Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman takes blame for defensive gaffe - ESPN

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman took ownership of having only 10 defenders on the field for the final two plays of Saturday's loss to Ohio State, and he told ESPN on Monday that changes are being made to help prevent that from happening again.

Moving forward, Freeman told ESPN, the Irish will have a signal that will draw a penalty to stop the game and provide an opportunity to get an 11th defender on the field.

«You win or you learn,» Freeman said. «Hopefully it never happens again, but do we have a signal to tell somebody, when it's loud and crazy, jump offsides and touch somebody?»

They will now.

Notre Dame used its final timeout with only seven seconds remaining in Saturday's game. On the penultimate play, Freeman said nobody noticed there were only 10 defenders for Kyle McCord's incomplete pass on second-and-goal from the 1. By the time the staff noticed it right before Ohio State's final, game-winning play, it was too late.

Trailing 14-10, Ohio State's Chip Trayanum ran up the middle and scored with one second remaining. The touchdown was reviewed by officials, which gave viewers the opportunity to spot the gaffe.

«We tell our players, every play you can't be distracted by the things that don't matter,» Freeman said. «You have to do your job. The same thing applies to coaches. We can't get caught watching the game and not do our job.

»I know people are like, take the penalty," he said. «By the time we realized — it got communicated — you couldn't get a guy from the coaching box to touch somebody on offense. To stop the play, you have to touch somebody on offense. We would've gotten a penalty and they would have scored, so it really didn't matter because we figured it out too late. What we learned