Notre Dame Practice Observations | August 10

Notre Dame had a day off yesterday to recover from a pretty intense practice on Tuesday night where they did quite a bit of scrimmaging. They were in “uppers” today, so wearing shoulder pads and helmets.

The first thing that most wanted to see for the five period viewing we had was whether or not the players who were injured on Tuesday would be back at practice.

The bad news first: Aiden Gobaira was in a full leg brace, which would suggest his knee injury is serious and that he will be out for a long time, if not the season. It did not look good when he could not put weight on it after his injury.

The other bad news is that Cam Hart wasn’t at practice today. Maybe he’ll come out later on when the media has already left, but it appeared like he might have had a head injury on Tuesday after making a tackle in the backfield.

Obviously with something like that, they would want to be cautious and try and get him 100% right to hopefully be ready 16 days from now against Navy.

The good news is that Gi’Bran Payne was back and did not look like the foot or ankle problem that took him out on Tuesday was bothering him. He was out there in warm ups and participated in the tempo drill that started practice.

Marcus Freeman was not playing around

- Freeman wanted the practice to start off right and sent a loud message before Notre Dame started with tempo (two-minute offense). When the offense was taking too long to get the play in, he yelled at them to “Get the f#$# off the field! Get in the huddle!”

The number one offense quickly ran to the side, got with offensive coordinator Gerad Parker, and then got down to business. They moved the ball well during this drill.

Personnel notes

- Rather than go play by play during the tempo drill to open practice, which featured the ones vs the ones, I focused on the personnel of who was involved in those situations and who wasn’t. Notre Dame was in their nickel defense and the offense was in 11 personnel (one back, one tight end).

- I think we can say that this is more than just them getting a glimpse of Pat Coogan as the left guard. It’s been a week where he has taken every rep with the ones that we have seen. The rest of the starting offensive line was as expected with Joe Alt, Zeke Correll, Rocco Spindler, and Blake Fisher. If this is how it looks to start the season, and it sure seems that this will be the case, it would be four starters from Notre Dame’s 2021 recruiting class.

- I’m not sure if they were limiting Chris Tyree today or not, but he didn’t come out with the first or second team offense as the slot. It might have been a rest day for the veteran player. It was Jaden Greathouse as the slot with Jayden Thomas and Thomas Merriweather as the other receivers. Audric Estime was the running back and Mitchell Evans was the tight end. They worked in Payne and Staes with the first team at the end of the drive.

- No surprises with the starting defense with Thomas Harper as the nickel and Clarence Lewis as the corner replacing Hart with Ben Morrison at the other corner. Xavier Watts and DJ Brown were the safeties, JD Bertrand and Marist Liufau were the linebackers, and the same front four we’ve seen all camp as the starters was the group we saw.

Jack Kiser did come in and substitute for Liufau after four plays, but that was the only substitution I noticed.

- When it was twos vs twos, the only notable personnel thing that I noticed on defense was Micah Bell getting work as the second team nickel. I think it was more about giving him an opportunity because Lewis was working at outside corner with the ones.

Bell was a bit confused on one play of where to go, which is pretty normal in a tempo drill for a freshman who hasn’t got a lot of reps, and Mike Mickens was getting on him.

- The number two offense was a much different story with Andrew Kristofic (right guard) getting driven into the backfield by Gabriel Rubio on an outside zone play and offensive line coach Joe Rudolph was not pleased. (Rubio made a tackle for loss on the play. Earlier Jaden Mickey came on a corner blitz and also had a TFL)

Rudolph yelled for Charles Jagusah to go in for Kristofic, but they ran only one more play so Jagusah didn’t get a chance to go in. I’ll have more on this, but this feels like Jagusah making a move and Kristofic is out of the mix.

Defensive line

- I watched a bit of the defensive line in individual drills and only have a few notes that I think are worth sharing, but they are certainly positive. The first is that the level of intensity of the players going through a club/rip drill by every player was notable. In the dog days of camp, it’s easy for more than just one or two players to not be competing hard in individual. This wasn’t the case with this group.

Al Washington and Nick Sebastian have their guys getting after it. There are no passengers that I can see.

- There were NFL scouts from the Bengals, Browns, Steelers, Bills, Texans, Packers, and two from the Commanders who were in attendance and all of them were watching the defensive line. Some of that is that the D-line was going through individual while most of the team was doing special teams. I also think some of that is that Notre Dame has more “dudes” up front who have NFL traits.

- It’s not nothing that Boubacar Traore was working with the special teams along with Jordan Botelho, Josh Burnham, and Junior Tuihalamaka. It says to me that he is on the radar to play this season, which fits with what we’ve seen from him so far in camp.

Offensive line

- When they were working with the interior O-line separately from the tackles and tight ends, the first group was Correll, Coogan, and Spindler. The second group was Schrauth, Craig, and Jagusah. When they split up half the line and went center, guard, tackle in a three-man drill after that, Jagusah was with the Aamil Wagner with the twos.

Kristofic did not get a rep when I watched.

It hasn’t been a great camp for Kristofic and it really wasn’t a great spring for him. For someone who has had experience playing to possibly have fallen back to the third team, it pretty much says it all.

Jagusah on the other hand making a quick move from repping at guard to working with the twos is also notable. It’s a situation we’ll need to monitor.

- Rudolph was a lot more vocal today than I’ve seen from him in the other practices I have watched individual. He was pushing his guys. When he came over from working with the tackles to watch the final rep with the interior O-line, he yelled “Holy (blank) that looked good!”. He dropped that one a few times after he was pleased with a rep by the group.

They were working on passing off stunts and he made sure to give extra feedback to both Spindler and Coogan after he saw something he didn’t like. They received the coaching well and he praised both of their next reps.

- Notre Dame’s head of personnel Butler Benton was watching the O-line closely during the start of practice.

One quick “Spear” note

- I did get a quick glimpse of Notre Dame walking through some “Spear” pressures and it was the same personnel with the first group: Botelho, Cross, and JJB up front with JD Bertrand and Marist Liufau at linebacker. This was the first time I’ve seen them line up Liufau off the ball and he was moving around pre-snap as a blitzer.

Men's '47 Charcoal Notre Dame Fighting Irish Brrr Altitude Trucker Adjustable Hat