Marcus Freeman likely knew his team was cooked before anyone else in the stadium.
With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Cincinnati quarterback Desmond Ridder kept the ball on a zone-read and zipped around the edge of Notre Dame’s defense for a 6-yard touchdown run, delivering the final nail in the coffin of the Bearcats 24-13 road victory over the Fighting Irish. Powerless to stop it from the sideline, Freeman knew the outcome all too well. It was the type of play Notre Dame’s first-year defensive coordinator witnessed Ridder make hundreds of times — in games and in practice — during his previous four seasons as the defensive coordinator at Cincinnati.
It was a bittersweet moment for Freeman, balancing the disappointment of a postgame defeat with hugs and congratulations for his former players and colleagues. That victory was the springboard for Cincinnati’s historic climb to the College Football Playoff in 2021 under Luke Fickell, the only Group of 5 team to reach that height during the four-team era. And even though Freeman wasn’t with Cincinnati that season, and was on the losing end that October afternoon, he was an indispensable piece of the journey for the Bearcats.
Three-plus years later, that same journey has provided the foundation for Notre Dame’s run to the national championship — with rising star Freeman at the helm of an Irish coaching staff with extensive Cincinnati roots.
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“We had a really special run at Cincinnati, and you knew right away that Marcus was going to be a star and was going to be a head coach someday,” said Brian Mason, who worked with Freeman at Kent State, Purdue, Cincinnati and Notre Dame, serving as special teams coordinator for the Irish in 2022. “Certain people when you’re around them, you can tell they’re a leader, that people will follow them. Marcus has a great presence and is a great relationship builder, which allows him to be a really successful recruiter and coach.”
Freeman was a day-one hire to Fickell’s Cincinnati staff ahead of the 2017 season, becoming a 31-year-old, first-time defensive coordinator under his former linebackers coach at Ohio State. Freeman spent four decorated seasons running the defense for the Bearcats, earning a finalist spot for the Broyles Award in 2020 before Brian Kelly hired him to the same position at Notre Dame.
There’s a history of Cincinnati influence in South Bend, including Kelly, who spent three seasons with the Bearcats before taking the Notre Dame job. A year before Kelly poached Freeman, he hired Bearcats defensive backs coach Mike Mickens, a Cincinnati alum who was a teammate of Freeman’s at Wayne High School outside of Dayton.
Freeman doubled down on that pipeline after taking over as head coach in December 2021. In addition to Mickens, Notre Dame’s staff features former Cincinnati coaches Mike Denbrock (offensive coordinator/tight ends), Gino Guidugli (quarterbacks), Mike Brown (wide receivers), Al Washington (defensive line), Max Bullough (linebackers), Chad Bowden (general manager), Kurt Rawlings (analyst) and Caleb Davis (director of recruiting), all of whom worked under Fickell and alongside Freeman in some capacity with the Bearcats.
“We never specifically talked about getting the Cincinnati staff back together, but we were all really close at Cincinnati, had gone through the struggle of building that program and were all on the same page in terms of the culture we wanted,” said Mason, now special teams coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts. “You had that bond of doing it before and how to do it together. It was a natural fit.”
Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock is one of 10 former Cincinnati staffers coaching at Notre Dame, including head coach Marcus Freeman. (Greg Swiercz / USA Today)
It wasn’t a straight line from Cincinnati to South Bend for all of them, and some are more established in their careers than others — most notably Denbrock, who had two prior stints at Notre Dame before stops at Cincinnati and LSU. But the connective Bearcats tissue is obvious and something Freeman acknowledged when filling out his staff as a young head coach.
“One of the benefits of this is hiring people you know and trust. … You learn a lot about an individual when you’re with them every day,” Freeman said in February 2023 about his staff’s Cincinnati linkage. “At the end of the day, you know what? I’m going to take a chance on guys that I know and I trust rather than just a resume, or rather than just a guy that did a great job in an interview. Experience goes a long way.”
The success Cincinnati football achieved during that run sparked opportunities elsewhere, whether it was Fickell’s moving to Wisconsin or players like Sauce Gardner, Alec Pierce and Coby Bryant shining in the NFL. It’s certainly worked out for Notre Dame, and beyond Freeman. Bowden was a must-have rider for Freeman when he first joined the Irish as a coordinator, infusing fresh recruiting creativity in South Bend. The blend of recruiting and development talent from assistants including Mickens, Guidugli and Brown has translated, and bringing a veteran OC in Denbrock back to Notre Dame was a masterstroke at what was a revolving-door position since Freeman took over.
The experience from Freeman’s four seasons with the Bearcats continues to resonate.
He made massive strides as a coach at Cincinnati, sharpening his recruiting and player-development bona fides while learning the intricacies of how to lead a staff. Freeman managed older assistants while operating under a defense-first head coach, helping to rehab the program from 4-8 in Fickell’s first season to a New Year’s Six bowl in 2020, establishing one of the best defenses in college football along the way. There was also an unprecedented pandemic and civil unrest, all as Freeman elevated to one of the most sought-after assistants in the sport.
“Marcus does a great job with his leadership skills, doesn’t try to be somebody that he’s not,” said Ron Crook, Cincinnati’s offensive line coach from 2017 to 2021. “It’s been fun to watch and see how much he’s taken off, but from day one, you could tell he was very motivated, and his personality lets him shine.”
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Despite the increase in attention at Cincinnati, Freeman was patient and particular about his next move, learning from Fickell, the two of them having mentored under Jim Tressel before that. Freeman passed on offers to be a position coach at Ohio State and with the Tennessee Titans, a defensive coordinator at Michigan State, and head-coaching interest from smaller Group of 5 programs. He knew he was first in line at Cincinnati if Fickell decided to leave. When that didn’t happen after the 2020 season, the outside opportunities finally became too good to pass up. LSU and Notre Dame wanted Freeman as defensive coordinator, and he chose the latter, leaning on his Midwest pedigree and prescient intuition.
Still, no one could have predicted what would come next, Freeman included. That he would take over as coach of the Irish one year later when Kelly bolted for LSU, or that he would usher Notre Dame to its first national championship appearance since 2012, despite being humbled by losses to Marshall, Stanford and Northern Illinois, not to mention the 10-men-on-the-field debacle against the Buckeyes in 2023.
Freeman weathered all of it to arrive on the doorstep of a national title. The Irish might be heavy underdogs Monday against their coach’s alma mater, but in just his third season, Freeman is already bumping up against the lofty potential he flashed at Cincinnati. And with some familiar faces in tow.
(Top photo: Michael Clubb / South Bend Tribune / USA Today via Imagn Images)
