Marcus Freeman Rolls the Dice, Working Without A Safety Net, In Two Major Respects
‘Notre Dame’ Head Coach Marcus Freeman is “working without a net” in two major respects, with no veteran quarterback on the roster and no one on the coaching staff with veteran head coaching experience.
Quarterbacks
For the first time in three years, Marcus Freeman does not have a veteran starter at quarterback. And for the first time in his still-young head coaching career he does not have a single scholarship quarterback on the depth chart with extensive collegiate game experience.
Of course, if either of the two inexperienced quarterbacks atop the depth chart play well, they might benefit from the honeymoon period that sometimes magnifies the results of a newly emerging phenom, before opponents have time to study up on the new phenom’s tendencies and game plan accordingly.
On the other hand, if, in their raw inexperience, they run hot-and-cold, making some “gee-whiz, the sky’s the limit plays” while also making some game-crushing mistakes, there will be that uncomfortable, sporadic gray zone where the head coach tries to figure out if, and when, to yank them.
Freeman’s agility at navigating the expanding world of transfers and quasi-ringers has meant that, for the past two seasons, Freeman had the luxury of two different veteran quarterbacks with robust playing experience gained elsewhere. Both transferred in to become instant leaders.
Last year it was Riley Leonard, currently in the NFL, where it looks like he might turn out to be the best quarterback option for the Colts, even if, for now, someone else is starting.
Backing up Leonard in 2024 was seasoned quarterback Steve Angeli, who had robust game experience, including winning a sub-major bowl game as a starter. Angeli also would contribute in a significant way in the 2024 playoffs.
Additional raw talent populated the quarterback depth chart, to such an extent that, when former ‘Notre Dame’ and Alabama starting quarterback Tyler Buchner returned to campus as a walk-on, Buchner was turned into a wide receiver.
Two years ago, Freeman had veteran Sam Hartman come in as a ringer/transfer, backed up by the faithful Angeli, who already had meaningful playing experience at that point. Even after Buchner had jumped ship, Hartman and Angeli still were accompanied by additional raw talent in the depth chart.
When Hartman played hooky from the bowl game, Angeli stepped in to start and win a sub-major bowl game.
Ironically, Freeman does have, third on the quarterback depth chart, the same player who was Freeman’s first starter, who was on scholarship back then.
In Freeman’s first year, his initial starter, before getting injured, was none other than Tyler Buchner, who had played in 10 games the previous season, rolling up 634 yards of combined offense as a duel threat.
Yet that player is now a walk-on, who transferred out to Alabama then back again, and spent last season as a little-seen wide-receiver.
So now, Freeman, for the first time in three years, literally has not one single scholarship quarterback with meaningful game experience. All he has on scholarship are a few rookies who got in for a few plays.
The 2025 starter, CJ Carr, helped run out the clock in one blowout victory, and apparently has never thrown a pass in collegiate competition.
The backup, Kenny Minchey, has thrown a handful of passes in a handful of games.
As for Tyler Buchner, Freeman only returned him to the quarterback position in the off-season, after Freeman failed to hang onto NFL prospect Steve Angeli.
Angeli, of course, still might end up playing in The House That Rockne Built after all, if he hangs onto his new starting job at Syracuse. The Orange, p/k/a The Orangemen, pay a visit later in the season.
One might argue that Freeman actually is in a stronger position now than in his first year. As in his first year, Freeman has Buchner himself available, along with a few players reputedly with enormous raw talent. Perhaps they have more talent, and more ready to play, than Drew Pyne was way back when he came in, in relief of Buchner.
On the other hand, failing to hang onto Angeli seems like a mistake that a more experienced, veteran head coach might have tried hard to avoid. “Rolling the dice,” with two unproven young talents, arguably runs the risk of sounding like the excessively wishful bravado of inexperience.
No Veteran Head Football Coaches on Campus
For Freeman’s first three years, he had Al Golden on the coaching staff, a veteran head coach with roughly a decade of mostly successful head coaching experience, half a decade at the power conference level.
Golden built a losing Temple program into a bowl team and helped Miami (Fla.) stay a winning program despite sanctions and scandal, carrying over from the past, that reputedly were not fully disclosed to Golden when he was first hired.
Golden, of course, was not at ‘Notre Dame’ to be a head coach. He seemed to embrace his defensive coordinator role wholeheartedly, and advanced to the same role in the NFL.
Yet even as a defensive coordinator, a veteran head coach like Golden still would add a certain weight, tenor and character to the fiber of the program.
And Freeman himself apparently spoke of benefiting from having a veteran head coach of Golden’s stature around, to gain insights and advice about head coaching. Whether Golden was officially deemed a head coaching mentor, he certainly sounds as if he was a valuable resource for a novice head coach.
With Golden off to the NFL, in 2025 there are no veteran head coaches, anywhere across the coaching staff, and only two coaches in the program with any head coaching experience at all.
Freeman himself has three years of head coaching experience, as does Golden’s replacement, defensive coordinator Chris Ash.
Ash was the Rutgers head coach for three years, averaging roughly 2 wins per season.
Charlie Weis
Curiously enough, like Freeman, Charlie Weis was another head coaching novice who had a veteran head coach on the staff when Weis started out.
Weis had limited head coaching experience at the high school level, then extensive NFL experience as an assistant coach. He won four Super Bowl rings, three as an offensive coordinator.
When Weis became a new collegiate head coach, he had Rick Minter as defensive coordinator for Weis’s first two years.
A highly successful defensive coordinator under Lou Holtz, Minter then spent a decade as head coach at Cincinnati, building up the Cincinnati program. Minter’s foundations helped lay the groundwork for Mark Dantonio and Brian Kelly to be successful at Cincinnati.
With Minter back onto the Irish staff as a defensive coordinator, Weis had 10-win seasons and major bowl appearances. After Minter left, Weis went 3-9, then fought to get back above .500 for two years before seeing his tenure come to an end.
Perhaps that was largely just a coincidence, and there were other changes and issues afoot, such as the roster and other foundations of the program still recovering from downturns under previous head coaches.
And, about the same time, a veteran positions coach with a string of consecutive All-Americans across two programs, suddenly had to leave the staff, for health reasons.
Of course, it did not help that Minter’s replacement, who was supposed to be an up-and-coming young phenom, later, after his departure, turned out to claim that he had football-related brain damage. That point came up as an attempted defense to legal problems, when the replacement, much later, had a dangerous run-in with law enforcement.
In any event, novice head coach Weis was successful for the two years that he had a veteran head coach as defensive coordinator, but then things went downhill after that coach left.
Novice head coach Marcus Freeman did fairly well during a time frame when he had a veteran head coach around, as a defensive coordinator and possible head coaching mentor.
Now that resource is gone. Time will tell whether, and how, that impacts the program’s success.
Bob Davie
Of course, looking back further, there was the curious case of Bob Davie and Jim Coletto.
Bob Davie was another defensive coordinator with no head coaching experience, promoted to take the top job. He hired experienced head coach Jim Coletto as offensive coordinator.
Coletto had struggled to average more than three wins per season, during his six years as Purdue head coach. Years earlier, he had a fairly poor record at Cal-State Fullerton.
Unfortunately for ‘Notre Dame,’ when they lost Lou Holtz, they lost one of the best offensive coaches in college football. And, at the same time Holtz left, his offensive coordinator, Dave Roberts, left to become head coach at Baylor.
Meanwhile, they still had Joe Moore as offensive line coach — yes, that Joe Moore, whom the award is named after, and whom the endowed current offensive line coach position is named after after.
Despite Moore being, by at least some measure, the most successful positions coach in the country, Davie insulted him for being “old” and fired him. That action ended up resulting in the university losing an age discrimination lawsuit brought by Moore.
Coletto decided that, since an offensive coordinator takes over some positions responsibilities, and since he had some offensive line background, he would take over the offensive line positions coaching.
So the combined net effect of Davie’s stewardship was that ‘Notre Dame’ ended up losing three of their best offensive coaches, including two of the best offensive coaches in college football, and replaced all of them with Jim Coletto.
Now, no one could accuse Marcus Freeman of following in Bob Davie’s footsteps in most regards, and Freeman, of course, has had significantly greater success than Davie as a head coach.
Yet, interestingly enough, with experienced head coach Coletto as a coordinator, Davie did start out with two winning seasons, going 25-9, with two bowl appearances, one of them a sub-major bowl game in which they played competitively.
After Coletto’s departure, Davie dropped to a losing record the following year, with two losing seasons in the subsequent three years.
While an interesting coincidence, the comparison between Davie and Freeman, across all aspects of the program, are such a night-and-day difference, that some of the details are little more than curious historical trivia (and legal history).
Yet it still will be interesting to see if any hiccups occur in the character and fiber of the program, after losing a veteran head coach from its ranks, with a younger, still-developing head coach like Marcus Freeman at the helm.
For one thing, a seasoned veteran of a head coach might not have blundered into letting a somewhat tried-and-true, experienced quarterback like Steve Angeli get away, or perhaps arguably allow him to be driven away, in favor of “rolling the dice” with a few practice-field hot shots whose game day abilities are still hypothetical.
Wiser heads might wonder if “rolling the dice” like that might turn out to be more of a “rose-colored-glasses,” semi-reckless, young-guy mistake, especially with the schedule front-loaded the way it is.
Time will tell.