After losing their head coach at the start of the week, Notre Dame football promoted coordinator Marcus Freeman to the head coaching job on Wednesday.
One of the craziest weeks in college football history continued on Wednesday night. Notre Dame football opted to fill its head coaching vacancy by promoting defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman to the head coaching role.
This was rumored to be the favorite for the job from the night that Brian Kelly left for LSU and it turned out to be true. With the Fighting Irish still alive for a playoff spot, it made a lot of sense to promote Freeman to the head coaching spot in case Notre Dame needed to prepare for a playoff game.
It has been quite the rise for one of the nation’s youngest coordinators. After coaching some of the top defenses in the country at Cincinnati, Freeman chose to come to Notre Dame over LSU this past offseason and it looks as if that move is going to pay off.
Freeman is regarded as one of the top recruiters in the country and Notre Dame has some very good recruiting classes coming in 2022 and 2023. This move signals the administration thinks that Freeman can keep elevating the talent level at Notre Dame and take them further than Kelly did.
This move does not come without some risk. Freeman has never been a head coach before and Notre Dame is one of the top programs in the country. Kelly was not liked by everyone, but he was very successful while at Notre Dame and took them to the national championship game in 2012 and two playoff appearances.
Here are the three reasons that Freeman was the right choice to be Notre Dame’s next head coach.