Freeman preaches ‘anti-fragile’ program in recovery
Photos courtesy of Bev Haramia
Story courtesy of The Pilot News
SOUTH BEND — With any football program at almost any level a loss lies at the feet of two people — the head coach and the starting quarterback in that order.
At Notre Dame, it’s even worse, as the expectations are possibly higher then any program in the country for both individuals.
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman accepted that “the buck stops here” after a stinging loss to Louisville and in challenging himself, challenged his team by example as they prepared for their win over USC.
“You always go back and look to your preparation and say, ‘Okay, how can we enhance the way we prepare,'” he said after the Irish’s win. “It’s always the coach’s fault. We have to own that and always coach better. We have to take pride in the fact that the production you see on the field is a result of how we coach. So it was a tough week to make sure that we take a deep dive into how we’re coaching and what they know.”
“Listen, it’s easy to say what happened,” he said. “We can sit and watch film. This is what happened. This is what should have happened. I challenged the coaches to figure out why. It’s not always going to happen in a team meeting.”
“That’s the challenge. It takes difficult conversations to figure out why the player didn’t do exactly what you want. Sometimes it’s because he didn’t know. We looked at everything we could to say, ‘Okay, are we teaching them exactly what we want?’ If it’s something we didn’t prepare for, let’s simplify so they have rules, that there is no confusion.”
Freeman wasn’t done. While he and his staff went back to the drawing board on how they teach, he challenged his team to look in the mirror as well.
“I challenged those guys and said, are we elite competitors, and coaches that really can hold your chin up throughout tough times?” said Freeman. “That doesn’t guarantee you to have success, but there is a process to guarantee you have a chance to have success. That’s what we couldn’t cheat. This wasn’t about the outcome. It was about preparing the way we needed to prepare to give us a chance to have this kind of performance.”
“I told our guys — here is the word I used — I said I want to be an anti-fragile program. We have to be an anti-fragile program,” said Freeman. “What does that mean? We just didn’t get through it, through adversity. We are better because of the adversity we faced. That’s easy to say. The challenge is to do the things that it takes to make sure we’re better, and that’s what these coaches and players did.”
It’s one thing to admit you have a problem and identify how to fix it, but with any team communicating that and getting team buy-in is maybe even more important.
When your two best players hear the message, it usually leads to a solution like the Irish saw on Saturday.
“Last week was a learning experience,” said Notre Dame running back Audric Estime. “What anti-fragile means is you get stronger from adversity; we did that. We had a great week of practice and came out today and that was the result, being stronger from last week.”
Quarterback Sam Hartman had a remarkable recovery from his Louisville performance and heard Freeman’s message during the week loud and clear. Coming from a program where winning wasn’t quite as much of a “life and death” situation, Hartman credits his coach with helping him.
“We are a reflection of our head coach. It’s been a bumpy season,” he said. “You know, you start hot and you lose a close one to Ohio State, and so it’s one of those things where being in those situations before prepares you for the ridicule, the feeling, the pit in your stomach.”
“It’s a credit to our head coach,” he said. “You know, without his leadership and guidance through a new landscape where losses aren’t acceptable, and not to say that other losses are, but it was something that just from day one, from Monday night when we were in there and guys are beat up and we’re all kind of like, shoot, man, we got to go.”