Howard Cross III Setting Tone in Practice, Notre Dame Injury Updates

Notre Dame needed its defensive line to take a step forward against Duke and the Irish did exactly that as the unit came up with several key plays.

Howard Cross III sacking and striping Duke quarterback Riley Leonard was a statement as it’s a moment the program can build on, but it doesn’t stop there. Cross now leads Notre Dame’s defense in tackles with 35 following his 13-tackle performance against the Blue Devils. 

For his efforts, Cross was recognized as the Reese’s Senior Bowl Defensive Player of the week. 

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman isn’t surprised to see Cross take his game to the next level after working with him over the last three seasons. 

”He is a confident individual,” stated Freeman. “He is internally confident in his skill set. Howard Cross is a great practice player. That's not what everybody gets the chance to see.I see it every day in practice. A lot of times I get to work with the scout-team O-line. One of the best joys of being a head coach is on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, working on the scout-team O-line.

“It's always a challenge when I know we're double-teaming Howard Cross. When we're blocking one-on-one, I challenge our scout-team O-line, ‘We’ve got to block him. I don't want Howard Cross hitting the quarterback.’ He finds a way.”

In fact, Freeman hopes more players start modeling their habits Monday through Friday after the New Jersey native. 

“If we can get everybody on our team to practice with that intent and that mindset, we’ll get better faster than a lot of teams in the country,” explained Freeman. “That's what you're most pleased about is his mindset and in practices, he’s very driven and works extremely hard.” 

The Irish will need another big performance from Cross and the defensive line on Saturday night as No. 25 Louisville averages 37.0 points per game and 193 rushing yards per contest. 

In the air, Cardinals quarterback Jack Plummer is a familiar foe as he played the Irish the last two years while he was at Purdue and Cal. Plummer has thrown fro 1,406 yards, 11 touchdowns and six interceptions while completing 65.2 percent of his passes in 2023. 

Freeman expects Al Golden to dial up some pre-snap games for Plummer, but pressuring the quarterback will once again be a significant key to victory. 

“It's hard to confuse him and we’re going to try,” Freeman said. “We're going to try to give him some different looks, but it’s hard to confuse him because he's seen everything. There’s no substitution for experience, so he's seen a lot of different things defensively and he makes decisions quickly. That's the one thing that I've noticed, even just watching him through these couple games of Louisville. He's making fast decisions. He knows exactly where he's going with the ball and he's doing a good job of putting where it needs to be.

“We’ve got to be good in our pre-snap disguises and try to give him some different looks and not just give him one or two looks and try to get him to hold it a little bit. If we can get him to hold it, we’ll try to get pressure on him and try to affect him that way.”

UPDATES 
Marcus Freeman mentioned in post-game that the punt spot second half shouldn’t have been reviewed, which would have pinned Duke at the one-yard line. Instead, the ACC officials reviewed it and put the ball on the 20-yard line. 

Notre Dame obviously sent that in to be reviewed and Freeman had an update on Monday, which is somewhat pointless, but also shows the lack of knowledge of Power Five officials. 

“They owned it and said it shouldn’t have been reviewed,” Freeman explained. “We appreciate the honesty. What can you do now? The game’s over. The communication that we can have with the ACC officials is extremely important, so that we can go back and forth and they can tell us why something happened or they can own a mistake. At least we can learn from it, too. We talked to them immediately after the game. They told us that it wasn’t reviewable.”

On the injury front, Notre Dame will get sophomore tight end Eli Raridon back this week after rehabbing from his second ACL tear. 

“He’ll be back this week,” stated Freeman. 

Notre Dame also expects receivers Jaden Greathouse and Jayden Thomas to be back on the field after missing Saturday’s game with hamstring issues. 

”We expect them both to be back,” said Freeman. We’ll expect both of them to practice tomorrow. They’re both improving. They ran around yesterday. I think they’ll do some rehab and run around today too. We expect them to be back for practice tomorrow.” 

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