportunities to understand how to continue to sustain those drives offensively.
“Defensively, did a great job of stepping up in plus-territory. There was a fourth-down stop on the one-yard line. You want the offense to score, and the defense to stop them. It’s a lot of good, a lot of good teaching. I’m really pleased with everybody that was on the field, the effort and the execution that they played with today.”
Q: What do you hope to get out of the next three practices after the Blue-Gold Game? What are the benefits of that?
Marcus Freeman: “The spring game fell where it fell. Usually, it’s obviously the end of spring. The reason why it was earlier is just because of pushing the start of spring back with the length of the season. We’ll go, and we’ll look.
“I have some ideas of what I want to see these next two and three practices. I’ll talk with the coaches about what else we want to see. A lot of it’s be some play situations, two-minute situations where you gotta make your guys think and execute. But also there’s going to be great teaching opportunities from those situations in practice.”
Q: What do the next two weeks look like for you with the portal opening and handling your roster management? How much time will you spend with Mike Denbrock, Chris Ash and Mike Martin evaluating everything?
MF: “We spend ...
