6 Thoughts on a Thursday

There haven’t been too many football careers at Notre Dame quite like Kyren Williams.

He was working in with the number one offense the week before Louisville in August of 2019. He got a small taste of playing time in week one, dropped a pass, and was only heard from again as a true freshman in a blowout of New Mexico.

The next year we didn’t get to see any of spring or fall camp and no one would have predicted that he would be full on “dude” status a couple of weeks into the 2020 season, but that’s exactly what happened. He went from a surprising redshirt to one of the best players on the team in the span of one year and that’s pretty rare in general in college football.

It’s been very rare in recent years at Notre Dame. He’s the only one who has pulled that off.

There have been others who were great as sophomores like Jaylon Smith, Julian Love, Michael Mayer, and Kyle Hamilton. They all played as freshmen, though.

Isaiah Foskey redshirted and he flashed his great potential in year two, but it didn’t happen for him right away. Maybe if Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah didn’t break his foot in his second year, he would have become a difference-maker one season earlier. It remains a “what-if” because that’s not how it happened.

Williams pretty much stands alone in doing what he did in the last decade. This could be a year where he gets some company because there are some intriguing candidates to join him.

It’s too much to expect great things from JD Price only a year removed from such a significant injury, but if he’s the same back he was before he tore his Achilles, then he’s at the top of the list.

The others are in the front seven and I wouldn’t predict that one of Jaylen Sneed, Nolan Ziegler, Aiden Gobaira, or Josh Burnham will all of a sudden separate themselves as one of the best one the team when right now none of them will come into fall camp as starters.

But a lot can change in a month. Jobs can be won or lost. Injuries can open up opportunities. Sometimes things just fall into place and when talent meets preparation and those four players all have plenty of talent.

Williams feels like one of one in so many ways because he also had this competitiveness and personality that made him special. His path to success is an unlikely story because players who redshirt tend to take time before they develop into top tier players.

The fact that it happened for him when it did was one of the main reasons why Notre Dame had a College Football Playoff run in 2020. I’m not predicting that Notre Dame will have a CFP run this season, but if they get a Kyren Williams type of ascension from a 2022 redshirt, then that could change some things.

2. A lot can change in a month and more can change in two months.

Two months from now Notre Dame will have played four games this season. In three of those four games, they are going to be favored by three scores.

They open in Dublin against Navy where they are a 20 point favorite. Navy is 98th in projected SP+ ranking before the season. They’ll be an even bigger favorite over Tennessee State, an FCS program, and Central Michigan, who is 109th in SP+.

When’s the last time Notre Dame opened up a season where they faced three non-Power 5 programs in the first four games? I’m not sure it has ever happened in the modern era and they never even played two at any point in the Brian Kelly era.

I wouldn’t be dumb enough to suggest that Notre Dame is going to destroy all three of these teams when they’ve had the Ball State, Toledo, and Marshall games happen all in the last five years, but the schedule should allow for the coaching staff to tinker a little bit and these games will be viewed as opportunities for young players to play more if Notre Dame handles their business like they should.

I think part of the reason we never saw much of Williams again in 2019 is that he never had the opportunities to play in low pressure situations after Louisville. They went from that game to Georgia and the season quickly shifted into the games meaning everything outside of New Mexico and Bowling Green.

Easing into the season a bit more before the heat gets turned up against Ohio State isn’t something Notre Dame is used to. Maybe it will allow for some players to grow a bit more from garbage time to part-time or from rotation to starter. And maybe it might even mean that someone gets a chance to go from good to great.

3. The Irish have that extremely tough four game stretch in the middle of the season against Ohio State, at Duke, at Louisville and then back home against USC. Those four, Ohio State and USC in particular, could very well determine how we view the season as a whole.

The final four regular season games are a bit different. They all matter and the Clemson game is as big as any, but Pitt, Wake, and Stanford are 119th, 112th, and are 129th in returning production. They will all obviously have more experience when they play Notre Dame in November than they do know, but they are all in some version of rebuilding mode.

Pitt and Wake have it a little bit different than Stanford, but none of them have the built-in advantages to lose that much production and be as good or better than they were the previous season.

Notre Dame will play three teams who win 10 games or more this season. They also will play a ton of teams who could end up being pretty bad and that really stood out to me as I was putting together the opponent previews for ISD.

4. Back in April, I wrote about Sam Hartman’s adjusted completion percentage (which takes away drops) on intermediate routes and how good it was overall (5th in Power 5 last season) and how good it was compared to Notre Dame’s quarterbacks last season (13.1% more accurate than Drew Pyne and over 30% more accurate than Tyler Buchner).

I wanted to bring this up again as a reminder that Wake Forest’s approach on offense had a massive impact on his numbers.

Sometimes it was in a positive way. He wouldn’t have broken the ACC record for passing touchdowns if they were more conservative.

Sometimes it was in a negative way. They had to be aggressive on offense to win shootouts and it’s not just Hartman who was trying to hit deep ball after deep ball (21.6% of his attempts were throws of 20+ yards, which led Power 5 quarterbacks). John Wolford was the quarterback before him and his 18.9% deep ball rate was 10th in Power 5 in 2017. Jamie Newman was Wake’s starter in 2019 and he was third in deep ball percentage at 19.8%.

Wolford’s completion percentage in ‘17 was 63.9%. Newman’s in ‘19 was 60.8%. Hartman’s last year was 63.1%. None of those scream pinpoint accuracy, but the scheme dictated those numbers more than anything else.

On non-screen attempts, Hartman completed 61% of his passes in 2022. Bo Nix, who led the Power 5 in overall completion percentage at 71.9%, completed 65.2% of his passes on non-screen attempts.

The difference wasn’t accuracy. The difference was the degree of difficulty. Nix threw only 47 deep balls (11.5% of his overall attempts) compared to 93 for Hartman.

The concerns about Hartman’s completion percentage and interceptions aren’t anywhere near what some people make them out to be when looking at advanced stats or watching film.

5. This is one of those great stats that you only get from someone like Parker Fleming and I’m going to again shout him out in 6 Thoughts as someone college football fans should follow on Twitter.

What’s the best indication that a receiver is about to become a “dude”? According to Fleming, an average depth of target of 13+ yards and 6+ yards after the catch per reception seems to be a pretty good indicator.

Of course this made me go back and look at some Notre Dame players who showed signs of becoming a “dude” at receiver, but for various reasons, did not ascend to that higher level the year after.

Equanimeous St. Brown in 2016? Yep, he was a “dude” (12.7/6.0). That only makes it that much more frustrating that Notre Dame didn’t have a better quarterback situation to take advantage of one more year with him in 2017.

Kevin Austin in 2021? If only we could turn back the clock and change things with his career because he was on the verge if he had elected to stay in school. He put 14.7/6.7 in his final year at Notre Dame.

There is no one more frustrating to think about than KJ Stepherson in 2017, though. How about 14.7/10.3. This “dude” literally had everything in his tool kit to be one of the best in college football and he wasted it.

There is no one on the 2023 Fighting Irish at receiver who put up those “dude” numbers last season, but I think we’ll see Jayden Thomas take that next step this fall after having 11.1/5.3 in 2022.

6. Notre Dame just did a media blitz in New York City with head coach Marcus Freeman and their five best players: Joe Alt, Sam Hartman, Benjamin Morrison, Blake Fisher, and Audric Estime.

ISD’s Matt Freeman put together a nice compilation of clips for those who might have missed them.

This was well done by Katy Lonergan and the rest of the communications staff at Notre Dame who planned this. It wasn’t too long ago that the only thing similar to this before the season was Brian Kelly going through the ESPN “Car Wash” and not much else.

Teams in conferences are going through media days right now and it used to be a reminder of how they were able to get their head coach and top players front and center in July while Notre Dame was never mentioned. Doing this put Notre Dame front and center for casual fans in a way that no other program is currently doing.

A lot of times we criticize the football program or athletic department for not being forward-thinking enough. Most of the time, in my opinion, that criticism is warranted.

When they do something like this that really takes advantage of the Notre Dame brand, they deserve to be praised. Hopefully we see them continue to build on this type of thing every year.

Men's Cutter & Buck Anthracite Notre Dame Fighting Irish Alumni Logo Rainier PrimaLoft Eco Insulated Full-Zip Puffer Vest