SOUTH BEND - Marcus Freeman isn’t pretending artificial intelligence is some magic answer for Notre Dame football. He’s using it, sure. He just isn’t handing the keys over to it.
“We use it,” Freeman said. “I mean, it's all over the place.
But you can't let it paralyze you. And you can't only depend on it.”
That’s the balance Freeman has tried to strike as he heads into his fifth full season leading the Irish, whose “Challenge Everything” approach has helped put them in the national championship conversation for 2026. The same mindset has also shown up in the 2027 recruiting class, which most services have ranked in the top three, with targeted AI work helping streamline the process.
“It's helped in evaluation of recruits and prospects,” Freeman said. “It's helped in evaluation of opponents (and) self-evaluation.”
Freeman said the technology has played a role in everything from figuring out how to maximize “eight uninterrupted weeks” of strength-and-conditioning work to asking every corner of the program to examine what went wrong in those six September losses across his first four seasons. But he was just as clear about the danger of leaning too hard on the machine.
“There's so much feedback that you can become lazy and just depend on what a robot is telling you,” he said. “That's not going to be sufficient for you guys (in the media) if I get in front of a mic and say, ‘Well, I listened to the robot.’ “
Freeman, who is 43-12 (.782) in his coaching career, smiled after that line.
“You guys would eat me alive more than you already do,” he said. “But we do use it. There's too much information not to use it.”
That same measured approach has shaped Notre Dame’s offseason. After the season ended Nov. 29 at Stanford, with the Irish left out by the CFP selection committee and turning down the Pop-Tarts Bowl, Freeman and his staff suddenly had time they rarely get. They used it to rethink everything from the winter training schedule to when football work should begin, when position drills should start and how spring practice should be organized.
“It started in the winter,” Freeman said in his first session with local media in 94 days. “How many weeks of training?
What exactly we're going to do. When do we want to incorporate football?
What date did we want to start doing position drills, spring practice?”
The spring also featured a dozen or more players who were limited or held out, though Freeman said that was mostly precautionary or tied to post-surgical recovery.
He said the staff kept digging into the details: daily emphasis, situations that needed more work, and summer review through science to identify physical issues and tactical mistakes. He also pushed back on the idea of blaming opponents for everything.
“What’s our emphasis of each day?” Freeman said.
“Is there a certain situation we need to hit more? In the summer, we look through science.
Is it a physical issue? Where have all the tactical mistakes (happened)?
Who's the opponent?”
Then he added: “That, to me, can be an excuse (if) you base it off the opponent,” he said. “(But) how we played. What have been the mishaps?”
Freeman said that same process will continue before fall camp opens Aug. 6, exactly one month before Notre Dame opens against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field in Green Bay on Labor Day weekend.
“We'll do the same things as we go into fall camp in terms of how we practice, what we're practicing, when do we go into scouts (of the opponent),” he said. “And I'll let you know after week one or two.”
The opener comes with plenty of optimism around the Irish, who bring a 10-game winning streak into a matchup against an unranked Wisconsin team coming off back-to-back losing seasons under Luke Fickell, Freeman’s former boss at Cincinnati. Notre Dame is then expected to roll through Rice, Michigan State, Purdue, North Carolina and Stanford.
Still, Freeman knows how quickly September can turn on Notre Dame. In three of his first four seasons, the Irish suffered their first loss within the first two games.
That stretch included the 2022 opening losses to second-ranked Ohio State and Marshall, the 2023 stumble at home against No. 6 Ohio State after a 4-0 start, and last season’s two-point combined losses to Miami and Texas A&M, who later met in the College Football Playoff.
This year’s schedule looks softer until the Oct. 17 trip to Provo, Utah, and Brigham Young, but Freeman said there’s no reason to assume anything. He also made it clear that even the lighter spots on the schedule won’t be used as a shortcut for overreaction.
“We've slightly changed some things,” he said. “(But) we've confirmed, like, ‘No, we believe this is the right way.’ … What you don't want to do is fall into a trap where you’re changing everything when it doesn't need blown up; it just needs enhanced.
“I think that's what we've done.”
As for how Notre Dame will judge itself once the season starts, Freeman said the early review will be less about records and more about execution. Clean football, limited mistakes and a sharper overall product will matter most. The staff will also look at defensive explosives, offensive big plays and the health of the roster.
“The biggest thing is we can't beat Notre Dame,” he said, using one of his familiar lines. “We have to make sure guys are healthy.
Are we executing? Looking at all those different things.
“The big plays given up defensively. Why?
Why are we having big plays or not having big plays offensively? All those things.
They've been evaluated and will be evaluated after the first couple games.”
How much AI factors into that evaluation may depend on what the staff sees with its own eyes. Freeman’s message, though, is already clear: use the tools, but don’t let the tools run the program.
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