Notre Dame Fighting Irish College Football Pregame Quote, 01/07/2025

Question: Where is the focus right now? Is everybody on the same page and mentally ready to get this thing going?

I think we’re all ready to go. We luckily, being a 12-team football playoff, we have been able to experience a bowl game already. We hosted one at home, and then we went to the Sugar Bowl, and now we’re here. So, we’ve been kind of through this once already, and we kind of get how things work, which helps us out a lot.

Question: Knowing that you guys are one win away from being in the championship game, what’s the most important part to be able to stay focused?

Yeah, Coach Freeman said it the other day. He said that there’s only four teams with the opportunity to practice even in college football right now, and we’re one of those four. So, everything that we do, just remember, the opportunity that you have right in front of you, and then, like you said, one game away from the national championship, but we’re treating this game like it is the national championship. And we’re putting all the marbles into this game, not on any hypothetical outcomes. But it’s definitely a cool feeling to be here.

On the weather

Yeah, we haven’t seen the sun in South Bend in a few weeks, and that’s doing it justice. But it was good. It’s good to get down here in South Florida. The vibes are high, to see the sun, the warm weather, which is extremely warm for us. We love it.

Question: How much have you heard from Irish fans that been waiting for so long to get this opportunity, to get this far and this close again to a championship?

Our fans are very unique. They’re nationwide, most of them have been fans for a lifetime. And I think I saw something within the last three decades or so, we haven’t had a bowl game of this magnitude, as in the Sugar Bowl. So, to have the opportunity to get another one for these fans really means a lot to me. Obviously, we gave them a kind of a heart attack earlier in the year, but hopefully everybody’s doing better now. And you know, the Notre Dame Faithful is truly faithful. And they all have great character, and we appreciate them a lot.

Question: How is this team different today than it was after the Northern Illinois game in September?

Yeah, I don’t even know. I can’t even recognize that team, specifically me as a player and as a person. I think my head was in so many different directions. I didn’t really understand the magnitude of being a Notre Dame quarterback. I always tell people like, I thought I knew what it meant to play quarterback here. We don’t really know what it’s like to play quarterback at Notre Dame until things go bad and there’s like a lot of weight on your shoulder here. But, I was able to take all that with a grain of salt and just focus on the work, because I always say the secret is there is no secret, put your head down, go to work and good things will happen too.