Irish loss ‘falls on my shoulders,’ Freeman says

ATLANTA — Following his team’s 34-23 loss to Ohio State in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman sat in the middle of his two teary-eyed team captains and took ownership for a multitude of mistakes that ultimately were too much to overcome when it mattered most.

With quarterback Riley Leonard sitting to his right and sixth-year senior linebacker Jack Kiser on his left, Freeman said there were uncharacteristic mistakes and breakdowns in communication that put the Irish in a 24-point hole in the third quarter they couldn’t overcome.

“You’re always making mistakes, but those type of detrimental mistakes when you play a really, really good football team cost you points,” Freeman said. “I think that’s probably the biggest thing that has stuck out to me even in between series, the communication. ‘Hey, we’re good, we got it.’ Well, we can’t make mistakes. It falls on my shoulders. And as the head coach, we have to prepare and be better prepared for this moment. These guys gave everything they got.”

Notre Dame, which was seeking its first national title since 1988, had its 13-game winning streak snapped and suffered its first loss since Sept. 7 against Northern Illinois. After opening with an 18-play, 75-yard scoring drive, during which Leonard ran nine times for 34 carries, including the game’s first touchdown, Notre Dame’s offense fell flat.

Leonard completed just one pass longer than 5 yards in the first half, and two of his five completions were thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage. His average completion was just 2.2 yards.

“We couldn’t run Riley every play,” Freeman said. “It’s not right for Riley, and it’s not going to sustain the success we needed offensively. We ran him a whole bunch that first series, and you look at the second series, we had two penalties, which ended up forcing us to punt, and in the third series, we had the miscommunication with the muffed snap, and that’s the end of the half.”

After the game, Leonard apologized “to everybody for the way that I played after that drive in the second quarter because it’s unacceptable.” He finished with two passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown, becoming the second FBS player this season with 20 passing touchdowns and 15 rushing.

“You see the next three drives after that, penalties and miscommunications,” Leonard said. “And all that stuff is on me. That first drive we just came out and played Notre Dame football, took advantage of our matchups when we had to. We just drove the ball down the field. We had to run the ball a little bit. Everything was just clicking.

“Then the next couple drives maybe I got relaxed a little bit, and I can’t let that happen,” he said. “… These are things that aren’t necessarily physical but just like the mental side of things that I can’t make certain mistakes. I’ve just got to live with that and respond.”

In the first half, 20 of Ohio State’s 33 plays were run in Notre Dame territory (61%). Notre Dame couldn’t get off the field on third down, and Ohio State quarterback Will Howard completed each of his first 13 passes, and he was 11-for-11 in the first half targeting wide receivers.

There was one completion, though, that might be remembered more than the rest. With 2:38 left in the game, Ohio State was facing a third-and-11 from its 34-yard line when Howard connected with freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith for a 56-yard completion. It was the first time Smith was targeted in the second half. The play eventually set up Ohio State’s 33-yard field goal that sealed the win.

“It was do or die,” Freeman said. “It was that type of down. If they run it and they get a first down — we’ve got to get them stopped, and we thought at that moment the best way to get them stopped is to run zero pressure. We have to have faith at some point that we can make a play.

“There was times in the second half that we did in man coverage, but he’s a heck of a player,” Freeman said of Smith. “He’s difficult to cover. You want to play zone, and they’ll find ways to pick you apart. You want to play man, they’ll find ways to get him the ball. It’s a talented offense with that situation right there.”

Kiser, who had a hard time reflecting on his time at Notre Dame without choking up, said in spite of the loss, Notre Dame is heading in the right direction.

“I think when you look at the six years I’ve been here, what I remember is the people,” said Kiser, who got an encouraging pat on his knee from Freeman while he was talking. “From when I was a small underclassman just trying to learn the ways, looking at a Drew White, Bo Bauer, to being a guy running with my boys in JD [Bertrand] and Marist [Liufau], and then this year coming back and feeling like I had a chip on my shoulder and getting to meet amazing guys like Riley coming in and just kind of going on the journey we went on.

“To have Coach Freeman — yeah, it’s about the people,” he said, his voice breaking up. “It’s the people that’s made this place different.”

In the fourth quarter, on fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard line, Freeman opted for a 27-yard field goal instead of keeping the offense on the field. Mitch Jeter‘s kick sailed into the left upright, and the metallic clink of the ricochet could be heard in Mercedes Benz Stadium. Ohio State coach Ryan Day raised his hands in celebration.

Freeman said that had it been a shorter fourth down, he probably would have gone for it. Notre Dame finished this season 4-for-10 on kicks inside the 40, the worst field goal percentage on those kicks in the FBS.

“I just thought instead of being down 16, let’s try to go down 13,” he said. “I know it’s still a two-score game, but you have a better probability of getting 14 points than you do 16 points. If it was a shorter fourth-and-goal situation, I probably would have gone for it, but I just felt fourth-and-9 was not a great chance for us to make that and decided to kick it, and we didn’t make it.”

Still, Freeman said the journey Notre Dame has been on this season and the players in the locker room made him better.

“You sit up here and you listen to these two guys speak and the passion they have for Notre Dame and each other in that locker room. I’m just sitting here listening like this is one of the greatest gifts in life is to be able to be the leader of this program because you have great young people like this that share the blame — share the success when you win and own the blame when you lose. But I’m better because of them,” he said.

“But we just have to be better. I’ve got to make sure we prepare better for this next opportunity that we have in the future.”