{"id":14837,"date":"2023-08-27T02:14:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-27T07:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/?p=14837"},"modified":"2023-08-27T02:14:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-27T07:14:37","slug":"quick-hitters-marcus-freeman-explains-audric-estimes-extended-absence-during-navy-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/quick-hitters-marcus-freeman-explains-audric-estimes-extended-absence-during-navy-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Hitters: Marcus Freeman explains Audric Estim\u00e9\u2019s extended absence during Navy game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Notre Dame dominated Navy in Dublin, Ireland, dancing to a 42-3 victory in Saturday\u2019s Week 0 Aer Lingus Classic. And Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman<\/a><\/strong> sang his team\u2019s praises afterward. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Freeman told reporters after securing his first season opening victory in his head coaching career. <\/p>\n

On Audric Estim\u00e9\u2019s departure after the fumble:<\/h2>\n

Yeah, we had planned to get out all the running backs today. And I don\u2019t know if Coach (Deland McCullough<\/a><\/strong>) pulled him out just because he fumbled. It was a pretty long run that he had. But we wanted to rotate all those guys. You\u2019ve got to be unselfish, man, right?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one ball. It\u2019s a lot of talented individuals. And this is just Week 0. And that\u2019s what you have to be able to do is have a team that is unselfish. And it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s really hard. But I think coach McCullough has done a great job with that room in terms of making sure they understand before the game.<\/p>\n

The worst thing, to me, you can do to a kid is tell them that, \u2018You\u2019re going to play,\u2019 and you don\u2019t play. Right? The ability to say, \u2018All five of you are going to play,\u2019 and they all played, it\u2019s really a great job of Coach McCullough, but we\u2019re going to have to be unselfish, man. And Audric showed a good example of that.<\/p>\n

On Sam Hartman\u2019s Notre Dame debut:<\/h2>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a reflection of, he told me today this was, I think the 48th or 47th game he\u2019s played in, right? He\u2019s started 42 games. This moment wasn\u2019t too big, and it\u2019s about him going out there and just executing. And what I really, really thought he did a great job of is putting our offense in a really good position to play.<\/p>\n

There were a couple calls that we had that was depending on what the defense was showing. We were going to check to a run or pass or a certain protection. And just to hear the communication of our coaches, to making sure that Sam is putting our offense in just really a great situation to succeed was really good.<\/p>\n

I thought just the overall operation of our offense, the ability to run the ball helps Sam a lot, too. We talked about this in our team meeting, the greatest friend for a quarterback is the ability to run the ball. And that was something that our offensive line and our running game did a great job doing today.<\/p>\n

On Hartman and Gerad Parker\u2019s connection:<\/h2>\n

As I said, the overall operation from Coach Parker, to the signallers to Sam, getting to the right protections, getting to the right checks, executing, that\u2019s the whole operation. And it was really good. I mean\u2026usually the first game, first-time offensive coordinator, first-time quarterback, there\u2019s some things in Week Zero that you\u2019ll see, it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t call timeout. I think we had one in the second half late. But I mean, that\u2019s the little things that we really worried about \u2014 how many operational mistakes are we going to have from the communication to the actual problems? And it was really good that we didn\u2019t have any.<\/p>\n

On Rocco Spindler and Pat Coogan making their first starts:\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Yeah, I was just talking to Jack Swarbrick about that. I guess we found out those two guards can play, right? We knew those guys didn\u2019t have game experience. But both Pat (Coogan) and Rocco (Spindler) stepped up and did a really good job vs., again, Navy\u2019s defense is almost as exotic as their offense.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t see some of the things they do. And so for them to execute and run the ball, to play physical, man, credit to, obviously, Coach Rudolph, and just credit to those guys, man, for what they were able to do in our first game.<\/p>\n

The post Quick Hitters: Marcus Freeman explains Audric Estim\u00e9\u2019s extended absence during Navy game<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notre Dame dominated Navy in Dublin, Ireland, dancing to a 42-3 victory in Saturday\u2019s Week…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}