Rakes Report #122: Summer grant us all the power to drink on top of water towers
Hey friends. It’s been — *knocks on an entire lumberyard full of wood* — relatively quiet since Blue-Gold so haven’t felt the need to check in but I think there’s enough to merit a housekeeping edition. Summer doesn’t officially kick in for another couple days but let’s get ahead of the solstice and bounce through this.
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Last month saw one of my favorite days of the offseason, with Bill Connelly’s Notre Dame preview dropping over at SBNation. If you haven’t given it a read, definitely do so for a smart national take on the state of the program. (My one critique is that it doesn’t quite recognize how incredible Julian Love was in a couple of places.) I also talked to Bill about his preview on the podcast if you’re interested in giving it a listen. Three takeaways from our conversation:
1) Notre Dame is going to have to run the ball more efficiently, particularly without Dexter Williams to bail them out at times. Presumably bringing back four of five starters from last year + another year of Jafar Armstrong adjusting to the backfield + Jarrett Patterson earning rave reviews at center will help? We hope.
2) Because Ian Book is so good on third down, it makes sense to take some more shots on first down. If you miss, you scratch out a couple yards on second and then rely on your senior quarterback for some conversion magic.
3) The Virginia game, which falls one week after the visit to Athens, is not going to be much fun. Win or lose on their road trip, the Irish will be dealing with a Dawgs hangover and playing a physical Bronco Mendenhall team that could sneak into the Top 25 this year. Mess around and a big win against Georgia could be immediately undercut or 2-1 could spiral into 2-2.
If you find yourself with some downtime and a craving to do some football reading, Bill has previews up for all of Notre Dame’s ACC opponents, Southern Cal, Stanford, Navy, Bowling Green and New Mexico up here if you scroll through the archives. (Spoiler: Bill has both the Trojans and Cardinal pegged as two of the biggest mysteries going into the season.) Michigan and Georgia will be a little later in the offseason when he gets to the Big Ten and SEC.
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In roster news, Notre Dame is officially down to the 85 scholarship player mark they needed to hit by the beginning of the season. Earlier this week the South Bend Tribune’s Eric Hansen reported that lineman Darnell Ewell will be retiring from football and taking a medical hardship while remaining enrolled at the university, which was the last piece that needed to fall into place. Although Ewell’s career was brief, it was a rollercoaster: He arrived in 2017 as the top-ranked defensive recruit in his class, 147th overall with offers from all the top schools. After a freshman year where he didn’t see the field he switched over to offensive line and didn’t crack the rotation there, either. He moved back to defense in the spring and despite a few signs of life this decision was made. It’s a reminder that recruiting is as much art as science but at least Ewell will get to stay and earn his Notre Dame degree. We wish him the best.
If you don’t follow the ins and outs of roster management, a thing that happens a few times a year as verbal commits pile up is a rumbling of the question, “How is Notre Dame going to get down to the NCAA limit of 85 scholarship players? I really don’t see it” and then some combination of transfer, injury and college student stupidity occurs and they hit the mark, usually with a couple spots to spare to help out some stand-out walk-ons. This year the staff built in some run-out-of-space contingencies with incoming linebackers J.D. Bertrand (his family was going to pay his way for the first semester) and Marist Liufau (who would attend prep school before coming to South Bend), but both will be on the roster and under scholarship.
Some expressed concern that these were shady practices but considering the recruits and their families were aware of these possibilities the entire time it just seems like a couple guys who wanted to go to Notre Dame and were willing to make sacrifices to do so. (Well, and some parents were going to make sacrifices.) Not sure if this will become commonplace but something to keep an eye on as classes start to round out every year. As long as no one shows up on campus expecting a spot only to be denied one, I'm okay with getting creative, but communication needs to be crystal clear with recruits and their families.
(This Liufau highlight video is pretty fun for a three-star who's ranked just 465th in the 247 Composite, especially when you consider the hit rate of Hawaii guys once they get to South Bend.)
On the injury front, Kelly told WSBT earlier this month that all the guys on the roster who were on the mend are either cleared to go for all football activities or will be by Fourth of July-ish. That includes:
* Shaun Crawford - I don’t know how much we can really expect from a guy who’s had three seasons end with leg injuries but if he can provide anything at the nickel, that would be huge. Remember that time he changed the 2017 Michigan State game on his own with the goal line forced fumble, or his dynamic play in Austin? Even if he has just enough mojo for a few big plays here or there, they would be welcome.
* Jamion Franklin - The redshirt freshman defensive tackle who went down in the Wake Forest game. Losing months and months of development is Not Good but even if Franklin is just ready to contribute ten snaps a game by November I am sure the staff will be happy.
* Donte Vaughn - I am interested and excited to see what Vaughn can do in his senior year, after a Cotton Bowl performance that went from “Wow, Vaughn is so bad” to “Wow, considering he was playing with a busted shoulder and did better than most of the Alabama defensive backs against the Clemson Monstars, that was honestly kind of okay?”. If Vaughn and Crawford are healthy, Troy Pride, Jr. does what we think he will and Houston Griffith has a productive summer it could be a solid corner corps even without getting anything from the other underclassmen.
* Jack Kiser - Clark Lea seems to googly heart eyes love the early enrollee freshman linebacker and with so much uncertainty in the middle of the defense, perhaps the 2018 Indiana Mr. Football can earn some early reps.
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We’ll get into this more in August, but I’m curious in how we set expectations for the upcoming season, considering we’re following up 12-0 and a playoff berth but also the big loss to Clemson, roster attrition and two road games against preseason top ten teams. Below I have gathered how every college football participant not named Alabama and Clemson did the year after making the playoff because Alabama and Clemson always made it back the next year and that would get repetitive to write.
Made playoff again
2018 Oklahoma — Lost the Red River Shootout but won the rematch in the Big 12 title game, earning the fourth spot and a date with Bama, where defeat resulted in a 12-2 finish.
New Year’s Six Bowl
2015 Florida State - Replaced Jameis with Everett and lost the Peach Bowl to Houston to finish 10-3.
2015 Ohio State - Might have been the best team in the country again but dropped a game they shouldn’t have at home against Sparty and fell out of the Big Ten title game and to the Fiesta Bowl, where they beat hmmm doesn’t seem to say. Finished 12-1.
2016 Oklahoma – Swept the Big 12 but due to non-conference losses to Houston and Ohio State ended up in the Sugar Bowl, where they defeated Auburn to finish 11-2.
2017 Washington - Fell short of the Pac-12 title game because of a loss to Stanford and lost to Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 10-3.
2017 Ohio State – Won the Big Ten but because of losses to Oklahoma and Iowa (by 31!) landed in the Cotton Bowl against USC, who they beat to finish 12-2.
2018 Georgia - Lost at LSU, to Bama in the SEC title game and then to Texas in the Sugar Bowl — a game they definitely weren’t trying to win and totally could have if they wanted to — to finish 11-3.
Other Bowl
2015 Oregon - Started the season 3-3 and fell out of the rankings before rallying with six straight wins to close the regular season. Blew a big lead to TCU in the Alamo Bowl to finish 9-4. Should be noted they went from Having Marcus Mariota to Not Having Marcus Mariota which is a pretty big swing.
Yikes a bikes
2016 Michigan State – Went 3-9, with wins over Furman, Rutgers and your 2016 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
What do we take from that? It’s pretty dang hard to make it back to the playoff unless you’re importing the Heisman winner and future number one overall pick via transfer. However, there is still plenty of success to be expected and found, with seven of the nine teams making a New Year’s Six bowl and 2015 Oregon making one of the best of the rest. The 2016 Michigan State result remains absolutely insane, winning one of their final ten games after three consecutive seasons of 11 or more victories.
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If you want to follow recruiting there are dozens of places you should be looking instead of here, but let’s make a note that Notre Dame is doing a really nice job on the trail at the moment. Over the weekend they secured verbal commitments from three four-star linemen, one in the Class of 2020 (Michael Carmody, an offensive lineman from the beautiful hills of Western Pennsylvania whose brother Robby is on the basketball team) and two in the Class of 2021 (defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio and offensive tackle Blake Fisher).
The Class of 2020 has some pretty cool guys in it. Since the Blue-Gold game, they've added verbals from the top all-purpose back in the nation (Chris Tyree, No. 34 overall and a borderline five-star), a 6'8" offensive tackle from Arizona (Tosh Baker, No. 60 overall), the best player in Hawaii (defensive end Jordan Botelho, No. 114 overall), another blue-chip defensive lineman (Rylie Mills, No. 133 overall) and Carmody (No. 134). Also, wide receiver commit Jordan Johnson got a rating bump and is now a five-star player and No. 29 overall. Pretty good!
Long way to go and these won’t be the final numbers but the 2020 class is currently ranked fifth on 247 and the 2021 class is ranked second (although it has all of four commits, so again, very early). Still need to add some bodies in the secondary but you can win a whole lot of games with good line play and quality quarterbacks, something the Irish seem set to have for years for come. Keep going.
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Some writing to check out:
* Andrew Smith at Notre Dame, Our Blogger took a look at the worst case scenario for the 2019 season and then also the best case scenario. Read them in that order, please – it’s for your own good.
* I enjoyed Eric Murtaugh taking a look back at Everett Golson’s career over at 18 Stripes. I will forever have a soft spot in my heart for Golson, who played amazingly in some big games. (We’ll always have Norman.) Without that lost 2013 season, where do things go? Extremely frustrating to think about, but I’ll always remember seeing Paint’s insane Lepredragon Piano Fight just before I got on a plane to Dublin for the 2012 opener.
* Jess Smetana investigated The Curious Case of the Notre Dame Opponent Bye Weeks at Sports Illustrated.
* Tim Prister’s piece on Mike Elston.
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Some early lines on ND games. Please tack an "-ish" on all of these, it depends where you're looking this far out and your preferred book may have it differently:
Notre Dame is a 20-point favorite in Louisville on Labor Day night (no pressure to take care of business or anything as the only game on), a ten-point underdog at Georgia, a 12-point favorite over USC, a six-point underdog at Michigan, a 16-point favorite over Virginia Tech and a 5-point favorite at Stanford.
This is more a PSA because I don't really have a point to make here. These lines mostly jive with the early S&P+ projections, which have Notre Dame winning every game by double digits save for Georgia (14-point loss), Michigan (five-point loss) and Stanford (6.6-point win).
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I think that’s it? Barring any major news (please let there be no major news), this is probably the last you will hear from me via this medium until camp starts in August. (Always feel free to reach out via email or Twitter.) Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, enjoy your summer, and emotionally/mentally/physically prepare for the fact that we are just two and a half months away from football. Go Irish, Beat Cardinals - and Cardinal, but not until 11 games later.
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