Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman is at the top of most lists of potential candidates to become the next head coach of the New York Giants. A college football analyst, though, says that pairing is not a good idea for either side.
“Neither are a good fit for one another,” Joe DeLeone, co-host of the ‘Ruffino and Joe Show’ and a college football and NFL Draft analyst for A to Z Sports, told Big Blue View. “I think that in a vacuum it looks great. He’s an up and coming coach. He’s done tremendous things to turn Notre Dame into a national title contending team. But here we are where there’s a lot more that needs to be unwrapped with this.”
DeLeone pointed to the 39-year-old Freeman’s inexperience as a head coach, and complete lack of NFL experience. He also questioned whether the Giants could provide Freeman with the stability and support to learn to navigate the differences between college and NFL coaching.
“He’s very, very green as a head coach. He has been a head coach for a very, very short amount of time. You just mentioned that he’s not even 40 years old,” DeLeone said. “I think that we’ve seen growth from him that he has gotten better as an on-field coach. He’s gotten better as a motivator.
“I think that for Marcus Freeman to jump at an NFL job, it needs to be the right NFL job. As a Giants fan, and I think a lot of Giants fans for the lack of success can agree with this, it has been impossible to produce winning football over the past decade because of the infrastructure, the mess that goes on behind closed doors, the things that we’re not privy to. It does not feel like there is a settled foundation that would work with a first-time coach who’s never coached in the NFL and has such a small sample size of being an actual head coach. I think that Freeman cannot be the type of coach to jump in and have to learn on the job with the Giants specifically.”
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Freeman is 53-12 (.782 winning percentage) in four seasons and one game at Notre Dame, the only place he has been a head coach.
The Giants seem to need a culture-setter at head coach. DeLeone believes Freeman has shown he can do that at the college level, but questions if he can do that with the Giants.
“Freeman is a culture setter, but for not having been around the pro game, I don’t think that he should want to jump into this,” DeLeone said. “It does not feel like the Giants would be able to effectively position him to win right off the bat and for him to be able to take this thing in the right direction early.
“There’s just too much of a learning curve in my eyes to take on a job like the Giants where they have had, again, so much trouble trying to get back on track with guys who have been in the NFL for longer periods of time.”
DeLeone also said that Freeman’s strengths at Notre Dame, recruiting and building relationships with 18-22-year-old young men, don’t apply in the NFL.
“That has been what has made him a great coach. Relationships and recruiting,” DeLeone said. “This is my whole point with all this is that he’s never been an NFL coach. He’s never coached at the NFL level. So, we don’t know if he would be able to translate a lot of the things that he has done for this Notre Dame program to the pro game. I think that there’s just a lot of lack of clarity in that regard.”
Read the full interview below.
[NOTE: If Joe DeLeone’s name is familiar, it should be. Joe is a former Big Blue View contributor, and we’re happy for his post-BBV success].
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