Marcus Freeman Has No Concerns About Notre Dame’s Defensive Tackles

Marcus Freeman said Tuesday that five defensive tackles have already separated as the group he expects to play this fall, and that the competition inside is over who joins them. Asked at his fall camp-opening press conference how the interior line rotation fits together, Freeman ran through the names.

“Well, I think there’s four guys, five guys, that you know are going to be out there and helping you with (Jason) Onye and Francis (Brewu) and Tionne (Gray) and Armel (Mukam) and Elijah (Hughes),” Freeman said.

Jason Onye, Francis Brewu, Tionne Gray, and Armel Mukam make up four of those five, with USC transfer Elijah Hughes the fifth name Freeman counted among the tackles he already knows will be on the field.

Onye led the group in production last season with 26 tackles, adding 1.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks. He put up a seven-tackle game against Syracuse and got his only sack of the year at Pittsburgh. Hughes came to Notre Dame from USC last year and posted 21 tackles with 3 TFL and a sack. Mukam finished with five tackles and 1.5 tackles for loss across five games.

Notre Dame added to that group through the portal this off-season. Brewu arrived from Pitt off a 34-tackle, six-TFL season. Gray came from Oregon with 18 tackles.

Most of that group did not exist on the roster, or at least wasn’t a lock for it, in January. Gray and Brewu were portal additions after a season that left the interior looking thin. Onye’s status hung on a sixth year of eligibility that was not granted until January. Mukam entered the portal before returning. Four of the five tackles Freeman named as his known quantities were, at one point or another this offseason, not on the roster.

The core five are already in place

The name Freeman volunteered beyond the core was Sean Sevillano Jr., who has five career tackles across two seasons.

“Big Sean Sevillano has done a really good job,” Freeman said. “There’s going to be a competition for who those next guys are in there.”

Behind Sevillano, the picture is younger and, at the moment, thinner than it was in April. Christopher Burgess Jr. had a strong spring and enters camp injured, which takes one of the more encouraging developments of the last few months out of the early practice reps. Burgess played sparingly last fall, with two tackles against Syracuse. The rest of the group is made up of young players who could play without being pushed onto the field before they are ready.

Partridge’s first assignment: sort through the depth

Charlie Partridge is the new voice coaching them. He spent 2017-23 coaching Pitt’s defensive line, where he was named FootballScoop’s national defensive line coach of the year in 2022 after Calijah Kancey became a unanimous All-American and ACC Defensive Player of the Year, then left for the Colts in 2024. Sorting out who plays behind the top five will be Partridge’s first real evaluation on the job at Notre Dame.

The reason the competition behind the core matters is what Freeman said next about how many tackles he intends to use.

“We’re going to need all of them,” he said. “We’re going to have to have plenty of depth at that position.”

Freeman returned to the position later in the session and framed it around the number of bodies he can put in the game rather than the two who start.

“But that’s a position that is deep and I don’t have much concern about, you know, who’s going to be on the field,” Freeman said.

Freeman wants more than a starting pair

Tackle stood apart in the checklist Freeman laid out for camp. He flagged the backup quarterback job, the five along the offensive line, the top six or seven receivers, and the next wave at defensive end as questions he needs answered before Sept. 6. Interior line did not make the list.

“And defensively, who’s going to be the next DE?” Freeman said. “I think we have a group of tackles that we feel good about.”

He committed to playing a lot of tackles and counting on them across a full season, which leaves camp to settle who claims the sixth and seventh spots, how the snaps get divided among them, and how much of the interior workload the top five have to absorb.

“I think we got a number of guys in that defensive tackle position that can help us and will play,” Freeman said.

Camp now turns to the sixth and seventh spots

Notre Dame’s first practice is Thursday. With Burgess sidelined to open camp, the reps behind the core belong to Sevillano and a set of young tackles who have to prove they can hold up against the first-team offensive line, and the month has to answer whether Sevillano turns a good early review into a real role. A seven-man interior rotation by Sept. 6 would let Freeman keep Onye, Brewu, Gray, Mukam, and Hughes fresh into the fourth quarter of games Notre Dame expects to be playing in November, while a rotation that stops at five would put those snaps back on the same handful of bodies week after week.