The early months of the #FreemanEra at Notre Dame have suffered no shortage of excitement. The hiring process was exciting. The Fiesta Bowl, unfortunately, was exciting. The trip to Columbus was exciting. Losing to Marshall was exciting. The victory over Cal stayed improbably exciting until the very juggling end.
This isn’t unusual.
To sum up Freeman’s team’s on-field performance so far—and we’ll include the Fiesta Bowl in this, given how much time he had to prepare as the head coach, and given he was making so many critical in-game decisions—we have:
- One disappointing loss (Oklahoma State)
- One encouraging loss (Ohio State)
- One bad loss (Marshall)
- One disappointing win (Cal)
That’s a résumé which peaks with “encouraging loss,” and you do not want “loss” on the top line of your list of accomplishments. Notre Dame should especially know this, we who gave Charlie Weis the world for nearly beating USC in a home game. But, as almost all are saying, give the man time.
Freeman clearly has room to grow, and this was a ‘known’ coming in. The man had never been a head coach before. I don’t know much about his specific role as a grad assistant at Ohio State, but even if he’d secretly been their shadow offensive coordinator, that would be one year of experience making any sort of offensive decision. Coaches are busy, and despite being a young head coach, he evidently didn’t spend much of his adolescence playing Madden. Notre Dame hired him because he was a known great recruiter and a known great motivator and a known great defensive coach. High level in-game strategy and overall program efficiency are both a big deal, but he hadn’t had charge of them before, and had Notre Dame even just escaped Oklahoma State or Marshall—which Notre Dame nearly did, in each case—our conversation would be a lot different. Had Notre Dame escaped both, we wouldn’t be giving any of this measurable thought.
What’s going unacknowledged—and Brian Kelly deserves credit for making losing so surprising, jackass though he is—is that a 1-3 start as head coach isn’t far off the norm at Notre Dame. Lou Holtz began 1-3. Brian Kelly began 1-3. Bob Davie began 1-3. Charlie Weis began 3-1. Tyrone Willingham began 4-0. Order those coaches however you’d like (I’d go Holtz, Kelly, Willingham, Weis, Davie), but Lou Holtz started his Notre Dame tenure 1-3.
This is not a standalone argument. It’s a stupid, small-sample stroke of luck. But it does make a small point—that a coach’s record in his first four games enjoys little correlation with their long-term performance—and that point, in conjunction with the reality that unlike Holtz & Kelly & Willingham, Freeman had never been a head coach before, does encourage. Like the Ohio State loss, we’d appreciate more than “encouragement” at this stage. But in lieu of wins, it’s the next best thing. And I’d imagine Freeman picks up a few more of those these next six weeks anyways. The schedule was one of the things that changed for Kelly.
