SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Riley Leonard expected the worst.
As he entered coach Marcus Freeman’s second-floor office for their standing Sunday sitdown, roughly 24 hours after a stunning home loss against Northern Illinois, Leonard braced himself for bad news. After all, he’d thrown two costly interceptions in a game that seemed to dash all hopes for Notre Dame making the College Football Playoff.
Is he going to tell me that I’ll never touch the field again?
Was that my last game at Notre Dame?
What happened next was a bit weird, wholly unexpected and, for Leonard, one of the most resonating thing he’d ever witnessed. A smiling Freeman embraced his quarterback with a dap, asked about his family and talked pleasantries like the day before never even happened.
During their conversation, coach made something clear to quarterback.
“In those lowest moments, Riley Leonard had to learn that I believe he is our quarterback,” Freeman recalls during an interview this week from his office. “People might say you are awful and boo you. I as the head coach believe in you. And I need him to believe in me when we’re at the lowest moments. The lowest moments are when you find out who you really are.”
Riley left the meeting with no better feeling, he now says — a turning point in the coach-quarterback relationship and, perhaps, the catapult he needed to recover from the first two-pick game of his college career.
Two months later, the Irish haven’t lost again. They have won seven straight, six of those by at least two touchdowns and four of those by at least five touchdowns. Leonard is leading Notre Dame in both passing and rushing yards (1,575-609) and passing and rushing touchdowns (9-13). He has thrown fewer interceptions in the last seven games combined (1) than he did in the single game against Northern Illinois.
And he’s playing more freely than ever. Why? That 16-14 loss to the Huskies.
“I already hit rock-bottom,” Riley told Yahoo Sports this week. “Who cares from this point? I have that mindset of no regrets. Let it fly. Have fun. You only get one shot at this thing. It’s my last year.”
Notre Dame’s winning streak has vaulted the Irish (8-1) from playoff impossible to playoff improbable to playoff … probable? The final stretch isn’t the most difficult three-game haul. But it’s not the easiest either. In fact, after hosting 5-4 Virginia this Saturday, Notre Dame plays unbeaten Army at Yankee Stadium before finishing the season in Los Angeles against USC (5-4).
According to the playoff selection committee’s latest rankings — the Irish are No. 8 — an 11-1 Notre Dame is undoubtedly in the playoff and may even be in line to host a first-round game as a No. 5-8 seed.
Fortune favors the Irish: On the year they lose to Northern Illinois, there is an expanded, 12-team playoff that provides them with enough access room to squeeze into the field. Not only that, but, unlike other teams, Notre Dame would enter the playoff without having played a physically and emotionally grinding game against a top-flight opponent in a conference championship.
There is a cost: Notre Dame is ineligible for one of the four first-round byes, which are exclusively reserved for conference champions. The Irish must get an at-large (seed 5-12), a compromise negotiated by former athletic director Jack Swarbrick for ND’s lack of a 13th game.
Imagine the Irish hosting in mid-December an SEC juggernaut like Alabama, Texas or Georgia. Or what about an in-state collision with Indiana? It’s conceivable if not even likely.
But there is no postseason imagination from Freeman.
“Everybody in this program knows we control our own destiny,” he said. “We can daydream all we want about the College Football Playoff, but you’re wasting time.”
But let’s waste just a bit more time, shall we?
A playoff game against any of those SEC programs would be extra special for Leonard, a kid that grew up along the Alabama coast without having offers from those more regional schools. He eventually signed with Duke, won 16 games as a two-year starter and then transferred here over the offseason.
He’s a long way from home and far from the Gulf Coast fishing holes he frequented as a kid. He’s a Southern boy in the Midwest and in one of the most pressure packed positions in the sport: the starting quarterback of Notre Dame.
Things were going just fine in that role until the Irish lost as 28-point favorites.
Being the Notre Dame starting quarterback wasn’t so fun any longer.
“You don’t understand the magnitude of (the position) until something goes bad,” he said.
Thankfully, his girlfriend and marketing team operate his social media platforms. He saw none of the hate and vitriol. Instead, his friends and family members saw it all and texted him about it.
Don’t look at your comments!
They’re all crazy!
They’re saying wild stuff — don’t listen!
Don’t worry, Leonard would respond, he’s not listening or watching.
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After all, the critics are just “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” That’s a line from former president Teddy Roosevelt’s speech on courage that he delivered in Paris in 1910 dubbed “The Man in the Arena.”
It’s one of Riley’s favorites. In fact, he has the speech text as lock screen wallpaper on his smartphone.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.
Leonard views himself as that man, in the arena, the bright lights shining on his golden helmet.
Freeman isn’t so different. He’s in the arena too, the face of Notre Dame football, one of the richest and most historic programs in the country, devoid of a national championship for 36 years now.
Their positions — head coach at Notre Dame, starting quarterback at Notre Dame — are two of the most enviable and inevitable in the sport. Win and you are showered in adulation; lose and you are the reason why.
“That’s the position we are in,” Freeman said.
“The lowest moments is when you find out who you really are and what you are made of,” he later said. “If you have too many low moments, guess what? You’re gone. Don’t care if you are the starting quarterback or head coach. You’ve got to be replaced.”
If they win the final three games, if they continue their torrid run in the playoff, if they win it all, maybe they’ll point to that low moment as a reason.
It’s the pain that drives the Irish.
“We use it as motivation every day,” said linebacker Jack Kiser. “Can’t lose that pain. Can’t lose what that feeling is like.”
Keep the pain. It’s a slogan that Freeman began using after the loss to the Huskies.
The gist: Don’t forget how you felt when you lost. Fear losing. Fear a loss.
“People are usually motivated by two things: fear or greed,” Freeman said. “I keep reminding them: You have to keep the pain. There should be fear.”
This isn’t Freeman’s first time reviving a team that endured a deflating early season loss. In his first season in 2022, Marshall beat Notre Dame in South Bend. His team followed that by winning eight of the next nine.
In fact, that game came up during that Sunday conversation in September between quarterback and coach. Freeman looked at Leonard, “I’ve been in your shoes,” he told him. “I’ve been here before.”
Freeman grew so much from that loss to Marshall, he told Leonard. He learned how to be a better coach and a better leader.
After the Northern Illinois defeat, the coach spent time examining how this could happen again.
Marshall and now Northern Illinois? How? Why?
It’s all mental, he says. A week before the Northern Illinois game, the Irish opened the season with an emotional victory at Texas A&M, delivering a win in a hostile and humid environment in Texas. “We weren’t ready to handle success,” he said.
Now, more than two months and seven wins later, the Irish are three wins away from a berth in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff — with a quarterback and coach who are more connected than ever as the men in the arena.
“He had to go through the ups and downs of being the quarterback at Notre Dame to understand what it entails,” Freeman said. “Just like me as a head coach. Someone can tell you what it’s going to be like to be the head coach at Notre Dame, but until you experience it, you don’t know.”