Inside Notre Dame’s Spring Practice Plan: How the Irish Are Adapting After a Long Season

Notre Dame will start spring football practice on March 19th and it will look a little different. 

The Fighting Irish completed the longest season in college football history by playing until January 20th, and the program is taking every precaution to ensure each player will be ready to go for fall camp. 

Extensive research has been done by multiple people in the program led by Associate Athletics Director for Sports Performance John Wagle, head football trainer Rob Hunt and several other key members on the performance side. 

“We have taken a look not only at our data within sports performance, but also conversations with coaches on what they believe the priorities are and learning about what these players really need to reach their full potential,” explained Wagle. “We take all of those things together and we develop an individualized development plan for each guy.

“To give you a little bit of an example of that at the group level, we've already actually staged the starting point of the offseason and not everybody's start is on the same day, which is kind of obvious in a sense that we had our transfers and mid-years here while we were playing in the National Championship Game. We've continued on that to make sure that the players had proper recovery windows before we began the offseason, before we started this journey in preparing them for Spring Ball.” 

That deep dive on each player focuses on deficiencies or areas of their game, physical and mental, they need to develop over the coming months. 

The plans are truly different, and it’s evident that a tremendous amount of time has been spent diving into each player's makeup to find areas for improvement. 

“For some, that could mean that they need to spend a lot of time getting reps in practice and they do need to learn what the situational demands are from our coaches and really allocate that time on the field,” stated Wagle. “But for others, we've identified that their priority might be in physical development or working with Rob and his team to clean up any deficiencies that will maximize their opportunity for availability come Fall. For others, it's going to be working with other support departments to perform under pressure or be a little bit better in these marginal areas because they're already outstanding players.” 

It’s not a secret the Irish were beat up entering the national title game and coming out of the season, the status of the roster reflects the long season. Notre Dame will have several players miss spring ball as they recover from significant injuries while others are limited due to a high workload coming out of the season. 

Hunt has established four groups related to injuries, with one being players returning to action.  

FULL RETURNED 

All the fully returned to action players have been full participants in winter workouts and have no limitations heading into spring football.

MODIFIED ACTIVITY

Hunt considers this group players with a previous or current injury that they are working through. Some may or may not have had surgery and they are transitioning through their injury process. The players in this category will be doing as much as their individual plan allows. 

Updates from Hunt: 

Cole Mullins: “He is recovering from knee surgery he had in the fall. He’s going to be limited the first few weeks of spring ball. We expect him to have some participation as we get to the second part of our spring practices.” 

Will Paulding: “On his physical exam process, we identified a stress injury in his foot. We quickly took care of that. He’s in the fourth week of his recovery there. He’s doing outstanding. It’s been a really, really good recovery. We value offseason conditioning and he missed the majority of our offseason conditioning. He’s going to transition into our spring practices as we build up volume and intensity for him. You can expect to see him doing some drill work early on and move into some more football-related and team activities as we get to the back end of spring.” 

Billy Schrauth: “We’re going to clean up his ankle. We’re going to have a clean up procedure on his ankle during spring break. Should be a quick recovery. He’s had the majority of our winter program, but we’re going to pause here for a little bit to do a little maintenance on that and allow him to have the back end of the spring. He was one of our guys we identified earlier that would have been an individualized plan as we control the amount of work he was going to be doing in the spring anyway. This is good timing for him to be taking care of that, moving into the fall and summer.” 

Anthonie Knapp: “He had surgery a couple days after the Orange Bowl. He’s continuing to progress really nicely through that for his ankle injury he sustained. He also has progressed nicely. It’s going to be give or take in terms of how much work he gets as he continues to progress over the next 3-4 weeks in his activity, training, intensity and build up of volume. We’re not just throwing guys who missed the winter program back into the fire right away.” 

Robbie Wollan: “He’s one of our walk-ons and had meniscus surgery just after the CFP. He will also be gradually brought back into activities as we get going here through spring football.” 

OUT FOR THE SPRING

Updates from Hunt:

Jordan Botelho: “He is progressing very well from a patella tendon rupture versus Purdue. He’s about five and a half months in and is absolutely killing it in his rehab and return to play process. We expect a great summer from him. We expect him to have a full summer of unrestricted activities. Our target is for him to continue to progress through spring. He’s not going to have any individual or drill work, but he’ll continue to add strength in preparation for him to have an unrestricted summer.” 

Ashton Craig: “Very similar. Same day. He’s five months in post-op post ACL. He’s progressing nicely.

Davion Dixon: “One of our mid-years. Suffered an injury last week that will require surgery. He’s going to have a pec tendon repair during spring break and will miss all of spring. It will allow him to have a full summer of participation for himself.” 

Cooper Flanagan: “Eight weeks into his Achilles repair. He’s progressing nice. He’ll miss all of spring. He’ll have continued work through the summer. These are anywhere from 8-10 months in terms of his recovery. It’s going to be a gradual progression back to activity and working through that rehab progress. He’ll miss all of spring and be modified for the early part of the summer.” 

Kahanu Kia: He’s eight months into an ACL rehab. He previously injured the same knee on his Mormon mission. This is ACL times two for him. We’re going to be super intentional in his recovery. The goal for him is to have an unrestricted summer. He’s doing really well. If it was ACL one, we might be pushing a little bit more, but this is ACL two. He’s going to follow a little bit longer return to play timeline.” 

Jalen Stroman: Similar to Will. On his physical exam process, he had an injury last year at Virginia Tech, a clavicle fracture. It ended up not healing, so we needed to take care of that when he got to campus. He’s going to be moving around a little bit during spring ball the second half. He’s not going to have contact. He’s not going to be exposed to any type of risk for himself. We expect a full recovery and unrestricted activity in the summer.” 

Chris Terek: “Had some clean up on his foot and will also have a second surgery on his shoulder once his foot recovers enough. Chris is going to miss all of spring and be fully ready for the fall.” 

Boubacar Traore: “Had his ACL/LCL injury from the Louisville game. He’s progressing really well. Super encouraged by his progress. He’s five months in on that surgery. Again, expect him to have an unrestricted summer. He’s got to build more strength and those kinds of things, but he’s doing very nicely at this point.” 

Chance Tucker: “He’s six months in from his ACL/MCL injury. He’s in a great position for an unrestricted summer.” 

The final group might cause some concern when looking at it on paper, but in reality, Notre Dame is doing what they promised the kids and their families when they committed. The program is looking out for them after a long season and ensuring key players are ready for the fall. 

These players could have restrictions on impact or running, which will be dictated by how they’re doing and the practice structure at that time. For example, you can expect these players to be practicing, but they may get held off a specific drill or period and it’s not due to injury.

“I think anyone could come up with that list of guys in terms of what they did throughout the season,” said Hunt. “It’s a pretty easy thing to do. Don’t be alarmed when you see some guys not doing something. It’s actually planned.” 

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