While Notre Dame won handily over Arkansas on Sept. 27, Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman had to answer for one controversial play.
Notre Dame (2-2), ranked No. 21, ran a fake punt with a 42-13 lead against Arkansas, and Fighting Irish wide receiver Jordan Faison threw it 40 yards to fellow wideout Malachi Fields on the play in the third quarter. The Fighting Irish only scored twice more and won 56-13, but Freeman and the Irish took heat for the play.
“In terms of the fake punt, I didn’t want to relax,” Freeman explained during Monday’s press conference. “We had to come out of that locker room with an aggression no different than the first half.”
Notre Dame scored on a 16-yard touchdown run by running back Jadarian Price in the third quarter for a 49-13 lead, and the Fighting Irish added another on running back Aneysa Williams’ 17-yard run in the fourth quarter and a 56-13 advantage. The Fighting Irish piled on 643 yards of total offense.
Marcus Freeman: ‘There’s No Lead That’s Comfortable’
Notre Dame nearly matched its season average for points in the first half alone, but Freeman didn’t want his team to take its foot off the gas in the second half.
“There’s no lead that’s comfortable. There’s no lead that’s comfortable,” Freeman emphasized. “When we went three-and-out, I think, on that first drive, I felt like it was the right time to send a message to our team. This was about our team that, hey, this is something we’ve worked on. Let’s go execute it.”
“That also is something on film for the next opponents, right? I’m not even thinking about this opponent, but I’m thinking about I want to make sure the next couple opponents see that. I could really make them think deeply about how they want to attack our punt unit,” Freeman continued. “That’s what went into that decision-making.”
Notre Dame already had a streak of 28 consecutive possessions without punting. The Fighting Irish have the 11th highest-scoring team in the country in part because of it.
“We didn’t get any points off of it, but it was a mindset that we have to be aggressive,” Freeman said. “There is no taking your foot off the accelerator. This is what we’re doing and they executed it well.”
Marcus Freeman Address Sam Pittman Firing
Arkansas fired head coach Sam Pittman on Sunday after the loss, and the Razorbacks will have defensive coordinator Travis Williams serve as the interim head coach.
“You never want to see somebody in any profession lose their job,” Freeman said. “He’s a man who has a family, but this is the profession we chose. The human side of you feels for him and his family. But he’s going to be okay because he’s a — I don’t know him personally, but I’ve heard he is a competitive, great human.”
“Competitive, good, selfless people succeed. That’s what we need on our team and our world, like competitive fighters who are selfless, who put others in front of themselves. I’ve heard those types of things about him,” Freeman added. “My interaction with him pregame was great. Everything I expected from what I’ve heard about who he is.”
Pittman coached Arkansas from 2020 to 2025, and he previously help position coach or assistant coach jobs around college football between 1984 and 2019.
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