Freeman: Notre Dame to Use Signal to Take Penalty, Get 11th Player on Field If Needed

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman is prepared to learn from his mistake.

The Fighting Irish lost 17-14 to Ohio State on a walk-off touchdown and the team only had 10 defenders on the field. Freeman said that the team will have a signal to take a penalty in a situation like that in the future.

"You win or you learn," Freeman said, per Heather Dinich of ESPN.com, "Hopefully it never happens again, but do we have a signal to tell somebody, when it's loud and crazy, jump offsides and touch somebody?"

Freeman continued by saying that the coaching staff can't get "caught watching" and "not do our jobs."

"I know people are like, take the penalty," Freeman said, per Dinich. "By the time we realized—it got communicated—you couldn't get a guy from the coaching box to touch somebody on offense. To stop the play, you have to touch somebody on offense. We would've gotten a penalty and they would have scored, so it really didn't matter because we figured it out too late. What we learned from that situation is that, (1), don't ever be in the situation where you've got 10 guys on the field, but (2), if something happens, we have to have a signal to tell somebody to jump offsides and touch somebody."

Freeman also said that the team will focus on execution going forward. The loss drops the Fighting Irish to 3-1 on the season but the team has several high-profile games on the schedule. Notre Dame has games against USC, Louisville, Clemson and Wake Forest—quarterback Sam Hartman's former team—further down the schedule.

Another huge one is coming this week as the Fighting Irish will travel to Durham to take on the 4-0 Duke Blue Devils.