Marcus Freeman reveals what he learned from national championship loss vs. Ohio State

Notre Dame advanced all the way to the national championship game in 2024, eventually falling to Ohio State. It was a whirlwind ride for coach Marcus Freeman and company.

The 39-year-old coach took a lot of lessons away from the loss, which wasn’t easy to deal with. For a minute or two, Freeman didn’t want to show his face.

“That game, there’s tactical things that I learned,” Freeman said on The Pivot Podcast. “I remember after that game going to the hotel and I couldn’t get out of my hotel room. Like I knew that there were some parents downstairs. I mean I was hurt, embarrassed.”

So what did Marcus Freeman do? He immediately went to rewatch the game to put it to bed.

“The next morning I snuck downstairs to my office in the hotel and watched the game. I needed to do that,” he said. “And that’s what I needed to do to reflect on that journey of ’24. It was a special one. It didn’t end where we wanted. We chase reaching our full potential, man. If we didn’t reach our full potential we were damned close. We were this close.”

Still, the ultimate goal is to win a national title, not just get close enough to touch it. Notre Dame has the pieces to make another run at it this year.

If Marcus Freeman can find the right lessons in it, he’s got the potential to guide the Fighting Irish all the way home this time. But there’s a lot to be learned.

“So what do we got to do, what was the difference between that great team and maybe some of the good teams I’ve been a part of?” Freeman said. “It’s talent, culture, development. That’s what I believe the difference between good and great teams: talent, culture and development. Well our culture and our development of that talent is not going to change. We’ve got to continue to increase the talent and we’ve got to continue to develop and have a culture that gets these guys to love each other.”

Recruiting has been a strong point for Marcus Freeman since he took over at Notre Dame. His last three classes have ranked 10th, 11th and 12th nationally.

The transfer portal has also been kind; Notre Dame has used it to supplement an already talented roster. Finally, it’s about applying the lessons of last year.

“There’s a lot of lessons I learned from that game,” Marcus Freeman said. “One is that we’re good enough to be in that game, we’re good enough to win that game. We’re good enough to win that game.

“If we get an opportunity we’re going to prepare, try not to make some of the mistakes that we did, but this program is good enough every year to be in that game and win that game. But we’ve got to earn the right to do that.”