Boos and slow start from Notre Dame can't shake Freeman's confidence in his QB

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A concrete summary of the first four games of the 17th-ranked Notre Dame football season was inaccurate and migraine-inducing enough before Saturday's home game against Miami, Ohio.

Then came the boos.

“We don’t make our decisions based on the mood in the stadium,” said the Irish head coach Marcus Freeman when asked about confidence in the Duke transfer Riley Leonard She continues to lead an offensive development of the ND, which has shown some points of substance amidst larger amounts of optimistic rhetoric and projection.

Leonard himself claimed not to have heard the whistles before the Irish rallied and slowly pulled away, taking a 28-3 victory at a sold-out Notre Dame Stadium, where the mood was getting brighter by the end of the game. The Irish (3-1) fended off what felt for a while like a repeat of their MAC assault on Northern Illinois on Sept. 7.

By the way, this is a team from Northern Illinois, whose storybook history ended on Saturday with a surprising home loss to Buffalo in overtime by 23:20.

“I didn't ask him how he felt when people booed him,” Freeman said of Leonard. “People boo MeWe can't play in a way that everyone is cheering for us. That's part of the game.

“If you don't do your job, people are going to boo you. If you let that affect the way you go out on the field and make the next play, then you're not the right person for this job or to be our quarterback at Notre Dame.

“I hope he handled it exactly the way I expected him to. You hear me? Great. Got it. What do you need to do to get your focus back up and running in the next game and get the job done?”

Anyone could say that, except the most stubborn members of the Steve Angeli Fan club that Leonard actually completed the task. Finally.

Maybe not at the level Leonard will have to reach next Saturday when Louisville (3-0) — which will likely be the top-ranked team on the Irish's 2024 schedule based on Sunday's poll results — comes to town for a 3:30 p.m. game at Notre Dame Stadium.

And it wouldn't have mattered if Leonard had heard the crowd's reaction to some first-quarter overthrows, a couple of three-and-outs and a five-play drive that stalled on Notre Dame's first three offensive drives.

This is, after all, the same guy whose mother made him wear “You Suck” bracelets off the field when he was in high school in Fairhope, Alabama. And during his three seasons at Duke, she texted him the same message before games at his request to keep him humble.

And one of the reasons he moved to Notre Dame in January was because he believed he needed to see and process the game differently, and to buy into a plan that would see his development as a passer parallel to the development of the Irish offense, which at key times last season was too easily captured by an opposing defensive coordinator who loved to have eight men in the box.

“I've played a lot of football in my life, a lot of college football,” Leonard said. “I've been in situations where you start slow and miss easy passes. As a quarterback, that happens. I've just seen it happen multiple times over the years, how I've reacted to it. You saw it two weeks ago, how we reacted overall last week. You just learn who you are as a person, who you are as a player. When my back is against the wall and I'm not playing my best, I usually react pretty well.”

This is what it looked like against the reigning MAC champion (0-3), who was coached by the former Irish assistant Chuck Martin.

Leonard's 143 rushing yards against Miami, in addition to the 100 yards he had in one half of a game at Purdue the previous Saturday, made him the first Irish quarterback since Carlyle Vacation in 2001 to accumulate 100 yards or more on the ground in two consecutive games.

His eight-yard touchdown run with 3:33 left before halftime gave the Irish their first lead and the final margin of 7-3. And his 50-yard run on a fourth-and-1 provided the final margin and gave junior backup Angeli the opportunity to get 4:01 minutes of garbage time.

And pass by?

Leonard threw his first touchdown pass of the year, a 38-yard pass to Clemson transfer Beaux-Collins 65 seconds before halftime. He also earned a number of penalties for pass interference on deep balls for Miami.

And after missing five of his first 10 pass attempts, Leonard completed 11 of his last 15 attempts for 154 yards. Overall, his pass efficiency rating of 128.4 was his best in a Notre Dame uniform.

“Obviously I understand where this offense can go,” Leonard said. “It's just my job, so to speak, to guide it in that direction. I'm still figuring out some things, but I think every game we're getting better at the things we struggled with in the game before.”

“Obviously, it gave me a lot of confidence on the deep ball, knowing that I could throw the ball down the field. Most of the time when we did that, something good happened, whether it was a PI [pass interference penalty]Guys that make plays. One of the most important things for me is being able to throw a guy short and having the confidence that he doesn't always have to catch the ball and the defender doesn't. That gives me a lot of confidence.

“I didn’t throw enough Jayden Harrison in the end zone, and what some people might have considered a pick on a short ball, he went up and made a play. He ended up dropping it, but that gave me a lot of confidence. The long ball is getting better.”

In that regard, it was a race against time, as Leonard missed all but the first few days of spring training due to a second ankle surgery in the spring semester, and ND’s left tackle – Charles Jagusah — is out for the rest of the season and two other O-linemen will be missing on Saturday and beyond.

And something new is coming into the receiver group. And a new offensive coordinator and a new scheme, even if these will prove to be significant improvements over time.

“We're tinkering with all these little things and improving,” Leonard assured. “We just have to stick to the basics and fundamental principles sometimes and remember the fundamentals of football and then we'll really make progress.”

No one needs to remind Leonard how to be resilient, and next Saturday could be the turning point that shows how far that can take a team that still has playoff aspirations.

Against Miami (Ohio), it was enough to overcome some bad field position early on. ND's first five drives started at ND's 4, 36, 6, 18 and 19 yard lines. And it was enough to overcome some first-half blunders by the Irish, including a botched punt by Jordan Faison, a bad snap on an aborted field goal attempt and a Leonard fumble at the end of a long run.

And that was enough to overcome the triple-digit number of penalty yards for the second time in four games this season. The Irish managed 10 for 100 yards on Saturday.

The Irish defense also played a major role in overcoming this shortcoming.

coordinator Al Golden's Unit got interceptions from Vyper End Junior Tuihalamaka and Cornerback Christian Greyand eight pass breakups by the defense. That's the most in a game since the 2018 season, a season that ended in the old four-team format for the Irish in the College Football Playoff.

Sophomore Vyper End Boubacar Traorewho made his first collegiate start after fellow senior Jordan Botelho was ruled out for the rest of the season last Saturday, dominated his debut with five tackles, two sacks, a QB hurry and a forced fumble.

Miami's sixth-year quarterback Brett Gabbert started 7 of 11 passing but finished 14 of 35 for 119 yards and two interceptions. His pass efficiency rating of 57.1 was the second-lowest in his 42 collegiate starts and the lowest since starting No. 4 in his freshman season (46.9) against an Ohio State team that went 13-1 in 2019, entered the CFP and finished No. 3 in the final polls.

“That's a damn good performance from our defense,” Freeman said, referring to the field goal the Irish allowed. “But we're greedy.”

Greedy, yes, but ready for the close-up in a matchup that, for better or worse, will have a profound impact on ND's postseason trajectory?

Boos or not. “You suck” texts or not. Freeman is still fixated on Leonard and what he could become.

“There are still things to improve,” the coach said. “And we have to continue to look at the mistakes he made and ask ourselves, 'Okay, how can we do a better job of not putting him in a position where he makes mistakes? And where was the discrepancy?'

“But we have a lot of confidence in our quarterback, who led us to a great win today.”