BREAKING | Notre Dame TE Eli Raridon Suffers Season-Ending Injury
On Thursday, Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman announced tight end Eli Raridon will miss the remainder of the 2022 season with a non-contact ACL injury.
“Eli Raridon unfortunately will be out for the remainder of the season,” stated Freeman. "He suffered a non-contact knee injury and retore his ACL. He’ll have surgery in the next couple of days. We’ll continue to keep Dr. (Brian) Ratigan busy. Dr. Ratigan had two surgeries this week with Kevin Bauman and Bo Bauer. Here in the next week or so, he’ll do Eli Raridon.”
It’s tough news for the Irish offense as the tight end room has already lost Kevin Bauman, but likely even more frustrating for the 6-foot-6 freshman as he tore the same ACL last December.
The Iowa native had not recorded a catch this season, but Raridon had broken into the rotation and carved out a role in several packages in recent weeks. Following week six, PFF had tallied 76 snaps on the year.
As a senior, Raridon recorded 53 catches for 627 yards 10 touchdowns for Valley High School.
Jamie Uyeyama’s Thoughts
What a tough break for Notre Dame with another major injury at the tight end position and it's even worse that it happened to Raridon after he worked so hard to get back early from his previous ACL injury
In terms of what it means for the team right now, it should be something they can handle pretty well because of the depth at the position. Mitchell Evans is back and can slide into that second tight end role like he did last week. They will miss what Raridon brought as a blocker, but Evans should be fine there. This also may give Holden Staes more reps and he's been impressive in his limited opportunities. Sophomore Cane Berrong earned reps a year ago and could also get into the rotation as a receiving threat, but he’s also coming off an ACL injury last fall.
And as long as Notre Dame has a healthy Michael Mayer, they'll be more than fine. The bigger question has to do with what this means in the future. There is probably no chance Raridon practices in the spring and who knows about his status next summer. They likely won't want to rush him back to be cautious.
This opens the door for Evans and Staes to have plenty of chances to be the next TE1 with Mayer off to the NFL after this season. We might not see Kevin Bauman for a while either so this also might mean that Notre Dame looks at taking a second tight end in this recruiting class.
The primary thing for Notre Dame is to make sure Raridon is fully healthy for the long term and that may mean him not playing much at all in 2023. That's a long time from now, but it isn't something the staff is going to have to think about with the depth at the position.
Under Armour Notre Dame Fighting Irish Squad 3.0 Full-Zip Jacket
