NOTRE DAME — Early season losses in 2025 to Miami and Texas A&M, ultimately cost the Irish a spot in the college football playoffs. A ten game winning streak to close the year wasn’t enough to offset the 0-2 start.
And slow starts have hampered the Irish throughout Marcus Freeman’s first four seasons as the head coach at Notre Dame.
Since 2022, Notre Dame has lost five times in the opening two weeks of the year. (0-2, in 2022, 2-0 in 2023, 1-1 in 2024, 0-2 in 2025).
By comparison, once Freeman’s teams get past week two, the winning percentage jumps to 87% (40-6), which would trail only Knute Rockne’s teams for the best in the modern era in Notre Dame history.
With a wealth of talent returning in 2026, Notre Dame is expected to contend for a national title. In order to do so, they likely need a better start than they’ve had in recent years.
Yesterday in a 1-on-1 interview with WSBT Sports, Marcus Freeman. discussed some of the changes he’s made to the offseason program, which he hopes will lead to better play early in the season.
“We’ve evaluated everything from January forward,” Freeman told WSBT 22 sports director Pete Byrne.
“What have we done differently in our off-season program? Actually, we made it a little bit longer. We held off on doing football-specific stuff and developed the (players) m in the weight room a little bit more. We evaluated how we practiced in the spring. What specific things we were doing, what situations we were doing, and what are we doing post-spring and now into the summer? How do we utilize this timeframe?”
“It’s not a big thing, it’s the accumulation of the little things that you hope is going to produce a better result. And I’m probably not even talking about an outcome of a game. It’s just that we’re playing at a higher level when we get to go against our first opponent.”