Marcus Freeman Believes Notre Dame Learned The Proper Lesson From Their BYU Loss

For only the fifth time since the start of 2024, Notre Dame and head coach Marcus Freeman are having to rebound after a loss. Prior to their 28-24 loss to BYU on the road on October 17, the Irish had rattled off 16-straight games, winning all by 10 or more points. This was a wake up call for Freeman and the Irish and something they don't plan on taking lightly and they worked on a lot of things during this year's bye week, something that couldn't have come at a better time. 

"I think sometimes in a normal week you try to look at the 'what's' and the 'why's' and you've got to start preparing for the next opponent," Freeman explained. "But we had a little bit more time. It was important that we all took ownership of the shortcomings and not pass blame on someone or something else. Once we were able to do that, we could now be honest on what happened, why it happened and come up with a solution to really attack and fix the issues in our process, in our preparation.

"Having the bye week gave us more time to do that than we usually do," Freeman continued. "I remind our guys, you know, sometimes you got to lose to win. There's lessons in losing that if you learn from them, it will help you be better prepared for the next opportunity that presents itself.  Our job is to learn from the many lessons I think that loss taught us."

Handling a loss is never easy, especially when you have Notre Dame's 30-5 record since the start of the 2024 season. Thankfully, we as fans haven't had to deal with the Irish losing many games the last two and a half years, but the team approaches losses with a different mindset. At the end of the day, you can do one of two things when it comes to a loss, and Freeman is confident his team is taking the right path. 

"When you lose, there's the physical pain that really encompasses losing," Freeman shared. That pain mandates you do one or two things to make it go away. You pass blame on somebody else and you have no physical pain. If it's somebody else's fault, you really don't have pain. Or you really own it. You identify what the issues are.

"You look at the process and how you can really fix or attack your process to produce a better result," Freeman continued. "As I remind them, with that being said, solutions in my process might affect others and solutions in other people's process might affect someone else. That's okay as long as we keep Notre Dame football reaching its full potential at the top of our minds."

The confidence in a portion of the fan base has been shaken, and to a degree I understand it. But everything this team wants to accomplish, all of their goals and aspirations are still in front of them. The level of confidence, internally, with Notre Dame football has not wavered despite their first loss in 16 games. 

"I'll never allow our program to lose confidence," Freeman said emphatically. "It's my job to make sure they understand how good they truly are and how much better we could have played and we have to play. It's a tough, you forget how much losing stinks. I think back to all the losses that I've had and you're reminded quickly how much losing isn't a pleasurable thing. But we needed it and if we use it and we learn from it and we practice, we can use this to make us better as we continue to go forward."

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