Opening Statement
I know it’s a little bit of a delay, but the first thing is to thank everyone that came out tonight and made that place electric. I mean, Hard Rock was really a different level of impact for us. Our players came out, saw that, and man, they were all about it. And that’s what college football football’s all about, that type of environment.
Our student section was jammed up. They were going bananas. So many alumni. This game, this victory is for everybody. It’s for our university, our players, our students, alumni, former players. Coach Johnson, got to see him earlier. I don’t know where to start, but tremendously proud of this team. The resiliency, complimentary football overcoming a couple of hiccups and whatnot.
But all in all, just an awesome, awesome night for the Miami Hurricanes.
On if this 1-0 start feels different and what the mindset was on the last field goal…
Not at all. We had done that. I mean, you know, our offseason training, our training camp, it’s becoming legendary because of the adversity we put our guys through.
We really do. And it helps us get off to a great start. Every year and every place that we’ve been. Can you say oh it’s guaranteed he’s going to make it? No. Do we feel good about it? Absolutely. We did. And we felt that if we got that field goal and they had to really get down the field and try to throw the football, then our pass rushers can take advantage of their offensive line.
On the play at the line of scrimmage…
It was a muddy and bloody night, that thing was like rockin’ sockin’ robots. First of all, hats off to Coach Freeman and his team.
Number one, because he has an unbelievably competitive and talented team and a great coaching staff and focus on an awesome job with that program. We knew that this game was going to be about who’s got one more shot in them. Who’s willing to go and just not let anything get in the way of doing their job.
And that was a challenge to our players. Everything was about being 1-0 on every single play and doing our job. And they took to that challenge, and they ate it up, man, and they got after it. They got after it all night, all the way to the end. And sometimes domination takes play on the final play of the game, as crazy as that sounds, but that’s what happened.
Postgame Press Conference Transcript: Notre Dame Head Coach Marcus Freeman
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Hard Rock Stadium
On the offensive game plan going in…
Yeah, I’ve said this before. It was creating some easy throws and easy decisions, obviously some RPOs and that you can hand the ball off or throw it, you know we started to say later in the game to stop breathing, hand the ball to J-Love. (Carr) was what he was coached to do on a lot of those pulls and growing.
On how CJ Carr responded after the interception…
Great. Came back and drove us down for a field goal. The next drive after that was a 75-yard touchdown drive. So, I guess pretty impressive after the interception off the tip ball.
On what Miami was doing on the defensive front…
Protected. We’ve got to be better with our four-man rushes. We need to blitz five. We will, but you’re not going to be really successful on defense if you can’t get pressure on the quarterback with four-man rushes. I think there were times they had enough time to really figure out what coverage we were playing. We got a little bit better pressure, maybe in the end of the third, fourth quarter, but the expectation is that throughout those four quarters, you’ve got to be able to get four-man pressure rolling guys in there and create some pressure.
On losing the turnover battle…
When you look at the two turnovers, Malachi has to have better ball security and can’t let that tipped ball happen. It’s almost like we didn’t want JG to tip it again when he was trying to be a football player, because it got popped in there, and they obviously got the interception. We have got to create more takeaways on defense. We pride ourselves in being able to create takeaways and creating takeaways, we have got to be intentional about it.
