Notre Dame's long travel day foreshadows Sundays off all season; DT Gabriel Rubio injures knee

After Notre Dame and Navy scheduled this weekend’s trip to Dublin, announced late in 2021 in part because the 2020 venture was canceled due to the pandemic, director of athletics Jack Swarbrick discussed the scheduling options with Irish head coach Marcus Freeman.

No, do not read into that timeline. Freeman was Notre Dame’s head coach just a week into December of 2021 and Swarbrick had a window to decide on his scheduling approach.

Freeman did not want to spend this week idle. Burning an off week just a week into the season — if that, given 10 out of 11 remaining Irish opponents have yet to play — would not be the optimal setup to Notre Dame’s schedule. So Swarbrick found an opponent without a commitment to start the 2023 season on relatively short notice.

On some level, Freeman had to know what awaited him this week, even if the No. 13 Irish (1-0) had little trouble beating Navy (0-1) on Saturday night, 42-3.

“A lot of those guys did not sleep after the game,” he said Monday. “We got back to our hotel a little bit after 12:30 (a.m., Dublin time), and I think the first bus took off at 5:15 in the morning. … [The players] probably thought they were going to be able to sleep on the plane, but to sleep on a plane is not an easy thing to do.”

Instead, the Irish had Sunday off entirely. For rough guesses, assume it was a 10-hour flight. If the last bus was at 6 a.m., perhaps Notre Dame took off at 7 a.m. Factor in the time change and that plane landed in South Bend at noon ET on Sunday.

“Encourage them not just to sleep all day, because we want to try to get their cycles back to where it needs to be,” Freeman said. “Try to stay up. Try to go on a walk. Do some different things when you got back.

“A lot of them got good sleep last night, but even me and our coaching staff, you don’t feel 100 percent probably until you get two nights.”

An old college basketball axiom is, “Thursday’s sleep is for Saturday’s game,” underscoring Freeman’s point. Thus, the Irish will treat Monday afternoon’s practice as something akin to a jog through, waiting for that Sunday night sleep to boost the body come Tuesday for a more genuine practice. Even then, Notre Dame may take it easier this week. Not because Saturday’s opponent is FCS-level Tennessee State (3:30 ET on NBC), but because the body needs rest. A team that issues players Oura rings knows as much.

“Where I could tweak it in terms of maybe an individual period, taking off a couple minutes of practice,” Freeman said. “Ultimately, everything we do is to make sure Saturday they are ready to peak and perform at 3:30.”

Freeman may not have known exactly how tiring this week could be when he expressed a preference to play it some 18 months ago, but he has set a path to navigating it.

Taking off Sundays will be a season-long item.

When Notre Dame practiced on Sunday last year following its home-opening loss to Marshallg, there was much shock that Freeman immediately got the Irish back onto the practice field.

That was misplaced. Notre Dame had travel difficulties coming back from Ohio State the week earlier, thus skipping a Sunday practice, but Freeman intended for Sunday to be a regular practice day. It had nothing to do with the 0-2 start.

He has now decided to revert back to taking off Sundays and beginning the week on Mondays, as the Irish long did under Brian Kelly.

“Science, player feedback — some liked the Sunday practice, some didn’t,” Freeman said of his decision. “I don’t take too much into that. It’s ultimately, I have to make a decision, what I think is best for Saturday. Each place is different.”

Each place is different.

“That is probably the biggest thing I’ve learned in a year experience,” he said. “You can’t just take a plan and say it worked for me as a player or it worked at a previous place I was at, and it’s going to work at Notre Dame. …

“I wanted them to truly have a day off. On paper, you get one day off. But I wanted them to take Sunday and really work academically. You don’t have anything mandatory from us on Sunday.”

That may not have felt like the case this week, but moving forward, the Irish will relax on Sundays in 2023.

ONE INJURY
Junior defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio suffered a knee injury and “will be out for a couple weeks,” Freeman said.

That should elevate sophomore Donovan Hinish behind senior starter Rylie Mills. Perhaps junior Jason Onye works a bit at both nose tackle and three-technique, as well, to create depth. Or perhaps Notre Dame’s pass-rush package becomes a bit more frequent, with fifth-year end Nana Osafo-Mensah flashing inside on clear passing downs.

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