Aneyas Williams scores against Michigan State, the Irish were flagged for a “celebration” penalty. (Photo: AJ Houk)
Notre Dame has become the least-penalized team in college football by learning a simple lesson: Don’t beat Notre Dame. That makes what happened to Aneyas Williams at Michigan State both memorable and more than a little ironic.
After Williams scored against the Spartans, he joined several teammates for a choreographed celebration that included Williams pretending to start a lawnmower. The flag came out, and Marcus Freeman lit Williams up on the sideline. Freeman later said he apologized to Williams and his mother for the way he handled the moment, although his message about the penalty remained unchanged.
Now we know something else about the celebration: It wasn’t Williams’ idea. The offensive line had conspired to make it happen. Notre Dame right guard Sullivan Absher happily admitted Tuesday that he and his fellow linemen were behind the plot.
“We approached Aneyas, and Aneyas might not have even been the first guy,” Absher said. “He was just the first guy to say yes.” Williams confirmed it: “It was actually planned by the O-line guys. It was something they wanted to do. Running back to O-line, I was like, ‘All right, yeah, let’s do it.’”
Williams also pointed out that although several teammates participated, only one of them ended up answering for it. “I took the blow for them,” he said, laughing. “But we’re past it for sure.” They learned something about the rule in the process, too. Absher said the players now understand that a celebration cannot appear to be pre-choreographed. “So, I guess we got to find a way to make it look a little more spontaneous,” he joked.
The irony is that the celebration penalty stands out precisely because penalties have been so rare for Notre Dame this season. Through four games, the Irish have committed just 10 penalties for 106 yards — 2.5 penalties and 26.5 penalty yards per game, both the best marks in the FBS.
Marcus Freeman offered some insight Monday into why Notre Dame has been so good at avoiding penalties, making an important distinction between mistakes that occur during the course of a play and those that happen before or after it. During-the-play penalties are part of football. Freeman wants his players aggressive, and if a penalty occurs while a player is competing with the proper technique and isn’t being selfish, he can live with it.
“We coach our guys up on just because there’s not officials at practice, this is a penalty,” Freeman said. “That’s improper technique, and so we’ve got to continue to do those things in practice and create good habits.”
Pre- and post-snap penalties are different. Freeman called them “non-negotiable.” False starts, offsides and illegal formations are failures of focus. A post-snap penalty can be even worse because, in Freeman’s view, it can mean a player has put himself ahead of the team. “Those are a lack of focus in that moment that we can’t have,” Freeman said, “because that’s Notre Dame beating Notre Dame.”
When the media had a chance Tuesday to talk with Williams, Absher and offensive line coach Joe Rudolph, it became clear Freeman’s message isn’t simply something the head coach talks about at his weekly press conference. It has become part of the way Notre Dame practices and plays.
“We pride ourselves on don’t beat Notre Dame,” Williams said. “Sometimes defense jumps offsides in practice. We jump offsides in practice, and it’s one of those things that we put such a big emphasis on that by the time game time comes around, we’ve made those errors and we fixed them.” Williams put it even more simply: “We’re not going to beat ourselves.”
For Rudolph, the veteran offensive line coach, avoiding penalties is part of something bigger than simply avoiding a yellow flag. He wants his offensive linemen to play efficiently and repeatedly emphasizes what he calls “doing the little things better than anyone else.”
“If we continually do the little things better than everyone else, then we’ll be at our best when our best is needed,” Rudolph said. “You can’t let those things show up because if they show up and then they show up again and show up again, then you’re really taking yourself out of drives.” Rudolph believes the emphasis only works if the players accept the responsibility that comes with it. “It only matters if the kids embrace it,” he said. “But they do. They embrace it and they want to do stuff right, and they’re not afraid to be accountable for it.”
Absher offered a more technical explanation. An offensive lineman has plenty of opportunities to draw a flag on any given play, but he said the objective isn’t to line up thinking about avoiding a penalty. If the technique is sound, the penalties should largely take care of themselves. “I think it’s just built into the technique that you play with, and if you can play according to that technique, you shouldn’t have any penalties,” Absher said.
Problems arise when a lineman stops trusting that technique. Absher said a mental lapse or an attempt to do too much can lead to a player holding outside his frame, oversetting and then grabbing while trying to recover. Even without officials throwing flags during practice, those mistakes don’t disappear unnoticed. “They see it,” Absher said of the coaches. “The next day’s meeting, we’ll hear about it for sure.”
Interestingly, Absher didn’t even know Notre Dame was leading the country in avoiding penalties until he was told during Tuesday’s interview session. “Man, I didn’t know that, but that’s — I’m proud of that,” Absher said. “Thanks for bringing that up.”
He did know exactly how closely the Irish track them. Absher said Freeman uses the Monday team meeting to put three important measurements in front of everyone: penalties, missed assignments and turnover differential. This week, Absher said the numbers were particularly impressive. Notre Dame had just one penalty in the 49-10 victory at Purdue, and Freeman told the team it also had its fewest missed assignments in a game since he became head coach.
That helps explain what Rudolph means when he talks about players embracing accountability. Mistakes aren’t simply corrected and forgotten. They’re identified, tracked and discussed with the team.
Williams acknowledged that avoiding penalties has become an even greater focal point this season, in part because the Irish weren’t nearly as good at it a year ago. “We hurt ourselves a little bit with that stuff last year,” Williams said. The improvement is striking. Notre Dame averaged 42.3 penalty yards per game in 2022, 47.9 in 2023, 50.9 in 2024 and 51.8 last season. This year, that number has dropped to 26.5, essentially half of last season’s total.
For an even more dramatic comparison, look ahead on Notre Dame’s schedule. Syracuse currently sits at the opposite end of the national spectrum, averaging nearly 110 penalty yards per game — more than four times Notre Dame’s total. The two teams meet Nov. 28 in the regular-season finale, meaning that, at least for now, the least-penalized team in the country is scheduled to finish the regular season against the most-penalized team.
Four games is still a small sample, and Freeman isn’t expecting Notre Dame to play mistake-free football. His point — and the one echoed by Rudolph, Williams and Absher — is that the Irish shouldn’t make the kind of mistakes they can control.
Which brings the story back to Aneyas Williams. A week after the Michigan State celebration penalty, Williams scored again at Purdue. This time there was no lawnmower and no flag. Williams looked for his teammates, celebrated briefly and headed for the sideline. “We were just gonna celebrate together real quick and get off the field as quick as possible,” Williams said.
He also didn’t run from what happened the previous week. Williams said he and his teammates should have checked with the officials before attempting the celebration at Michigan State. “We should have,” he said. “We just won’t do it again.”
That sounds a lot like the philosophy Freeman has been preaching. Mistakes are going to happen. Correct them, learn from them and don’t make the same mistake twice.
Notre Dame is four games into a season with much larger goals than leading the country in fewest penalties. But as the competition gets tougher and the margins inevitably get smaller, eliminating the mistakes that beat yourself becomes increasingly important.
So far, nobody in college football has done that better than Notre Dame.