With Indiana and Notre Dame’s matchup coming on a Friday night, both coach’s official “game week” schedule began on Sunday, a day earlier than normal game weeks. To kick things off, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman met with the media to discuss his team’s upcoming matchup with the Hoosiers. Let’s take a look at what he had to say about Indiana, specifically.
“Moving along to Indiana. Obviously, it’s a 11-1 football team. Very talented but you can tell they’re coached well. They play, as I often say, with the clarity that you look for when you watch film. It’s a team that plays fast, a team that understands what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it. So, you can tell they understand what’s expected of them. They make quick and fast decisions. A very disruptive, chaotic defense that is number one in the country at stopping the run. So, we understand it’ll be a great challenge for us, and we’ve got to have a great week of prep as we get ready for Friday night.”
“They do some unique things with their D-line, with their second-level defense, in terms of pressure packages but also some different stunts that you don’t see every week. What we can’t do is try to play fit-ball. You hear me say it all the time, and make sure, ‘Hey, we’re scheming everything up the exact right way.’ Part of this is you’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to establish a new line of scrimmage when you’re running the football, and that’s a mindset, a mentality, that we have to have. But they’ve done an excellent job of stopping the run all season long.”
“Christian [Gray], there was a couple of plays they made on him that they have really good players. They had a really good quarterback. They made some plays. But again, when Christian picks off that last ball and takes it to the house, it’s a reflection of one play, one life. This is one thing that matters. We have the utmost confidence in all of our DBs, Christian Gray included.
You’ve got to learn from some of the things that happened, but also understand and build off the confidence that he has after that last interception he took to the house. They’ll be ready to go. They’ll be ready. All of our DBs will be ready for the challenge that presents itself on Friday.”
“Every great offense is led by a quarterback, and this is no different. He’s a veteran. He’s been in big games. He’s played a lot of football games, and he makes really good decisions. He knows where he’s going with the ball. He knows what he’s looking for, and he is able to execute at a high level. But more than that, I think, their offense, being able to run the ball, is something that they’ve done really efficiently.
When you think about weather conditions, you think about a Friday night in South Bend, Indiana, weather could have an impact on the football game. They’ve done a really good job running the ball. So, we have to prepare, obviously, for the things he does well in the passing game, but we got to make sure we can stop the run, too.”
“They play aggressively. I often say they create chaos. They have a really unique scheme in terms of some of their twist games and pressure packages. But they’re talented, and they play hard. They play hard. Their D-line is really, really good. It’s hard to simulate some of the things they do in practice, but our scout guys have done a good job of trying to give us a really good look as they’ve done all year. They are well-coached, they’re aggressive and they’re a confident group
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