After a much-needed bye week, the 5th-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish are back in action this week against the Navy Midshipmen. The Irish hit the road to take on the 2-5 Midshipmen in Gillette Stadium this Saturday afternoon at 12:00 PM. Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman spoke today around the team's first loss since September of 2025, the work they put in during the bye week and the much anticipated challenges the Navy offense will present on Halloween. 

You can watch the entire press conference here: 

Here are some of Freeman's main quotes from today's press conference: 

"You always come into a game with a plan on when you want to get certain guys in the game," Freeman explained. "But then the game sometimes dictates who you want in the game at that moment. I think as we were getting ready for Series 4 on offense, it was a plan, OK, let's get Mylan [Graham] in, let's get some other guys. But it ended up being a two-minute situation right before half. Again, in a two-minute situation, you want your most dependable guys in that moment.

"That becomes the flow of the game and in those toughest moments, you're going to go with the guys that you truly trust," Freeman continued. "But that's not to slight these other wide receivers. These guys are ascending, and we have to play them more. I've been outspoken about it with the staff, and we've got to find ways to get those guys in the game. But it's also a challenge to them. How do you continue to be more consistent in practice so there's no hesitation to put you in the game? I have a lot of confidence in the entire wide receivers room. We have to be more intentional about getting them the game."

"We've got to be better both sides of the ball in the red zone," Freeman shared. "I think defensively, it's third down. Both sides of the ball really it's third down. We have to be better third down in the red zone. QB runs are hurting us a little bit defensively where they're getting to the point where it's a manageable third down. We've got to be better in our technique versus some of those third down passes. And offensively, it's the same thing. It's the third down situations where, one, we're either throwing an incomplete pass or it's a four-down situation where we're not having an efficient run on third down."

"There's some areas that we've got to be better in," Freeman stated. "We've got a couple of MAs (missed assignments) where they change the formation, we spin the rotation, and we don't drop to the area that they hit. There's some areas in the zone we've got to be better. There's some that you're okay with a check down. You're okay with giving up that ball and keeping the ball in front of you. Now, as far as the third down stuff, we're going to play some zone. We've got to be ready to match stuff. We've got to be ready to take away some of those easy throws and make them hold it. If you hold it to try to get the deep ball, then we've got to hope that our pressure gets home."

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