Things We Learned: Avoidable first-year mistakes cost Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman

Notre Dame will receive no points for Marcus Freeman’s honesty. His transparency on Monday will not soften the Irish loss on Saturday, falling inexplicably to Stanford, 16-14. Any retrospective credit comes only in the shadow of the first-year head coach initially making the mistake he voluntarily confessed to.

“It’s been a long 48 hours of trying to really figure out what the heck happened on Saturday,” Freeman said Monday, summing up both his coaching staff’s tasks and his fanbase’s angst.

One thing that happened on Saturday was Notre Dame twice failed when it should have scored touchdowns. Convert either of those opportunities, beat the Cardinal by a hair, and this game would be filed into the overflowing folder of “Winning is hard” moments that former Irish head coach Brian Kelly excelled at, those three words one of his favorite postgame mantras, one laughed at for years by critics but now envied for its accuracy in hindsight.

The latter of those scoring opportunities will haunt sophomore running back Audric Estimé for some time, fumbling the ball after he had gained a first down on Notre Dame’s penultimate drive. That was not a moment to scratch and claw for every yard; that was a time to put everything short of his life in front of losing that ball. That was the possession to win the game on, not when the Irish got the ball back deep in their own territory with no timeouts and the clock dwindling, as Freeman regretted on Saturday night.

Estimé will learn from that mistake, this his first season of any genuine work, one that has been impressive albeit one now wrought with a pair of fumbles in scoring territory.

But it was the other botched scoring opportunity that Freeman took ownership of, essentially hopping on