Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman is working to address the recent kicking woes that have plagued his team
Notre Dame has a kicking problem. What started as an annoyance in and Oct. 18 win over Southern Cal became a full-blown meltdown of a mess in last week’s road win over Boston College.
Fighting Irish kicker Noah Burnette missed both an extra point and a 31-yard field goal in the win over the Trojans could maybe be chalked up to his lingering hip injury and a rainy night in South Bend. But then he missed his first extra point try last weekend. Marcello Diomede missed a PAT as well and Erik Schmidt pushed a 35-yard field goal try.
All those misses by all those kickers in a two-plus hour stretch are unmistakable.
“Everybody can identify some of the issues,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said this week. “Like how do we fix it? What's the plan of attack? That's what we spent a lot of time in the past 48 hours. I want to know the plan of attack to attack the mental and the physical side of kicking the football.
“We have a good plan,” Freeman continued. “I'm confident that the kickers and the coaches and the people, sports psychologists, all the people that we're investing into trying to fix the situation. We're going to get it done because there's want-to, and there's a good plan.”
Burnette’s first missed extra point forced the Irish to go for two after their second touchdown. CJ Carr’s pass for Jeremiyah Love was incomplete and they settled for a 12-0 lead. Diomede’s missed kick after Love’s 3-yard touchdown run came after Schmidt’s missed field goal at the end of the first half and made what could have at least been a 24-10 lead just 18-10.
The erratic kicking issues that have seen the combined three kickers miss three extra points and two field goals in two games have not typically been an issue in practice during the week.
“Most of it's game,” Freeman remarked. “They're never perfect in practice. I mean, some days they are, right? We kick two times a week and it's been pretty good in practice, but that doesn't mean anything if we're not doing it in the game. There has to be a process of translating what we're doing in practice to the game. And that's why I say a lot of it is mental. There's a technique to it. There’s a technique to kicking a football, but there's a human element when all sudden you're out there on Saturday that can mess with your mind, mess with your head and get you to revert back to a technique that isn't producing consistent results.
“We can try to simulate it in practice,” Freeman continued. “I can yell and scream at them. That's a way to simulate pressure, the coach going to yell and scream at you, but that has nothing — that's not even close to the pressure they feel when they got to make a field goal, and especially after you've missed some. It's a challenge, but we’ve got to fix it and we ‘ve got to work at it and attack it, and we're going to do that. We are doing that.” Burnette transferred to Notre Dame this season after three years at North Carolina where he booted 138 of 140 career extra points. He missed once in 2022 and once in 2024 but he has missed twice in his last two games with the Irish. He has made five of six field goal tries this season as well.
Schmidt, a freshman who has handled the majority of kickoff duties as Burnette tries to heal from a hip injury, has missed Notre Dame’s other two field goals. Both attempts were in the 30-39 yard range, meaning the line of scrimmage was inside the 25 each time.
Freeman and special teams coordinator Marty Biagi are now leaning on its sports psychology staff, which is led by Joey Ramaeker. Kickers and punters have typically met with Ramaeker twice a week during the season but the frequency will now increase.
“It's one thing to hear different ideas of what you can do, but if you don't practice them and work at them, you can't use them,” Freeman explained. “You can't use them when they matter the most. You got to really work at them. We have a plan, right, and you're going to put as much work into the plan on the mental side as you do on the physical side. We'll kick them two days a week like we always do, and there's going to be two days a week for multiple lengths of time that they're working on practicing those different tools that could help them in those moments.” However Freeman and the Irish solve their current kicking dilemma, the answer will come from the current roster. While college football teams have been known to audition soccer players and even members of the student body at large to fill kicking spots, that is not an option during the season.
“It's an NCAA rule that before the season, you set your rosters at 105,” Freeman explained. “There's guys that you can declare grandfathered in that were previously on your roster, but once your rosters are set, you can't add anybody to your roster. “So, that's why we can't do anything about that right now.”
The 105-man roster limit is for the entirety of the 2025-2026 college football season. Meaning even if the season extends beyond the current fall semester and into bowl season and the College Football Playoffs like last season, no new additions can be made to the roster until after the Irish play their last game of the season.
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