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It's funny to me, I'm great by the way, thanks for asking. It makes me laugh, you see people posting, first of all, social media is about the worst thing that could have possibly happened to fanatics out there, to fans. Because I was like, oh, I can't stand being an Notre Dame fan. Who's keeping you here? I don't think anybody has a gun to your head saying you have to be a Notre Dame fan. Move on with your life. It's okay. It's just, it is amazing to me how upset people can. I think they just like to be upset. It has to be what it is. People just enjoy being miserable. That's all I can, I don't know. Does feel that way sometimes. We're going to tell, we're going to say the Jaden Mickey news for rapid fire because we've got a lot of Riley Leonard stuff that we're going to talk about here today. We've got a lot of comments from Marcus Freeman about Riley Leonard. So we'll say the Jaden Mickey stuff. It was significant news that he has decided he's going to red shirt and enter the transfer portal in December. So like I said, we will save that. Yeah, we've got plenty to talk about there for sure. DK is lightened up early, said that we better bring the fire. This show better bring the fire because he's dozing off already. His weekends are putting a toll on him. And now Mickey on a Monday, he says he threw the Mickey in there as well, USMA 87. This is the next big test for this staff and team. Every game is a must win from here on. I mean, they, I mean, it's been a must win since you have to, like that has, that's not a new thing. It's not a new thing. They're all must wins actually all 12 games are all must wins. So yeah. This is interesting. Joe was at the game this weekend. He says there were people cussing and leaving after the first, the first quarter. I don't know. First half, first quarter, like it's got to be the first quarter because by half time they were up by two scores and things were just fine, by the way, at that point. So it must have been after the first quarter because the first quarter wasn't good. I think they had two possessions in the first quarter and they're both bad. So yeah, it might be after the first, but like, look, if you're cussing and leaving after the first quarter, then there's a couple of things wrong with you, number one. Why did you spend your money to go in the first place? Bingo. Okay. That's number one, hundred percent. And number two, they don't just play a quarter and then end the game. Like there are three quarters where you get to continue to play the game of football. I'll tell you what, you know, because I've already had a couple of people throwing cowboy stuff at me here today. I thought about, you know, turning it off, I did start doing a little bit of work in the third quarter when they were getting their booties smacked by the Ravens, which, you know, like I told Jesse was probably going to happen and, you know, it wasn't, I wasn't very far off. But hey, they made a comeback. They made it close late in the game. I don't know if you saw, you know, kind of how it played. They were down 28 to six and then they ended up, they ended up losing at the end, but now, you know, granted, I didn't shell out the money to go to the game and, you know, park game and all those different things, but I stuck around until the end and because you're a fan. Yeah. I mean, look, DCAF says it was a, it's a boring brand of football and it was really hot. Okay. Cool. Then don't go. Exactly. Don't don't go for 20 minutes and then leave. What is the point? Why did you fight the traffic? Why did you spend the money? You know, let's say you got the tickets for free. You still got to fight the traffic. You still got to fight all the crowds and everything else. Why did you go? If you were going to leave after a quarter, I will never understand that. You know exactly what this team is at this point. Okay. Cool. You knew what the temperature was going to be. All I got to do is stick your hand out the door like I don't know man. I have a pro. I have a huge problem. If you claim you're a fan of the team leaving after a quarter, I got a huge problem with you. Well, people were upset at Riley Leonard and I, I was thinking today, Vince, I cannot remember a, now quarterbacks are always polarizing, but who's been more polarizing than Riley Leonard? Yeah. Like in Bush, baby. Like, no. I don't think so either. Tommy Reese is an offensive coordinator maybe, but not as a player. Yeah. But social media wasn't really as big of a thing back when he was playing quarterback either. Right. But yeah, I, no more polarizing player in the land of social media than I can ever remember. That's absolutely for sure. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I remember a quarterback, a Notre Dame quarterback specifically who's been this polarizing, like, especially this quickly. Yeah. Like the rush to like this guy sucks, get him out of there. He's never been a, he's, you know, he's not a passer. He's never been a pet. Like, you know, look, the guy is, the guy has had some struggles and he didn't have a great first quarter, but I also don't think it was nearly as bad as a lot of people made it out to be. And I'll just kind of, we've got a ton of comments for Marcus Freeman, some from the postgame and some from today. So we'll just kind of play off that a little bit because, you know, like on the subject of people leaving, I think that's even worse than the booing, but Marcus Freeman got questions about the booing that just that Riley Leonard got in the first quarter is, you know, after he missed some, some open receivers with some passes. Here's Marcus Freeman's response to the booing and how Riley Leonard dealt with that Saturday. Oh, I didn't ask him about how he feels about people booing him. That people boo me and we can't, we can't perform to plea, like to, to make sure everybody cheers for it. All right. That's part of game. Right. And if you don't do your job, people are going to boo you. You let that affect the way you go out and execute the next play, then man, you're not the right person for this job or for it to be our quarterback and Notre Dame. So I hope he handled it the exact way that I would expect him to is you hear it? Great. That what do you need to do to refocus to go out the next play and get your job done? All right. So there's Marcus Freeman on the booing Vince. I think people have pretty much made up their mind on Riley Leonard and there just doesn't seem to be much changing anyone's mind on him at this point is kind of how it feels. And you know, like if you're, if you're pro and jelly, that's cool. You can tell me why you're pro and jelly versus pro Riley Leonard, I guess. But you know, like with, with the booing, it said, you know, like he didn't attempt to pass on Notre Dame's first drive and they go three and out. There was a false start. So three and out on the first drive didn't throw past second drive. The deep shot in the scene to Mitchell Evans that ended up being the pass interference. That was a beautifully placed. Oh yeah. It was the first play of the drive. It was his first pass attempt. If the Miami guy doesn't grab Evans arm, it's probably a 40 yard completion. And you know, again, that was his first pass of the game. So then he throws a couple in completions. His first two official attempts of the day because of the pass interference and people start booing after he throws a couple of, you know, short pass in completions. Look, if you want to boo, that's your prerogative, you know, but I would add this rather than booing and I'd be curious to get Joe's take on the actual atmosphere inside the stadium. Rather than booing your own players, how about redirecting that energy and actually creating some home field advantage inside the stadium when the other team has the football? How about do that? Like you're going to boo your own players for a couple of incompletions rather than make noise to make it difficult for the other team to do their thing, you know, make it hard for them to hear their quarterback and the signals and everything else out there when they're on offense. That's what I would say about the booing because like I was, I felt like it was a pretty dead environment inside Notre Dame stadium for most of me. Like the booze were the most noticeable noise I think that I heard the whole day out there. Prize picks is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over 5 million active members. Prize picks is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps on prize picks, it's just you against the numbers. All you do is pick more or less on 2-6 player stat projections and watch the winnings roll in. Get in on the daily action with your friends and become part of the prize picks community today. You can now win up to 100 times your money on prize picks with as little as 4 correct picks. You can turn 10 dollars into a thousand dollars. I'm a Bears fan so this one gets me really excited. One Caleb Williams passing yard gets you one win on prize picks every week in September. That's right. 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I 100% believe it because that's pretty much how it's been recently, especially for the lower end opponents, when Clemson comes in, those kind of big games, the atmosphere is pretty good at Notre Dame, and usually that coincides with a night game and allows everybody to get a little bit more soft up before they get into the stadium, so I'm sure that that certainly helps. But a 330 game, you've got plenty of time to get soft up too, if that's the issue. Exactly right. Exactly right. There's no excuse for a dead atmosphere in there. There's no excuse. So yeah, I completely agree with that. I am very interested to hear what his answer is to the next question, because I know what my answer would have been, and I might have gotten fired, so I'm very interested to hear where this one goes. But again, a couple of incompletions, I get it, but you're going to start booing right away. Again, people had their mind made up. They were looking for exactly to be ticked off about if you're going to start booing because of a couple of incompletions. Because again, if that Evans pass isn't passed interference, it's a 40-yard gain. To me, that kind of changes, again, if you've got your mind made up on Riley Leonard, okay. But like, what have we been waiting for? We've been waiting for deep shots, like completed deep shots. And if he completes that, that changes a lot of the complexion of everything it feels like. It's just incompletion as opposed to a 15-yard pass interference call. So, I mean, he was four or five for 27 yards on that, I guess he was actually, no, what did he do? Yeah, that was in the scoring drive. Right. In the scoring drive, in the first touchdown drive. Yeah. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. So Irish for Life 99 says, "I disagree, Sean. They were louder for the defense, but look at the competition and how we played on offense for a good part of the game." First of all, I disagree for a good part of the game. They had a lousy three possessions to start off with. I'm not going to disagree with you on that. They had seven possessions after that. And they scored on five of them, I believe. So I don't really understand what it's not for a good part of the day. Like, that's not, that's not even, that's not true. Well, excuse me, they scored on four of them. The fifth one would have been a score except, you know, the fumble for Ryder Leonard on the 14-yard line for Miami, right? They were going into score and then they didn't because he fumbled the ball. Right. The offense was not bad for a good part of the game, but all you can focus on, if you are in the game time- They weren't bad for a couple of drives. They were. And I'm not even saying that they weren't, but you can't say for a good part of the game. They went punt, you know, bad snap on the field goal punt, the first three possessions to start things up. And they scored touchdowns on the next two drives to close the half. And remember, if not for the Adon Schuler bone-headed penalty, they might have even got another field goal out of that. And then they get touchdowns on two, you know, they had the ball. They would have had a touchdown on the third, like a third consecutive drive. If, if the Ryder Leonard doesn't get the ball punched out in the red zone going in, by the way. They had the ball five times in each half, they scored touchdowns two times in each half. I mean, so you can be upset with some of the drives that didn't go anywhere and that you are totally entitled to your opinion on that. And that's fine because they, the couple of those drives were not good, okay? But here's the thing. They got better as the game went on. Again, four deep passes that everybody wanted Riley Leonard to throw. Four deep passes, four good outcomes. One was a touchdown, one would have been a touchdown, but it was a pass interference and the other two were pass interference. What else do you want, right? You want, you know, and he was a 64% completion quarterback. So I guess I would hate to be on the Miami of Ohio show right now when they're quarterback through for 40% right in the game. But he's the seventh year quarterback. So it doesn't matter. Yeah. You as a man, why was the Schuler thing a penalty? I mean, because he was taunting the other team, that's right. He handed the ball to the, to a guy on the sideline. You can't do that. You hand it to the ref. You can't do it, man. And you don't know what he said as well. You know, the ref is, is there and yeah, it was a dumb move. Look, I can't defend that. I mean, it was a dumb move. You can't do that. Under the names, wine and cheese, genuine question. Can we overcome a 10 to 14 point deficit with this offense? Sure. This offense put up 66 points the other day. You know, and look, look, part of my point in this whole thing, you know, again, like on the Riley Leonard, I had a question as to, okay, you get into, you get into two minutes. Can he lead you on a touchdown drive? He has. Look at what he just did at the end of the first half. It was going to be my point. That's going to be my point. That's a question that I had going into that game, but he answered that. He answered two questions on the same drive because not only does he lead him on a touchdown drive, he throws a perfect beautiful and I mean, perfect to probably the best pass that he's made all season to bow Collins and bow is like putting on the juice, you know, like right at the end to make sure he's like, this is not going to be overthrown. I'm catching this football. He dropped a dime to bow Collins and, you know, so they get the ball with 201 to go in the half. He leads them down field. He, you know, he finishes it off and I'm looking for it on my notes here so I can, like if I, if I wrote anything particular about, oh, there it is, you know, nothing particular, but I mean, it only took him not even a minute, right, not even a minute, a 79 yard drive and not even a minute and of course he used his, you know, his legs on some of it and his arm. I mean, he answered, I felt like a lot of questions on that. I do too. Look, drive right there. We are not your own Riley Leonard apologists. Okay. Yeah. Jason Rose, he had a game here. I'm going to pull it up because this is a great point. I was going to say it, but I didn't want to belabor the point. Jason Rose says he had a game winning drive on the road at Texas A&M against a defensive line with NFL players all over it. He's proven he can do that completely agree. It'll be the best defensive line that he plays all season. The second best defensive line though, he's going to play in six days. So there are five days, whatever it is. So, you know, still needs to do what he needs to do. And I have no problem with that. And we are not saying that he played a perfect game. We're not saying that he's got to hit those layups. There's no doubt about it, but he proved last week he can hit the layups, right? And then this week he proved he can hit the deep stuff. So all he's got to do is put it together, but it's not going to matter to most people. That's a thing. It's not going to matter. He can play the perfect game and there will be excuses all over the place as to why he still stinks and why Angeli should play, period. America's truth broker. He's asking essentially, can this offense throw the football for sustained chunks of the game when the defense is aware of the Irish are impassing situations? It's coming back and watch the Texas A&M drive when he drove them down the field or the end of the first half. He had a 14 yard pass to Evans and then he hit the 38 yard touchdown pass to Bowe College. What else do you want? You think, you know, again, it's a two minute drill and they had to go 79 yards or 70. What was it? 81. My math is bad. 81 yards. They started at their own 19. 81 yards to get to the end zone, I mean, you're putting up, you know, her name is wine and she says, so if it's 7 to 17, you mean 17 to 7 or 21 to 7. I get it. Another name is trailing at half this Saturday, you think our offense will win this game. I mean, it's not, first of all, it's not just on the offense. Why did the defense give up 21 points in the first half? Right. I don't see that happening either, by the way. The defense, the defense is, is allowing 9.7 points a game. So, so why, yeah, why is the defense giving up 17 points in the first half to Louisville? Right. I need, I need to know that that's your, you're worrying about a lot of hypotheticals that don't exist. Right. That don't exist. Because if you're preconceived notions of, of who you think this guy is, basically, and you know, Ryan jumped in, you know, I saw Ryan in the chat and he said he's tired of talking about the quarterbacks, but you know, look, what's everyone bitching about all weekend, the quarterbacks, right? Oh, 100%. This is what we have to talk to. Why we're talking about it? Yeah. That's why we're talking about it. And did he play, did he play perfect? No. But by the end of the day, you know, like everyone wants to talk about what his stats are supposed to look like and, you know, what, you know, what this is supposed to look like, what that is supposed to look like. At the end of the day, he had a pretty solid day. And when you, you know, like this is not a quarterback, you know, this is a quarterback one who's, who has thrown from almost 400 yards in his career before he did it against Wake Forest a couple of years ago, but he runs for 143. He throws for 154 and combines for three total touchdowns. He runs for two 11, almost 12 yards a carry fence that he had in that game. Almost 12 yards per carry, as you've said a million times, those count as well. Well, and so basically he was responsible for 297 yards of offense and three touchdowns and people are mad. If he did that all through the air, people will be happy. Why does it matter? Why does it matter how those yards come about, how those touchdowns come about? Why does that matter? That's what I don't understand because it's not beautiful. It's not pretty. The way you think quarterback should be played. Okay. That's fine. Go be a fan of USC because they're going to chuck the ball all over the place and probably complete more passes. That's fine. But that's not who Notre Dame is going to be. And okay. He said Notre Dame is wine and Jesus because if we start slow at home again, why can't this be a real situation? Because the defense has given up 19 points in two home games. Totally. And, and remember the two previous games, including against Northern Illinois when they lost against Northern Illinois and Purdue, Notre Dame opened the game with touchdown drives. Like they didn't start slow in those games. It was the middle where we, especially against Northern Illinois, where things went off the rail. Like because, and you know, again, what you're throwing up is a hypothetical. It's not a real situation until it actually happens. And, you know, again, like you, you are, you know, like all the doubt that you have about the offense, you're, you're, you're basically moving over here to the defense because you have these worries. America's truth broker says Louisville scored mostly in last year's game because the offense couldn't stay on the field for any length of time. No. I mean, that was part of it. But the real reason was because Sam Hartman committed what was it? Five turnovers in that game. That is why that is why they lost that game. That's why they lost that game. So the defense is giving up under 10 points a game. They're giving up under 10 points a game. They're giving up under nine points a game at home. I just, I'm sorry. I don't see them being down. I don't, I don't see them giving up 21 points in the first half. Again, it's a hypothetical and anything can happen, right? There could be a fumble. There could be all kinds of craziness that, that occurs where points are stacked. I just don't see that being the case. So as we said during the post game show, as we said during a pawn for the review, regardless of what the offense does, Sean, this defense is going to keep this team in every single game for the whole season, the whole regular season. They will be in every single game the entire season. It's going to be up to the offense, obviously, to put up some points, right? And I think they can, right? But you know, I just don't see the defense giving up to have any points. I just, I just don't, even when they played poorly, as we were pointed out to a thousand times, we gave up 16 points. They didn't play that well, but they only gave up 16. The run defense wasn't fantastic on Saturday. They only gave up three points. So at the end of the day, they're not giving up a bunch of points. And so the offense will have an opportunity to win a game. So you said you wanted to hear the answer. Oh, I really do. So Freeman was asked after the game, what gave him the confidence to stick with Leonard when he was struggling like he was and when he, and when Freeman could feel in the stadium that the sentiment is that they're looking for a change at the quarterback position. Here's the answer. Don't make decisions based off what the sentiment of the stadium is. So that's the answer, that part of the question, but again, I don't know how many yards rightly led our offense to through rushing and passing, but there's always parts to clean up. And we got to continue to look at the mistakes that he made and say, okay, how do we do a better job of not putting him in a position to make mistakes and where was the disconnect, but we got a lot of confidence in our quarterback that led us to a great victory today. So what'd you think there, Vince? I think that he handled that much better than I would have because that was one of the dumbest questions I've ever heard asked. I'm serious. Why in God's name, would you ask a coach why he didn't make a change at any position based on what the crowd wants you to do, right? You might as well just put up Twitter polls the entire game up on the big screen and that's how they'll go. Who do you want to quarterback? The third quarter. Yeah. And I don't even know who asked the question. I don't care. It doesn't matter. That was a terrible question. Well, the crowd wanted you to make a change. How come you didn't make a change that like, what, what? When I read that I on your rundown this or this afternoon, I was like, I can't believe that somebody would ask that question that just mind blowing. Why even have a coaching staff? Let's just, we'll just, we'll just crowd, uh, certain, you know, crowd source the entire game. Oh, it's that. It's verse a 10. Crowd. Uh, what do you want to do? Everybody gets on their little hand held and you get. Hey, Irish fans. Yeah. Yeah. Next drive. Right. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Oh my goodness. I would have lost my mind if I was Marcus Freeman on that question. And I, and that's why I don't have a job like that where I have to talk to the media because I wouldn't do well at times when stuff like that happens, I would lose my mind. I'm with you. I'm with you. Like, like, well, you know, that those people back there in, in, uh, row 14 are pretty ticked off that you're sticking with, right in the letter that you're not going to make a move. You know, you're really going to stick with them at that point. So yeah, I, you know, again, like, I think, you know, like the look of those, uh, on the little rollouts, they were both incomplete. Oh, they're bad. Unfortunately. Yeah. They look bad, but like, is that, is that grounds for benching a quarterback at that point? No. There's nothing. No. Nothing that he did. You know, so like you look at what he's doing for the season, he's got over 320 rushing yards. He's the, the fifth leading rushing quarterback in the nation right now. He's averaging over seven yards a carry for the season. You see, and you've, you've seen the explosive plays six touchdowns that he has scored and then he's, he's passed for 587 yard, 63% and he, they got, he finally got his first touchdown pass. Oh my God. We don't have to talk about that. Seriously. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. And he did get it before Caleb Williams, by the way. He did, he did, they each threw one this weekend, I believe. You're right. So, but of course Saturday came before Sunday. Yep. So did you see Caleb Williams? By the way, he threw it to Roma Dunzay, trying to get the ball. Yeah. It's almost like well, first touchdown pass. It's a Dunzay's first touchdown that he's scored in their fight and over the boys. He's like, come on. Hey, give me that ball. He's like, no. I scored it. That's great. There's got to be another ball that they use like on that drive or something like that that they can figure out. But yeah, yeah, I thought that was actually pretty funny because the offense was not good again. Chocker. No, for the Bears. So today, Marcus Freeman's press conference today asked him what gives him the most confidence in Leonard right now through four games. It's a performance that I see, you know, ability to rush the ball for about 150 yards to throw it for 150 yards. You know, I think we had almost 400 to 500 total yards of offense and that gives me a lot of confidence in right of Leonard's our quarterback. You know, as you evaluate the film, we actually threw the ball downfield really well, probably the best we've done, but we missed some layups and, you know, those are the ones that I'm sure everybody's talking about. Everybody sees is the layups, but, you know, those will be corrected in practice. We've got to continue to do movement throws, but I got a lot of confidence in Riley Leonard. And again, again, I don't know what the outside's saying, but I'm sure, you know, it comes with the position. I just said it after the game, I said, there is not much difference between being a head coach and being a star quarterback in Notre Dame. You have to be able to handle everything that comes with it. And he's doing a great job at doing that. I mean, Vince, he's absolutely right about the layups. And I think that, you know, that that's something that we can all see. It's not just you have to make the layups, but there are layups that he also has to see, you know, and make those throws as well. I think that that's part of it. But what do we talk about last week? Incremental progress, right? And the fact that he's hit a couple deep shots now and you got some pass interference calls on a couple of other deep shots, you know, that were that were there. I think that, like, you've got to call that progress, right? Because we didn't see him hitting those deep balls. You know, there was a drop ball that we've all talked about in Northern Illinois, but he hit him. And he, you know, he hit basically the best pass that he's probably made all season on that touchdown to Collins. Well, and the throw to Mitchell Evans was actually a really, really good throw. If Mitchell Evans doesn't have his right arm, I believe, like, basically tied behind his back. I think it was his right arm, but like if that's not the case, that might be a touchdown. You know what I mean? That he threw the ball well deep on Saturday, which thank goodness because I knew that he could do it because I've seen him do it, but I hadn't seen him do it with a with a game day gold helmet on. So I'm glad that, well, outside of the throw to great house, but then a great house dropped it, right? But I'm glad that he got that monkey off of his back, right? And we've seen him make the layups in a game. We've seen him make the long passes in a game. And I said this earlier, but as long as he could put that together, his team is going to be just fine. He could do for 69% completion percentage two weeks ago. This week he throws for 64% like, I mean, or lat, you know what I mean, last week, two two games ago, and then this past game 69, 64, that's where he's going to be. That is who Riley Leonard is. He's going to be between 64 and 70%. That's who he is, right? And the offense will be just fine if he still is able to use his legs and, you know, make plays and be a playmaker. That's who he is. And so with him, you have to be able to add up both yardages, his running yards and his passing yards, right? That's who he's responsible for and touchdowns that he's responsible for. That is how you have to evaluate Riley Leonard. That's exactly it. That's it. You know, we, honestly, we haven't seen a quarterback like this in a long time. Like the closest thing was probably was Brandon Windbush, but like Windbush, you know, and for like people who want to make the comparison to Brandon Windbush, obviously a great athlete. But like the thing with Windbush, you talk about not being able to make the layups. I mean, the guy couldn't even turn to his right and make the simple throw. You know, just like over to the flat, the ball would either, you know, like go into the dirt or it would just take off into the sideline, whatever. I don't know if you remember or fewer at that practice at Notre Dame Stadium. I think it was toward the end of a fall camp where they had the net out there on the field and Brandon Windbush could not hit the net, unfortunately. And that's not, it's just not Riley Leonard. Like there's, he's, he's getting closer, I think, to the guy that he was a couple of years ago at Duke, but you're absolutely right about, you can't just look at a stat line for this quarterback and try to judge him based off what he is with the passing line. All you see is one touchdown and a five hundred and you know, 80 some yards. He's got seven total touchdowns. That's the most important thing. Seven total touchdowns through basically three and a half games because he didn't play the entire second half against Purdue. Well, and Joshua Finn, I think says it the best. And since you've already got a thing up, I won't bring his up, but he says Riley. Well, I'll just, I'll just say Coach Mo, I'll, I'll take this down. I had it up there. We will talk, we will talk about the Jade Mickey thing at the start of Rapid Fire. So you can. So Joshua Finn says Riley heats up the past game after you heat him up in the run game. He is a weapon. It's up to the coaches to hit the right firing sequence. Could not agree more. I mean, he wasn't hitting those throws and then they come back out and they start running him a little bit more. And all of a sudden he's hitting throws like, I just think that's probably the formula right now. When you chalk it up, I guess to, you know, in experience between the coach and the player and used to how he does things in a game and all. And that's legit to a degree, right? I get that. It's only game four, but you only get 12 guaranteed as Marcus Freeman likes to remind us. So I think that hopefully they're starting to figure out, okay, what do we need to do to get him heated up to get him where he needs to be? And hopefully you'll see that more in a bigger game like the Louisville game. Hey, Irish Breakdown listeners, it's Urban Meyer. This fall, the game changes. Join me. Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram and broadcaster Rob Stone as we bring you a new perspective on football and culture every week. We will be joined by the biggest name in sports and talk about everything inside and outside of the lines. Let us guide you through a new era of college football. Watch triple option on YouTube or listen on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. Hey, Irish Breakdown listeners, it's Matt Liner. I've got a podcast called Throwbacks with actor Jay Ferrar, where we'll be talking all things sports, but also so much more. We'll give you the behind the scenes stories for my days as the quarterback on an iconic college football team to Jerry's days as a star on an iconic TV series. So subscribe to throwbacks on YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. Kind of along those lines, Freeman was asked about the game plan going forward and how Riley Leonard's ability to break off the big plays at different times factors into how they feel about him as well as his dual threat ability, like the fact that you've got this offensive line that's, I won't go so far as to call it makeshift, but look, that you've got three starters on the line right now who are not starters early in fall training camp. Like when with that depth chart, and then of course you've got a couple of, you've got all these injuries that have got other guys out there. How much does that dual, does his dual threat ability sort of also play a factor into you need this guy out there because of what he's got in front of him on the offensive line. I think there's, there's benefits, no matter who's at your quarterback yet to me, that's like you have to call things around the strengths of your players. And obviously Riley, one of his strengths are the ability to run the ball. And you know, they showed today that we can run the ball and they had a lot of success. I'm proud of the way those two guys stepped up and Patton and Rocco and really performed well. They felt like they performed well, obviously the rushing yards showed they performed well. So we'll go back and watch it and continue to get those guys to improve, but I'm really proud of our offense being able to run the ball, but also those guys being able to step up and get their job done. And I mean, he makes his running ability makes an opposing defense have to account for so much more, you know, one, you know, like one, Miami was, was keying on Jeremiah Love every time Jeremiah Love was on the field. And you're in price to a degree to, I mean, yeah, right, but more, more so love, but prices. Yeah, you know, price as well when he was on a traditional run game, and that's another subject altogether, the fact that those two guys combined for 17 carries, you know, out there Saturday, like we want to talk about game plans, everything else, but, but the fact is if that's going to be your focus and you've got Riley Leonard, I mean, there's a reason he averaged 12 yards, sorry, I guess, but but then the other part of it is what he did. And Marcus Freeman talked about this as well, you got to be able to throw it over the top if they want a key on that, and he was finally able to throw it over the top. And that's that's big, especially because you are now going into a game like Louisville, where they're going to want to make you have to throw over the top this weekend. One of the things somebody mentioned in last night's show, Sean was, well, they should just put in jelly in and then give the carries that Riley Leonard has to the running backs and then they'll be just fine. Well, here's the difference. So running a quarterback is completely different than running a running back, first of all, okay, when it comes to the run game. One of the reasons that Riley Leonard had such a good day on the ground is because the defense was keying on the running backs so much that all he had to do to keep the defense honest was fake it to the running backs and keep it himself. You don't get that kind of an opportunity if you don't have a mobile quarterback. They're not going to respect Steve Angeli's ability to run. You know, might he pop off a run here or there? Sure. But he's not going to be a consistent threat and he's going to get sacked more often. That's exactly correct. And so it's not just as simple as take the carries away from Riley and give them to arguably the best running back room in the country. That's fine, but that it's not an apples to apples comparison. And so that doesn't really work. Okay. So I wanted to make sure I got that out there, but and everybody's asking us when certain guys are coming back from injury. We don't know the answer to that. They have not shared. Yeah. But with us, I don't believe injury report came out today. Josh Burnham still listed us questionable. So we don't know if Josh Burnham is going to be back Cooper Flanagan is going to be out this week. You know, as far as Billy Shrouthe, he's on the injury report Rubio. We don't know, you know, like, they don't, they don't just come out and say, here's what, you know, like once they start, you know, like, for example, Josh Burnham showed up on the 2D this week. He was not on the 2D last week, but he was on the 2D this week, but he is still listed as questionable. And Marcus Freeman talked about that, you know, like none of the like Rubio's not on the 2D right now. So there's no reason to ask about that Shrouthe. Like I wouldn't expect Shrouthe, you know, like I'm just guessing because they were talking about several weeks, I wouldn't probably expect him until the middle of, you know, the, you know, next month, October, whatever. Next week is a bi-week. So we won't have a press count. We won't have any press conferences next week either. So, you know, like we're, we won't really get a chance to, to find out a lot of them, until basically what two weeks from today, I was trying to think of what today was two weeks. Next, that'll be the next press conference. Let me, because people are asking about injuries yet. Let me, let me pull up the game notes and see if I can, of course, it's like giving me the, you know, like the blank screen when you get, of course, if you ever had that when you click on it. Well, I saw that they, they put an updated version. So here's, I don't know what the difference was. Here's Josh Burnham. Well, they updated the notes because Jade Mickey was initially listed in the 2D and then they said he's got you at shirting and he's gone. Okay. Burnham has listed his questionable still with his ankle out for the game this week Cooper Flanagan left ankle Tae Johnson left foot gave Rubio left foot Billy Shrouth right ankle. So those four guys are definitely out for this game. And then of course, Marty hour, Quentin Autry, Tabor on Benny Powell, Jordan Batello, Ashton Craig, Charles do Charles Jagasau, Kahanu Kia, Jabron Payne, Stiles Prescott, Chance Tucker all out for the season. So that's, that's what the injury port looks like today. There you go. Good enough. It's good for now for me. I mean, honestly, Vince, I was expecting more and jelly pushback in this show today from not from me. No, not from you. Oh, it's going to say maybe, maybe people were swayed a little bit. I mean, the, you know, I think also maybe they're just over and I can't. I believe they're over it because no, they're not over it, but, you know, Leonard played well enough that people need to take, kind of take a step back, but there's still plenty of people out there that think and jelly is like the second coming and he can lead this team to, you know, championship, it's just, and there, and there's no way you're going to be able to convince them otherwise. That's the thing. And that's fine. It's totally fine. People on the complete other side that are Riley Leonard apologists and there's nothing you can say that is going to sway them. And that's fine too. Just like any topic where there's people on both sides, the truth generally lies in the middle somewhere. And I think this is no different Michael makes a good point. You lose to Louisville and jelly folks. Oh yeah. They're going to go down. Look, and Riley Leonard could throw for 350 yards, three touchdowns and do nothing wrong. But if the defense, whatever reason doesn't show up and they give up 24 and Riley Leonard only scores 21, they'll be back. It could have nothing to do with Riley Leonard and it won't matter because he just won't be as effective enough as a quarterback. [Music] [Music] [Music] (upbeat music)
Irish Breakdown has comments from Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman on his polarizing quarterback Riley Leonard on today's show. We hear Freeman's thoughts on the Irish home crowd booing Leonard during Saturday's win over Miami (OH) as well as if he thought about making a change at quarterback, what gives him the most confidence in Leonard and more.
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