Notre Dame didn’t know 10 men were on field in penultimate play vs. Ohio State, Freeman says

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman confirmed that Notre Dame didn’t know it had only 10 men on the field in the final moments of its 17-14 loss to Ohio State.

That lack of recognition cost the Irish a chance to substitute after Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord’s pass to Marvin Harrison Jr. fell incomplete and the Buckeyes substituted running backs, which by rule meant Notre Dame could change personnel before the snap.

Notre Dame had roughly 45 seconds of real time to identify its mistake.

“We did not know,” Freeman said. “By the time we noticed in the last play, it was too late to do anything about it.”

The failure to properly substitute out of a timeout put Notre Dame’s defense on the field down a defensive lineman, although Freeman wouldn’t say which player should have been on the field or which staffer was responsible for communicating the substation. Ohio State didn’t seem to notice the mistake on the first snap, throwing the opposite direction toward Harrison. The Buckeyes figured it out on the second chance afforded as Chip Trayanum bowled into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown.

“There’s a whole bunch of systems in place to make sure that doesn’t happen, but ultimately it falls on me,” Freeman said. “That’s the reality. I’m not gonna get up here and say this person should have done that, ultimately I have to do a better job as the head coach to make sure those systems we have in place are executed.

“We as a coaching staff should be held to the exact same standards that we tell our players. We tell our players fight the drift. You can’t get caught watching the game. Coaches gotta win the interval too. We all have to own that and make sure that never happens.”

A day later, Freeman said the staff discussed a signal that triggers an intentional offsides penalty, which would have required a defensive player to make contact with an offensive player, stopping the play. A player running onto the field late would be called offsides, too, but if there’s no contact the play would have been run as designed and Ohio State could have taken the result or run it again after the yardage mark off.

In this instance, a defensive end running onto the field late wouldn’t have impacted the outcome as the touchdown would have been scored anyway.

“When did you find out? It was too late. It was too late,” Freeman said. “By the time we realized there was 10 guys on the field we don’t have time to get somebody from the sideline when the ball is on the one-yard line on the far hash.”

Freeman said the final four minutes of the game offered a harsh lesson for both him and his coaching staff, meaning the issues went deeper than 10 men on the field.

After making a fourth down stop with 4:12 remaining, Notre Dame began a potential game-ending drive at its 11-yard line. Sam Hartman hit Rico Flores for a 12-yard gain, then Audric Estime rushed for 11 yards, his final touch of the game. The trouble started with an awkward handoff between Hartman and Jeremiyah Love, which ended as a five-yard loss. Ohio State called timeout. An incomplete screen pass followed, stopping the clock. Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker called a run on third-and-15 to bleed clock before a punt.

“When it doesn’t work, you always go back and say, ‘Yeah, we should have called something different.’ Because it didn’t work,” Freeman said. “But again, if it would have worked, nobody would be asking about it.

“And so I’m not second guessing coach Parker, his play calling, at all. We got to execute better. To me, it’s not why did you call it, it’s why didn’t we execute on this play? What do we have to correct? And there’s multiple different people that have to get things fixed on that drive that the offense had the ball with four minutes left. But it’s not play calling. It’s not a call that wasn’t efficient. It was the execution of that play.”

Notre Dame’s defense allowed conversions off a third-and-10, fourth-and-7 and third-and-19 on Ohio State’s game-winning series. Notre Dame safety DJ Brown dropped a potential game-sealing interception. And then the substitution errors at the death snuffed out Notre Dame’s chance at a historic win.

“There’s a lot of positives and you have to make sure you see them and you encourage your staff and players,” Freeman said. “But the ones that you didn’t do, those are the ones you have to attack and you have to really get it corrected. Because those are the ones that great teams find a way to get it done when it matters the most.”

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(Photo: Rob Kinnan / USA Today)