Notre Dame Diary | Travel Matters, Jarrett Patterson and Tobias Merriweather

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Notre Dame’s offensive line was up and down Saturday night in Columbus. The Fighting Irish flashed the ability to run the ball, but Notre Dame couldn’t find consistent success on the ground against a strong Buckeyes front.

Head coach Marcus Freeman will be the last to make excuses, but he knows all too well that his best offensive lineman won’t be on the field when All-American Jarrett Patterson tried his footing in the heats and couldn’t go.

“The communication we had with the medical colleagues and Jarrett was, let’s go through a warm-up and see how you feel,” Freeman said. When you get to that area you talk, sometimes you talk about happiness and what the environment does for you. Sometimes it would relieve the pain, but he couldn’t go away after the heat.

The 6-foot-4, 310-pounder talent wasn’t the only hole the Irish struggled to overcome. Patterson has seen it all, including some of the late moves the Buckeyes have offered.

Will Patterson return this week? Freeman is hopeful, but it remains to be seen when Notre Dame prepares for Marshall.

“We made a decision, OK, it’s not going to work,” Freeman said. We’ll reevaluate it today and this week and I still think it’s doubtful, but let’s see. If he’s ready to go, we’ll play him this week.

Overall, Notre Dame’s offense struggled to find consistent play against Ohio State. Quarterback Tyler Buechner was efficient in his first start, but he completed passes to three receivers and no receiver had more than one catch.

The receivers will have to raise the bar moving forward, and Freeman hopes freshman receiver Tobias Merweather can make his rotation debut sooner rather than later.

“It continues to grow,” Freeman explained. “I know the usual camp injuries that prevented him from progressing quickly through camp could be a muscle or knee injury or a minor injury. The coaches have to continue to have faith in him to help our offense.

Merriweather’s next step is to find a consistent performance in practice, as there is a role for him after learning of Tommy Rees’ offense.

“He’s got a lot of talent,” Freeman said. “He’s going to help us. Between Tobias Meriweather and both tight ends, at some point, that talent will come to the execution of what they need to do in our offense. They are going to help us. How fast it is depends on the performance of the task.

If the damage wasn’t bad enough, Notre Dame had a major delay in travel following the game and didn’t return to campus until 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

It started with the mechanical problem of the plane, which caused many problems because the bus drivers did not have more time. Notre Dame returned to their hotel Friday night and killed the clock in the meeting rooms until the plane was fixed.

Then there was the matter of no buses to take the group back to the airport. Only two buses were available, so several trips had to be made to get the entire traveling party to the airport.

Sunday is the team’s regular day off, but there are fewer players pouring through Gug than usual, so Monday will be the first time Freeman meets with the entire team.

“We didn’t get back until Sunday morning because of the plane issue,” Freeman said. “So normally we’re the team that comes together on Sunday to put the game behind us, pick the game up again, learn from it and move forward. We did not meet yesterday due to his late return. So see you today. We didn’t get a chance to spend much time around them yesterday. They came in to have dinner.”

Freeman met with a few players and the vibe was what he expected. Notre Dame will now begin preparing for Marshall as they look to move on from Ohio State and the Irish to get their first win of the 2022 campaign.

“The feeling was like the coaches,” Freeman said. “Anytime you lose a game, it’s not good, especially for 24 hours. Now that 24 hours have passed, we should be ready to move forward. It’s hard because you have to revisit the game and learn from it. You have to learn from what happened in the game so you can improve.

“They will be motivated. They will be ready to go. Coaches will be ready to go. After going through this team meeting and the game review, it’s all martial from now on.