6 Thoughts on a Thursday

You’re Marcus Freeman. You’re getting heat after a tough loss at Louisville and then your team’s response is a beatdown against USC.

Your defense just dominated one of the top offenses in the country led by the reigning Heisman winner. Recruits are buzzing. The vibes are once again bordering on immaculate (see how quick that can flip?). And you’ve got a bye week for your team and staff to rest and recharge before the final stretch.

All of that is true, but you’ve got a looming problem after this season with your roster. You have too many good players who have the option to return next season and it’s going to be difficult to have them all come back.

That’s if they want to come back. Some of the players might make the decision for Freeman. There’s a number who have played themselves into being legitimate NFL prospects after being on the bubble prior to the season. They may choose to move on to the next level.

The crux of the problem is that Notre Dame is playing great defense right now and out of the 15 players who have logged the most snaps this season, only three are officially out of eligibility. Out of the 12 left over, 11 are in their fourth or five years with an option to return because of the uncounted Covid season of 2020.

There are depth players like Ramon Henderson, Clarence Lewis, Jack Kiser, and NaNa Osafo-Mensah. I’d say it’s unclear if any of them will be back next fall, but my guess would be Henderson and Lewis are the two most likely.

Then there’s starters like Cam Hart, Xavier Watts, Howard Cross, Rylie Mills, JD Bertrand, Marist Liufau, and Jordan Botelho. I would be shocked if Hart isn’t playing on Sundays next fall and I think everything is TBD with Botelho depending how he closes this season, but Watts, Cross, Mills, Bertrand, and Liufau are players who could leave and be drafted.

They also are the kind of players who Freeman and Notre Dame would likely love to stick around for 2024. They’ll have to fight hard to keep them and could do the same with Chris Tyree and Zeke Correll on offense. (Tyree is a no-brainer decision for him and Notre Dame in my opinion)

Most of the fourth and fifth years players for Notre Dame with the option to return would be day three prospects for the NFL Draft (rounds four to seven) other than Hart and possibly Mills. Even with strong seasons, those later round hopefuls might not be able to do enough to rise up past that during the draft process.

Maybe that makes the decision easier for them if Notre Dame really wants them to stay.

These are unique times in college football and the 2024 season is the last one where this will be an issue with roster management. The players from the 2019 and 2020 recruiting classes are the only ones left with that extra year of eligibility. This won’t be something Freeman has to worry about after this offseason.

It’s a good problem to have and the way to look at it is that keeping these players is like landing a player from the portal. They are filling holes that only exist because they would have been gone.

There is another piece of this, though. There are young players waiting for more of an opportunity behind these players currently on the depth chart and there has to be a certain amount of foresight for Freeman to make sure he’s managing the entire roster. Not everyone is going to be thrilled if many of these players are back next year. 

One of the main reasons why the 2018 season was so good for Notre Dame had to do with getting Drue Tranquill, Te’von Coney, and Jerry Tillery to come back that season. Who Freeman can convince to come back and how many of them do could have a big impact on Notre Dame’s College Football Playoff prospects next season, but he also has to make decisons looking beyond 2024 as well.

2. One thing to note about someone like Watts is that he really wasn’t someone on the radar for NFL scouts prior to the season.

He didn’t start until the 10th game of last season. This is his first full-season as a starter and that certainly could be enough for him to get drafted, but teams generally like to have more tape to evaluate a player if they want to invest a higher pick.

That’s something that could really work in Notre Dame’s favor and I think it’s fair to assume that NIL opportunities while at Notre Dame next year should be pretty nice for him as well.

Watts is also an example of how players can emerge in the back half of the season. Eight games into the year and most of the guys who are leading the way now are going to be the same ones we’ve seen so far, but as previously mentioned, Watts didn’t start until the Navy game in 2022.

There’s still players on both sides of the ball who we aren’t talking about much right now who we could be talking about in a few weeks. There are still players who could be setting themselves up for a breakout season next year, much like what happened with Watts.

Boubacar Traore making the most of his opportunity as a pass rusher could end up earning him more chances in the final five games of this campaign depending on if they want to maintain his redshirt or not. JD Price taking that kick back to the house could earn him more touches on offense.

The bye week could also allow for more players to make a move as well. Sometimes a little bit of a break can go a long way in helping players take a step in the right direction.

3. I knew Notre Dame’s defense was going to be better this season. I didn’t anticipate it was going to be quite this good.

It’s now at a point where people are (correctly) calling for Notre Dame to find a way to convince Al Golden to stay when there was a large portion of the fanbase who would have been just fine to see him go back to the NFL or get a college head coaching job only a few months ago.

The defense is 9th in DF+ (combined FEI and SP+ rankings) after being 31st in 2022. This puts them back in 2018 and 2019 territory (8th and 9th respectively). I think there’s a good chance they can end up in the top-five after all is said and done.

When Notre Dame faced USC last season, the Trojan offense had a 61% success rate, averaged 0.49 EPA per drop back (90th percentile), and 0.4 EPA per rush (95th percentile). On Saturday those numbers dropped to 38%, -0.52 per drop back (7th percentile), and -0.16 per rush (25th percentile).

Caleb Williams had an NFL passer rating 51.5, his lowest of the last two seasons. His next lowest from this season was 98.6 and his overall rating on the season is 130.8.

Ohio State’s Kyle McCord’s NFL passer rating is 111.9 on the season. It was 72.6 against Notre Dame. Yes, it was his lowest of the season.

Duke’s Riley Leonard had a 56.7 rating against the Irish. You guessed it, it was his lowest of the season and it was over 30 points lower than his 87.8 overall number in 2023.

Golden is going to have options, but Notre Dame should do everything they can to make it difficult for him to leave. The same goes for all of the position coaches on defense. They’ve collectively done an outstanding job.

4. Jordan Botelho played 28 snaps against USC. That was his second lowest snap count this season when he played a full-game. In only a half of action, he played 22 snaps against Louisville.

His lowest snap count of the season in a full game was Navy (27). That was the only other game where Junior Tuihalamaka and Josh Burnham combined to play more snaps than him (28)...other than this most recent one.

They had 35 to Botelho’s 28 and when you throw in Jaylen Sneed (13) taking snaps away from Botelho on 3rd down, it sure looks like an indicator that Vyper is going to be a competitive situation going forward.

Botelho hasn’t looked the same as a pass rusher this season compared to how he did at the end of last season or even during spring ball. Maybe it’s the added weight. Maybe it’s confidence. Whatever the reason, he has not won as pass rusher and has only one pressure in the last three games.

PFF has credited him with nine pressures this season on 151 pass rush opportunities. He had 18 pressures on 77 opportunities all of last season and had more in the bowl game (10) than he’s had this entire season.

Against true pass sets (no play-action, no quick game, no screens, etc), he has six pressures on 64 opportunities. Sneed has the same number on only 25 opportunities. I’d be surprised if Sneed isn’t starting in Notre Dame’s 3rd down package for the rest of this season.

5. It’s easier to play offensive line at home than it is on the road in college football. That should come as a surprise to no one.

Crowd noise and silent counts on the road versus being able to dictate the cadence at home is a significant difference.

Need proof that home vs road matters for O-linemen? How about the Irish only allowing pressure on 22.7% of drop backs and zero sacks at home. They’ve allowed 11 sacks on the road.

This is something worth monitoring with Notre Dame still having a match up with Clemson on the road in a few weeks. The atmosphere probably won’t match the last time Notre Dame played at Clemson, but it’s going to be a big deal and it will be loud. (It’ll be a little less loud if Clemson loses to Miami this weekend, but still loud nonetheless.)

With a clean pocket, Sam Hartman is one of the best quarterbacks in college football. He has the fourth best grade in those situations behind only USC’s Caleb Williams, Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, and LSU’s Jayden Daniels. Hartman’s adjusted completion percentage is 78.6% and his NFL passer rating is 131.7.

He’s 40th in passing grade when pressured. His adjusted completion percentage drops to 59.1% and his rating drops to 71.4. Hartman hass been pressured a lot more on the road. That right there is one reason why we’ve seen a big difference with the offense on the road compared to when they are in Notre Dame Stadium.

I probably didn’t need to list pressure and sack numbers to make my point. The simple eye-test would tell anyone that Notre Dame’s offensive line has not been very good on the road so far this season. They have to be better in that Clemson game because the one thing they have is “dudes” in their front seven.

6. There’s still plenty of season left for Notre Dame and they aren’t thinking about next year’s opponents.

That doesn’t mean we can’t peak ahead to next season during this bye week. With the way things have gone at Texas A&M, the vultures are circling Jimbo Fisher. The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported that, unsurprisingly, that A&M “will find the money to get rid of him” if things don’t improve there.

They’re 4-3 with two road games left at Ole Miss and LSU.

If Fisher is gone and they go through a coaching change, how many studs are going to be left at A&M in 2024 and 2025 when they play Notre Dame? They signed 18 top-100 prospects with their 2022 class. Five are already gone after a year. They signed 18 blue-chips in the 2021 class and only nine are still at A&M.

They could upgrade their coaching staff with a new hire, but it’s doubtful the roster will be as loaded as everyone thought they would be when they originally signed that number one class in ‘22. Their situation is one of those fascinating ones to watch as a general college football fan and it should definitely interest Notre Dame fans because everything with A&M feels uncertain.

Notre Dame also plays Florida State in 2024 and it might be the best time to play them because this year wasn’t. They had several players stay in school who could have declared for the NFL Draft. That combined with the additions in the transfer portal had them first in returning production (80% on offense and 94% on defense) entering season.

The good news from a Notre Dame perspective is that those guys who decided to stay in “school” aren’t going to be there in 2024. Quarterback Jordan Travis is finally going to run out of eligibility, edge rusher Jared Verse isn’t sticking around, wide receive Keon Coleman will be playing on Sundays, and most of the key players for them are in year four, five, or six.

They are set up to win now. They are not set up as well for next year.

I’m sure they will add a bunch of players in the portal again and probably slide a bag or two to some late round picks to stay in school. That won’t be an issue for them.

Mike Norvell hasn’t been recruiting like it’s 1996, though. They signed only 30 blue-chips (4 and 5-stars) from 2020-2023, but 12 of those players aren’t on the roster. Even with all of the added transfers (11 blue-chips) and a couple of fifth and sixth years hanging around, they only have 31 total out of 85 scholarships this year. It’s just worked out for them that most of those guys are prominent returning players or productive transfers, so they have a team who can win now.

They’re going to sign a good class this year, but most of those guys won’t be doing all that much in 2024.

FSU will be good. They just aren’t likely going to be as good as they are in 2023. Who knows what to expect from USC as well after Williams is gone, but I think the way the Trojans have been built makes it seem like a year to year situation with them rather than Lincoln Riley building something that is going to be great every season. There is a world where they go .500 in the second half of their season and who knows what that could mean for their roster next season.

The Irish still have more to accomplish in ‘23. I can’t help looking ahead to next year knowing how different things could look for their highest profile opponents in ‘24.

Fans will be paying attention to who Notre Dame can convince to come back to play for them next fall. They should also be paying attention to the situations at A&M, USC, and FSU because those teams could look a lot different than they do right now depending on how those programs finish this season.

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