Why Colorado could be the perfect landing spot for Jonathan Drouin
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Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporterOct 7, 2023, 04:30 PM ET
Close- Ryan S. Clark is an NHL reporter for ESPN.
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Coming here was not the only option. It was just the best one for Jonathan Drouin.
Every choice has its consequences. Other NHL teams reached out to Drouin and his representatives about joining their club. Those clubs had more salary cap space and offered more money than what the Colorado Avalanche presented to Drouin, which was a one-year contract worth $825,000 — a substantial dip from the $5.5 million annual salary he earned over the past six seasons.
Every choice also has its advantages. Drouin makes this clear while sitting in his stall at the Avs’ rustic practice facility just south of downtown Denver. One of them has to do with the stall just to the right of Drouin. Or rather, who occupies that space. It’s Avs superstar center and perennial Hart Trophy candidate Nathan MacKinnon. They’re best friends and have known each other for more than a decade, dating to when they were teammates with the Halifax Mooseheads in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Another advantage is what playing for the Avs represents. It was just this time last year that the Avs were seeking to win a consecutive Stanley Cup. They navigated a series of challenges to win the Central Division and finish with the best regular-season record in the Western Conference, only to then have their title aspirations cut short with a first-round exit by the upstart Seattle Kraken.
Championships are how this current iteration of the Avs is being defined. One key to that has been bringing in players and helping them find higher levels of success than they’d seen before. Forwards such as Andre Burakovsky, Nazem Kadri, Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin all set career highs while playing with Colorado. Defenseman Devon Toews went from a top-four option to a low-key Norris Trophy candidate since playing here. Goaltenders such as Alexandar Georgiev, Philipp Grubauer and Darcy Kuemper also enjoyed the strongest seasons of their careers with the Avs.
Is Drouin next? Can he parlay this opportunity into helping the Avs win their fourth Cup while also showing at 28 years old that the best is yet to come?
“With the team here, everyone could probably achieve their career numbers with the way they play and the way they move the puck,” Drouin said. “But that wasn’t really the main reason [why he signed with the Avalanche]. I don’t really have any goals for me other than finding my game back and helping this team in any way I can.”
SCARS CAN OFTEN go beyond being marks on flesh. They provide illustrations into the pain of a life. In Drouin’s case, he has two scars — one on each wrist — from the surgeries he has endured over the past few years.
Remnants of those incisions are noticeable, not just on Drouin’s body but his mind as well. Those scars were born out of pain and have created doubt, but now they have made Drouin optimistic. This is the first time in a while Drouin said he didn’t spend the offseason rehabbing from wrist surgery before starting his workouts.
Having confidence in a pair of fully healthy wrists is what has made the beginning of Avs’ training camp fruitful for him. Drouin has provided more than enough evidence to show that his wrists are fine. It’s the passes he plays during drills or the shots he takes.
Everything about the way his wrists move is fluid, smooth and uninterrupted — three traits that have not always been the easiest to attain in a career that has faced setbacks.
Expectations have long followed Drouin. Recording a pair of 100-point seasons in the QMJHL does that. So does going No. 3 overall in the 2013 draft to the Tampa Bay Lightning. He played three seasons in Tampa, with his final year there amplifying those expectations as Drouin scored a career-high 21 goals and 53 points.
Friction was also a part of Drouin’s time with the Lightning, which is what eventually led to him being traded to the Montreal Canadiens. Drouin scored 99 points in 158 games in his first two seasons with the Canadiens. Injuries hindered that production, however. In Drouin’s final four seasons, he recorded 87 points in 163 games with 29 points in 58 games in the 2022-23 campaign being his most productive.
Fighting through injuries also came at a time when Drouin was attempting to manage his mental health. He’s open about detailing the life-changing anxiety he experienced more than three years ago.
Drouin said he started experiencing anxiety in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that “being in the bubble didn’t help” — a reference to when the NHL held the 2019-20 Stanley Cup playoffs in bubbles in Edmonton and Toronto.
“The two months in the bubble really lingered,” Drouin said. “I don’t think I could tell you if we didn’t have that bubble I would have been fine or I wouldn’t have had to stop playing. But the bubble and the COVID year in Montreal, we had rules in Canada where you could not leave your house unless you were walking your dog. I’d walk my dog six times a day to get out of my house.”
Drouin also said being a top-three pick and a French Canadian who grew up an hour away from Montreal also contributed to his anxiety. He believed he was ready to carrying those expectations because he grew up watching other players handle them.
“Until you live it,” Drouin said. “No one’s ready for it.”
Longtime NHL agent Allan Walsh, who has known Drouin and represented him since he was a teenager, also grew up in Montreal. Walsh said playing in Montreal comes with “a wholly unique set of challenges and pressures” that no one can fully understand until they encounter it.
Walsh said playing in Montreal means coming off the ice to be greeted by 15 cameras and more than 30 media members on a near-daily basis. There’s also the constant attention that comes when a player is walking down the street, if they visit a local market for groceries or if they eat at a restaurant.
“You want to be welcoming and understand that this is a privileged set of circumstances that you are living under, yet at the same time when things are not going well, it’s just grinding you down every day,” Walsh said. “There’s no getting away from hockey off the ice. What players tend to do in this situation … is you tend to cocoon. You order in your food, you don’t go to the market, you don’t walk down the street, you don’t walk to the park to get some fresh air. You tend to avoid people and crowds. It turns into an isolating and insulated life and that is not always the healthiest lifestyle.”
Although Drouin wasn’t performing to the level he or the fans wanted, it wasn’t the primary reason why he struggled with anxiety.
Sleeping was challenging. Drouin would lie awake at night for hours, only thinking about hockey. He would think about the next game or what happened in the game the day before. Those thoughts forced him to replay an entire game in his head. Every single sequence that he was involved in played in his mind as if it were on a continuous loop that could only be interrupted when he realized he only had two hours to sleep before practice.
“I didn’t really go to sleep until I got help and really someone to talk to about the perspective of getting sleep and getting rest,” Drouin said. “At one point, it was just normal for me. I thought it was normal. I didn’t want help. I didn’t feel like I needed help. When you’re sleeping two or three hours a night, you can’t function as an athlete. You can’t perform the way you want to and your body is not responding either.”
Drouin said he realized he needed help when the Canadiens were in Calgary to play the Flames during the 2020-21 season. During that season, the NHL created what was basically an all-Canadian North Division so those teams could travel across Canada to comply with the nation’s COVID-19 restrictions.
“My body literally shut off on me. I remember that first practice and came to the hotel room and started feeling sick, started feeling tired and started having attacks,” Drouin said. “It was new for me and I thought I was sick. I thought I had a fever or something. Obviously, the doctor came and saw me and there was no fever and now I was even more worried about why I was feeling this way.”
Drouin said that “losing control of my body and having my body control me,” was the breaking point. He called his parents and close friends to open up about what he was experiencing. Drouin described it as one of the hardest and most emotional experiences of his life.
A week after his experience in Calgary, Drouin decided to step away from hockey.
“My parents knew and that was the part that hurt me when I was on the phone with them,” Drouin said. “My parents saw it before I saw it. When that phone call happened, I knew it was time to focus on me for once and get better. I’m still young but I was younger then and knew I still had a lot of years left in the NHL. I couldn’t follow that up for 10 years to live that way and handle that stuff by myself. I knew I needed help. Ever since then, my life has been great and I know how to handle those things.”
Opening up about anxiety and undergoing therapy were the first steps toward personal happiness, Drouin said. He found pleasure professionally the past two years in Montreal as well. The organization went through sweeping changes that led to the Canadiens hiring Kent Hughes as their general manager with Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Martin St. Louis becoming head coach.
Drouin said the arrival of Hughes and St. Louis created a sense of newness with the franchise which he believed gave him a clean slate. It also might have contributed to the past two seasons being among the most productive of his career.
While it’s natural to look at his statistics, Drouin explained how he found more positives in his game, allowing him a sense of comfort.
“The last two years have been good and I haven’t had anxiety, nor have the sleeping issues really come back,” Drouin said. “It’s been very positive.”
MONTREAL ALLOWED DROUIN to fulfill a childhood dream of donning those iconic red, blue and white sweaters that made him fall in love with hockey. But the reality of playing in Montreal at this stage of his career and the Canadiens building for the future did not quite align with Drouin’s aspirations to win a Stanley Cup.
There were opportunities elsewhere. Walsh said that there were “multiple teams with offers on the table and all for more money” while Drouin pondered his future.
He decided it was Colorado or bust.
“He was very motivated to reunite with Nate,” Walsh said. “Nate was texting him and calling him several times a day, pushing him to come to Denver and to come together again.”
The decision to join the Avalanche was layered. It started with Drouin’s relationship with MacKinnon, the fact that MacKinnon is one of the best players on the planet and is one of the faces on a team expected to complete for another championship. And Colorado made it clear it wanted Drouin.
Drouin also examined his surroundings. Avalanche coach Jared Bednar has not only won a Stanley Cup, but is the third-longest tenured coach in the NHL behind the Lightning’s Jon Cooper and the Pittsburgh Penguins‘ Mike Sullivan. Having a coach with the longevity and success Bednar and his assistants have and them wanting Drouin also was welcoming.
“Management is also sensitive to the challenges you have had before and is excited to bring you in too,” Walsh said. “Players love to go places where they feel wanted. From July 1, Jonathan felt like Colorado really wanted him. Players in the locker room really wanted him and it gave him a chance to turn things over and get a fresh start somewhere.”
Part of the reason the Avalanche has found success in recent years is how they make new players and their families feel welcomed. MacKinnon, who is an alternate captain, is quite involved in the process.
Several stories have been shared about MacKinnon’s intense nature. One came when Burakovsky joined the Avalanche after he was traded from the Washington Capitals. MacKinnon spent part of the offseason examining Burakovsky’s statistics and advised him to shoot more. Burakovsky recorded his first 20-goal season while scoring what was then a career-best 45 points over 58 games of the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season.
“I think since we have a relationship already it was easier, a little easier for me to kind of do some things that I think he should do on and off the ice,” MacKinnon said. “That’s been a lot easier for a new player. I’m not used to having new players come in that I’m really good friends with. But other than that, I try to make everyone feel welcomed as I can. We have a lot of new faces, so it’s definitely going to be important for us to come together quickly.”
Reuniting with MacKinnon comes with a sense of nostalgia and warm feelings. Drouin smiles when looking back at how MacKinnon would pick him up for school or practices, all while blaring early-2010s hip-hop. Drouin chuckles upon sharing that the biggest difference with the 18-year-old version of MacKinnon who drove him around Halifax versus the 28-year-old who is trying to steer him toward a Stanley Cup is that older MacKinnon is calmer.
Drouin is also realistic. He knows coming to Denver and playing with one of his best friends will be a challenge. Drouin said even as a teenager MacKinnon pushed their teammates considerably. He knows that type of mentality is what has allowed MacKinnon to be one of the best players in the world and also helped the Avs attain a level of success other teams covet.
What Drouin said about MacKinnon on a recent Friday afternoon backs that up. MacKinnon missed practice that day because he wasn’t in Denver or Colorado. He was home in Halifax, where the Mooseheads retired his number.
The following morning, MacKinnon returned, having taken an early morning flight so he could participate on the third day of training camp in late September.
“He hasn’t changed with that part, he was the same in junior where he’d push you to the end of the wall, sees there’s a hole in the wall and wants you to go further,” Drouin said. “I think this is why this team is so good. It looks like there’s a lot of guys who buy into that and become kind of like Nate a little bit. I think that’s why Nate’s had success [because] he’s never really satisfied with anything.”
MacKinnon’s mentality is one thing that defines this iteration of the Avs. Another is how they continue to have success with new players since Bednar and his staff have taken charge.
While Bednar admits that not every new player the Avs have acquired has found their place, there’s evidence that shows a good number of them have. Burakovsky had his three most productive seasons and could have been a three-time 20-goal scorer if not for the pandemic. Kadri went from averaging 0.64 points per game with the Toronto Maple Leafs over 10 seasons to averaging 0.87 points in three seasons with the Avalanche. Lehkonen finished with a career-high 21 goals and 51 points in his first full season with the Avs, while Nichushkin went from a first-rounder who struggled with the Dallas Stars to a hulking two-way presence averaging 0.63 points per game.
What is it about Denver that allows players — especially forwards — to reach the sort of highs they didn’t achieve elsewhere? Bednar said it is a multifaceted process that starts with the front office identifying players whom it believes will excel.
Bednar said if the Avs get those players, the next step is to have them spend time with the team to get acclimated. That gives new players a chance to experience the Avs’ work ethic, how their leaders work, how competitive they are and how much everyone pays attention to details.
Ryan Johansen, who was traded to the Avs in the offseason, echoed those sentiments.
“I remember our last playoff series where they swept up and it felt like there were 20 MacKinnons on the ice and six [Cale] Makars on defense. I’m not kidding. That’s what it felt like,” Johansen said, referencing when he and the Nashville Predators lost to the Avs in a first-round series during the 2022 playoffs. “The speed this team plays with, it’s exciting for me to be a part of it.”
Another newcomer who had a firsthand encounter with it was Ross Colton, who was also traded in the offseason. Colton won a Cup with the Lightning in 2021 and went against the Avs in a six-game Final during the 2022 playoffs.
“The organization I came from had great leadership and guys who knew how to win in the league and you see the same thing here,” Colton said. “Guys who know what it takes to win, how to carry themselves on and off the ice.”
Something else Bednar does with new players is watch 10 of their games from the previous season. He watches how they played early in the season, in the middle and late. He looks for how they performed in good games and bad ones. Bednar said he takes notes to get ideas about how to optimize a player’s usage based on how they operated with their former team.
“When you come in here, you really don’t have a choice but to follow that same thing,” Bednar said. “That’s going to bring out the best in people. I think [Drouin] is a perfect candidate to be able to step in and help us. The first three days of camp, he’s been one of the hardest working guys on the ice. He’s shown real quickness with an ability to make plays and score goals and play with those top guys.”
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Source: Jays, Santander reach 5-yr., $90M+ deal
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11 hours agoon
January 20, 2025By
adminThe Toronto Blue Jays and free agent outfielder Anthony Santander have agreed to a five-year deal that is worth more than $90 million, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Monday.
The switch-hitting Santander, 30, hit .235 for the Baltimore Orioles in 2024 but set career-highs with 44 home runs, 102 RBIs and 91 runs scored.
He spent his first eight MLB seasons with the Orioles, hitting 155 home runs with a .246 batting average.
MLB Network first reported Santander had reached an agreement with the Blue Jays.
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CFP National Championship: Why everyone at Notre Dame bought into Marcus Freeman
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January 20, 2025By
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPNJan 19, 2025, 06:00 PM ET
ATLANTA — Rocco Spindler still remembers the feeling that permeated the air in South Bend, Indiana, during late November in 2021.
The Notre Dame offensive lineman — then a freshman — and his teammates had just finished an 11-1 season only to be hit with the news that their head coach, Brian Kelly, was leaving for LSU while they still had an outside shot at making the College Football Playoff.
“There was a lot of uncertainty that whole week,” Spindler said. “We didn’t know who else was leaving, who else was staying.”
As November turned into December, Spindler and the rest of the team found themselves grasping for any semblance of familiarity or comfort. In Marcus Freeman, they found it.
“He was the one guy we all gravitated toward,” Spindler said of the Irish’s then-first-year defensive coordinator.
Naturally, the players who had seen what Freeman could do, who had been coached by him and felt his impact on their game, viewed the idea of Freeman succeeding Kelly as a no-brainer and campaigned for it.
“It was hectic,” said defensive lineman Howard Cross III. “But immediately everybody was like, ‘Why doesn’t Coach Freeman just be the head coach?’ Everybody agreed.”
“Seeing his ability to lead and how he handles certain situations was all we needed,” said defensive lineman Rylie Mills. “I think we all kind of knew what he was capable of.”
The players’ preference was no secret. Spindler remembers upperclassmen who would not be there the following season expressing their desire for Freeman to take over. It didn’t take long for them to get their wish.
a player’s coach@Marcus_Freeman1 | #GoIrish pic.twitter.com/pf9E1OygA8
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) December 3, 2021
The video of the team’s reaction to Freeman’s hiring immediately became a touchpoint for the program’s decision. It wasn’t about hiring anyone connected to Notre Dame. As the caption “player’s coach” alongside the footage of Freeman being mobbed by his players showed, the decision had the potential to start a new era for the program.
“It was absolutely risky to hire somebody at a place like Notre Dame who doesn’t have a track record as a head coach, but he won the job,” former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who hired Freeman, told ESPN. “We had plenty of really attractive candidates, but based on my experience with him, based on what the players told me, and based on a really excellent interview, he distinguished himself.”
In the three years since that moment, Freeman has built on that foundation, showing himself not only to be the right person for the job, but also being able to channel his approach into leading Notre Dame here, one game away from its first national championship since 1988.
“We were so excited [in 2021], but it was trust beyond knowing,” Mills said. “Now, he’s taken it to a whole other level.”
Here is a glimpse into some of the moments that make Freeman, the coach.
‘He would be the guy to always bring the juice’
Freeman’s first shot at a Division I coordinator job came at Cincinnati, where then-head coach Luke Fickell hired Freeman to be his defensive coordinator. Freeman was only 30 years old, but it didn’t take long for him to find his footing with a group that had won just four games the year prior.
“He came in and immediately made a first impression on us,” said former Cincinnati defensive lineman Kimoni Fitz. “We were trying to find ourselves and restart the culture with the new staff, and he made it easy.”
It helped that the results materialized quickly. Freeman’s defense led the AAC in rushing defense, scoring defense and total defense, and it ranked among the top 15 in FBS in all three categories.
According to Fitz, as the defense improved over the season, Freeman would get with the Bearcats’ video team and cut up a highlight reel of their best plays from the previous game and show it to the defense as a way of motivation.
“We would already envision ourselves making the plays,” Fitz said.
Then, as Miami’s turnover belt became an object of fascination in the sport, Freeman instituted the “turnover dunk,” where players who created the turnover would dunk the ball on a small rim.
Cincinnati Turnover Dunk pic.twitter.com/Is4rhN8Brq
— NCAAF Nation (@NCAAFNation247) September 26, 2020
“He was such a high-energy guy,” Fitz said. “If we came to practice without any juice that day, he would be the guy to always bring the juice, and we would live off that and play off that.”
Freeman was also able to draw from his playing experience — Freeman had been a linebacker drafted by the Chicago Bears in the fifth round in 2009 — to get the most out of his players, a trait that kept resurfacing as Freeman was rising.
“He wasn’t ever too big for anybody,” Fitz said. “Because he was a former player, he knew what it takes and he knew what we actually went through every day and respected that. You wanted to play hard for him.”
‘The head coach is telling me he believes in me’
Irish running back Jadarian Price won’t soon forget getting called into Freeman’s office. After a fall camp practice, Freeman pulled the junior aside and flipped on some film from practice. Freeman was neither interested in praising Price nor scolding him. He instead wanted to challenge him.
“He was like, ‘I really believe, and we all believe, that you can make plays like this,'” Price recalled Freeman saying. “We know that you can break away and run, but I want to see you strap up and break through the line.”
Price first took the challenge as a negative criticism, but when he thought about it more, he was able to see what Freeman was doing, not just for him but for all the other players on the team he was challenging.
“The head coach is telling me he believes in me, and he thinks I could do this better,” Price said. “It was a great thing to have. If the coaches are quiet, it’s not such a good thing, but if they’re telling you something, it’s a good thing.”
As Freeman has attempted to get the most out of this particular team, players have become accustomed to his coaching style.
“A lot of people say he’s a great coach. No one really truly understands and experiences that [like us],” Price said. “How he is behind the scenes at his meetings, the way he speaks, his attentiveness, his involvement with every player. I think that’s really rare, him not just being the CEO of the program, but the coach who steps in and figures out a way to make every player better and get to know every player.”
Talk to any Notre Dame player, and they’ll harp on a similar thing: how easy it is to play for Freeman because of who he is and what he does, not just on the field, but off of it.
“He has a relationship with every single person on his team of how that person needs to be interacted with and motivated,” said kicker Mitch Jeter.
Linebacker Jack Kiser perhaps knows this as well as anyone on Notre Dame’s roster. Kiser has been at the program since 2019 and was coached by Freeman as a defensive coordinator in 2021. The list of challenges and motivation, constructive criticism and praise that Kiser has received from Freeman is long, but what sticks out to Kiser the most is how Freeman has been consistent through it all.
“You don’t talk to him and walk away feeling like he just lied to you or he was someone different,” Kiser said. “He’s just a very authentic, genuine person, and I think you see that on the sideline, too. You see his raw emotion come out. You see the way he processes things. He’s not able to hide some of his emotions, and that just goes to show that he really cares about us players and he cares about this place, this program.”
‘The right guy at the right time for Notre Dame’
“What was a place-kicker who had spent most of his time in the Carolinas doing here?”
That’s what Jeter, covered in as many layers as possible, thought to himself as he walked across the Notre Dame campus on a day when the temperature dipped well below freezing. The South Carolina transfer had recently arrived on campus and was experiencing a bit of culture shock. Freeman didn’t exactly coddle him.
“He really instilled in me that you come to Notre Dame to choose hard,” Jeter said with a smile. “Even if that is the weather or the class schedule or the football.”
Although Freeman said he didn’t follow Notre Dame football much before he was hired in 2021, the way that he has embraced the program’s history has stood out to players. Offensive lineman Aamil Wagner recalled a meeting earlier this season where they discussed the 1988 Notre Dame team, the last Irish team to win a national title, and tried to gather inspiration from it.
“All season he has gotten us so invested in the concept of going after team glory,” Wagner said. “Everyone remembers that 1988 team and how they got the crown jewel of the sport. We know what came before us, but we want to chart our own path.”
“He tells us all the time to be misfits,” Price said. “That seems like an unusual word for Notre Dame, but people like me, I’m not Catholic myself, I’m from Texas. I didn’t grow up thinking I would be at Notre Dame, and look, we have a minority head coach at Notre Dame. So it makes you feel a lot more comfortable as a player and just being led by someone who doesn’t care what the world thinks and stands by themselves.”
Whether it’s bringing transfers into the fold seamlessly or reinstituting pregame mass for the program, Freeman — who is the first Black and Asian coach to be in the title game — has struck a deft touch between utilizing Notre Dame’s tradition and history to bring the Irish together.
“He has completely embraced the University of Notre Dame and the University of Notre Dame has fully embraced him,” said offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock.
Said defensive coordinator Al Golden: “Marcus is the right guy at the right time for Notre Dame.”
‘Every week is now a playoff game’
The game that kept Notre Dame from heading into the title game with an undefeated record is also the one that likely allowed them to reach the championship. That particular thesis about the Irish’s shocking loss to Northern Illinois in September has now become folklore for this year’s players and coaches, in large part due to the way they say Freeman handled the defeat.
“After the NIU loss, a lot of coaches may scream and yell, and I’ve been in the building before where that’s happened,” Mills said. “But he wasn’t doing that.”
“The mood of the team and the feeling around the team always comes from the top down,” Denbrock said. “His ability to compartmentalize it a little bit, to analyze it, to kind of be willing to be vulnerable, us as a coaching staff, him as the leader of the program, and look at the things that we felt like we really needed to fix.”
Freeman, like he had done at Cincinnati, turned to a video, this time not of anything related to football, but of a high school hurdler who was tripped up by the second hurdle in a 100-meter race. The hurdler got back up and made a comeback, qualifying for the final heat where she won and set a personal record.
“He was like, ‘This is us and this is what we can do. Every week is now a playoff game,'” Mills said. “He just brought that intensity that we knew we didn’t have with NIU, and we kept that with us the rest of the season.”
Instead of burying the loss, Freeman utilized it, and it fueled the team’s dominance the rest of the season.
“He’s big about remembering the scars in the past. He’s always mentioning the scars and the troubles and the adversity, how to handle success,” Price said. “Even when we have success, even when we beat big teams like Penn State, Georgia, he always refers back to the past. Remember how you felt at this moment. That’s going to give us motivation.”
When the Irish faced off against USC in the last week of the regular season and headed into halftime tied with the Trojans — the first time since NIU they hadn’t had a halftime lead — they were able to remember their shortcomings, come out of the locker room and not let it happen again, outscoring the Trojans 35-21 in the second half. After the game, no one was shy about remembering exactly how many days it had been since that fateful NIU loss.
“To see where we were 84 days ago to where we’re at now, it’s a testament to trust and the decisions of those guys in that locker room,” Freeman said then. “This is what it’s all about, man. It’s the journey.”
‘One of us’
As the clock struck midnight in Miami on Friday Jan.10, Notre Dame players were celebrating their Orange Bowl victory over Penn State in the locker room when suddenly, Kiser made an announcement: It was Freeman’s birthday.
After congratulating him and singing happy birthday, the Irish players took the opportunity to poke fun at their head coach.
“Someone said he was turning 39,” defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka said. “We were all like ‘S—, Coach, you’re old’.”
Tuihalamaka laughs now thinking of the moment, while acknowledging the reality that underscores the barb: Freeman is one of the five youngest coaches in FBS.
“When he recruited me as a defensive coach, I felt the vibe and the chemistry I had with him right off the bat,” Tuihalamaka said. “He felt like an older brother and still feels kind of like an older brother.”
And while age does nothing to determine a win-loss record, to hear Notre Dame players talk about it, Freeman’s youth and the way he carries himself is a monumental part of his magnetism.
“Freeman is very personal and player-focused,” Cross said. “Kelly was a strategist. Coach Freeman is a players’ coach.”
Whether it’s letting players decide on the practice playlists and, as Prince put it, “vibing with us,” or making an effort to be invested in players’ lives outside of the sport, Freeman has struck the ideal balance between coach, mentor and friend.
“Everywhere he goes, he’s one of us,” said quarterback Riley Leonard. “You’ll see him [in Atlanta], he’s just wearing a jumpsuit, chilling with the boys, hanging out for media day. Then he knows how to flip the switch.”
“He understands us on a level that other coaches probably wouldn’t understand us on,” running back Jeremiyah Love said. “We love him. We respect him. We want to make him look good. He wants to make us look good.”
Notre Dame looks better than it has in a long time, and at the crux of it all is this symbiotic relationship between Freeman and the players. What started back in 2021 as a decision that had an entire team jumping up and down with Freeman as he was promoted to be their head coach has turned into one of the best runs the Irish have had in recent memory.
“I think the special thing about that video is he’s the defensive coordinator, and yet if you look, the whole offense was ecstatic when he walked through that door,” Kiser said. “Everyone believed in him then, and everyone believes in him now.”
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CFP doesn’t rule out ‘tweaks’ to format for 2025
Published
1 day agoon
January 19, 2025By
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Heather Dinich, Senior College Football InsiderJan 19, 2025, 03:50 PM ET
Close- College football reporter
- Joined ESPN.com in 2007
- Graduate of Indiana University
ATLANTA — No major decisions were made regarding the future format of the 12-team College Football Playoff on Sunday, but “tweaks” to the 2025 season haven’t been ruled out, CFP executive director Rich Clark said.
Sunday’s annual meeting of the FBS commissioners and the presidents and chancellors who control the playoff wasn’t expected to produce any immediate course of action, but it was the first time that people with the power to change the playoff met in person to begin a review of the historic expanded bracket.
Clark said the group talked about “a lot of really important issues,” but the meeting at the Signia by Hilton set the stage for bigger decisions that need to be made “very soon.”
Commissioners would have to unanimously agree upon any changes to the 12-team format to implement them for the 2025 season.
“I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not,” Clark said on the eve of the College Football Playoff National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. “There’s probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that yet.”
A source with knowledge of the conversations said nobody at this time was pushing hard for a 14-team bracket, and there wasn’t an in-depth discussion of the seeding process, but talks were held about the value of having the four highest-ranked conference champions earn first-round byes.
Ultimately, the 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the CFP’s board of managers will vote on any changes, and some university leaders said they liked rewarding those conference champions with byes because of the emphasis it placed on conference title games.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the board of managers, said they didn’t talk about “what-ifs,” but they have tasked the commissioners to produce a plan for future governance and the format for 2026 and beyond.
Starting in 2026, any changes will no longer require unanimous approval, and the Big Ten and the SEC will have the bulk of control over the format — a power that was granted during the past CFP contract negotiation. The commissioners will again meet in person at their annual April meeting in Las Colinas, Texas, and the presidents and chancellors will have a videoconference or phone call on May 6.
“We’re extremely happy with where we are now,” Keenum said. “We’re looking towards the new contract, which is already in place with ESPN, our media provider, for the next six years through 2032. We’ve got to make that transition from the current structure that we’re in to the new structure we’ll have.”
Following Sunday’s meeting, sources continued to express skepticism that there will be unanimous agreement to make any significant changes for the 2025 season, but a more thorough review will continue in the following months.
“The commissioners and our athletic director from Notre Dame will look at everything across the board,” Clark said. “We’re going to tee them up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done … and then look back and figure out what is it that we need.”
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