Rakes Report #124: Dog days of camp

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If you’re reading this when it arrives Tuesday morning, you’re exactly two weeks from waking up after the first Notre Dame game of the season, which is somewhat crazy to contemplate. As far as news from South Bend, there have been a few tough injures along with the captaincies being announced, but we’ll hit on all that now as we take a quick run through the depth chart.

Quarterback – All the reports on Ian Book are Pretty Good. There aren’t really any signs of concern but he also isn’t completely dominating, which is fine for a guy who’s 9-1 as a starter since his season will be judged on how he does in the big road games and not in August. (Book was also named a captain, the first quarterback to receive that honor since Jimmy Clausen in 2009.) Perhaps the most important development in this section is that Phil Jurkovec has been doing a lot of good stuff and seems like he’d be able to step in against a great chunk of the Irish schedule and give Notre Dame a good chance at winning.

Tight end – Well, Cole Kmet is out until somewhere between the New Mexico game in Week Three to late October with a broken collarbone. He healed quickly from a gruesome ankle injury last year but collarbones are dicey. (More on that just below!) A reminder that Brock Wright was the only tight end ranked above Kmet in their high school class and he’s earned compliments after slimming down from last year’s blocking specialist. Question marks in depth after that with sophomores Tommy Tremble and George Takacs, so hopefully Brock stays upwright (I’m sorry) and Kmet gets back on the field sooner rather than later. (Not that it’s of any help this season but verbal commit Michael Mayer is up to 51st in the 247 Composite while Kevin Bauman is a solid four star at 250th. Just need to survive through Kmet’s absence and things should be okay moving forward.)

Wide receiver – A real “Tale of Two Cities”-type situation here. In the best of times section, beat writers are now openly comparing Chase Claypool to Michael Floyd after the Canadian has dominated all camp and Chris Finke is still doing Chris Finke Things, which is a high compliment. (Finke has also been named a captain.) Unfortunately, the guy who’d been impressing and set to start alongside the seniors, Michael Young, went down on Saturday with a broken collarbone. (I love finding out there are new college football elder gods that Notre Dame can offend. Who knew there was a vengeful deity focused solely on the clavicle?) Kevin Austin, the blue chippy sophomore, is still set for some kind of suspension that will keep him out for an indeterminate amount of games. On the bright side, there are a slow of sophomores — led by Lawrence Keys, but also including Braden Lenzy and Joe Wilkins, Jr. — who’ve earned some praise. (When Young went down, it was Keys who took his place with the starters.) Senior Javon McKinley has also shown flashes at times and there’s pedigree (114th in the composite) if experience and health are where they need to be.

Runningback – It seems like Jafar Armstrong has come in below some of the Theo Riddick-esque offseason expectations but is still playing well while Tony Jones, Jr. is on the rise, marking the potential for a timeshare at the top of the depth chart. Everyone is speaking very highly of Kyren Williams, the Doug Martin-esque freshman who’s also a threat in the passing game. Jahmir Smith is powering through a broken hand to provide depth. With the injuries to Kmet and Young, expect to see plenty of formations featuring two or more of these guys. Likely bet: This group is really productive but without the home run ability of a Dexter Williams or Josh Adams. If they start ripping off big plays, this offense could be elite.

Offensive line – Julian Okwara and Khalid Kareem haven’t maimed anyone yet, which I count as a positive. A number of the starters have earned various accolades this summer, with Tommy Kraemer showing up as a first-team All-American guard on some lists, Liam Eichenberg being listed as the fourth best left tackle in The Athletic’s draft analysis and Pro Football Focus loving them some Robert Hainsey, who was named a captain. Depth could be an issue here for this year only if these guys start to get banged up — the top two reserves are Josh Lugg, the four-star junior, and fifth-year senior Trevor Ruhland, who was considered a potential medical retirement a few months ago — but the starting five should make strides over last year when they were solid in pass protection but struggled in the run game. For all of our mental and emotional health, it would be nice if these young men were blowing holes in the defensive fronts of Louisville and New Mexico to start the season.

Defensive line – Well, Okwara looks like he might be a top ten pick, so that’s good. There is an absurd amount of depth at defensive end, as we’d probably be cool with Daelin Hayes and Ade Ogundeji starting on most of the Irish teams of the 21st century and then there are the deeper reserves: Justin Ademilola, Ovie Oghoufo, Jamir Jones, incoming freshman Isaiah Foskey. On the interior, we had concern most of the offseason about depth but so far so good as MTA, Kurt Hinish and Jayson Ademilola are healthy while Jacob Lacey is looking the part of a freshman who can take snaps. For bonus points inside, freshman Howard Cross looks like he might be able to pitch in a bit as well as we wait for Ja’Mion Franklin and Hunter Spears to work their way to full health later in the season. Also, as far as interior line depth goes, there are going to be a lot of passing downs where one (or maybe two!?) of the defensive ends move inside to help soak up some snaps. If you want to feel good about this team, you should feel that way because of this group and the two captains leading the charge in Okwara and Kareem.

Linebacker – Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah has excelled at rover so we needn’t worry about that.* There are still questions at linebacker but it’s starting to look like the answer at beginning of the season will be Asmar Bilal (who started at rover last year) and Drew White opening games with Shayne Simon and Jack Lamb behind them (Lamb has earned raves for his pass defense so expect to see him in nickel situations). I still contend linebacker is not going to be a problem this year and am somewhat confused by the people who predicted that Notre Dame would have different linebacker combinations over the course of the season but were also worried that there was a lot of experimenting in the opening weeks of camp.

* Report Style Guide Update: I think from this point on it’s going to be JOK on first reference and Wu on second reference. If he has the season (and future seasons) we now expect there are going to be a lot of references so we might as well get familiar.

Safety – Alohi Gilman and Jalen Elliott are still really good and now both captains while incoming freshman Kyle Hamilton has perhaps exceeded his five-star billing so far. After that? Well, Derrik Allen transferred to Georgia Tech and D.J. Brown moved over from corner and has been banged up but fifth-year senior Shaun Crawford has been cross-training at the position and looking good, although concerns will linger about his ability to avoid injury all season. In summation: Tremendous at the top but potentially perilous descent should injuries occur.

Corner – Not bad! Troy Pride is getting beasted on by Claypool but that’s going to happen to everybody this season. Sophomore TaRiq Bracy is making strides after an up-and-down freshman campaign while Donte Vaughn has been playing well but needs to stay healthy. Freshman K.J. Wallace is doing some nice work while Crawford can also put some reps in here if his legs hold up. Hadn’t heard much from Houston Griffith until he returned from injury Saturday and then worked with the starters on Monday, which seems like a positive development. Walk-on Temitope Agoro, who you might remember from shining a little in the Blue-Gold Game, could get in the rotation here. There’s a lot of “Probably…?” here but not much in the way of sure things outside Pride.

Specialists – Jonathan Doerer has been solid on field goals as of late and Jay Bramblett is getting hang time on his punts. We will see how they do in live action when the stakes are a bit higher.

So, looking at all of that I have a couple of questions: a) What is the ceiling of a defense that is elite at defensive end and safety but somewhere between fine-to-good everywhere else and b) What’s the ceiling of an offense where everything is solid but perhaps nothing is elite? Now there is a chance that I’m underselling a lot of the team with those questions (Book, Claypool, Wu, MTA, Pride and parts or the entirety of the offensive line could all be great, for example) but if I’m not then we will find out what happens when you put a team with a high floor but potentially limited ceiling into a schedule with three tough road games and three home games against teams that could end up in the top 20.

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If you aren’t subscribed to the Report podcast I think you should try it because we’ve really had some very cool and smart people as guests over the last couple weeks. Among the voices and topics you will get to hear, in reverse chronological order:

* Jess Smetana of Sports Illustrated on one final tribute to last season’s 12-1 run before turning our attention to our hopes and fears for the 2019 season. (This one went live Tuesday morning so is fresh off the audio content truck.)

* Andrew Smith and Alex Herrmann of Notre Dame Our Blogger dot com broke down all twelve opponents the Irish are set to face this fall.

* Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic talked about surviving in a Clemson/Bama world and how blue bloods are attempting to keep the stands full on Saturdays. Matt and I also talk the future of the secondary, general camp thoughts and “Hobbs & Shaw.”

* Carter Karels of the South Bend Tribune on Cole Kmet’s injury (which occurred a few hours before we recorded) and his general thoughts after attending the first few practices available to the media.

Listen on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (I use Pocket Casts on my Android and it shows up there.)

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In previous years I would do a run through of how Notre Dame could defeat or fall victim to every team on the schedule. I’m not sure how necessary that is after 2016 because I think you all can now visualize things breaking bad while after 2012 and 2018 I hope you have the joy in your hearts to imagine everything going right.

However, I do think it’s worth going through the schedule so folks have an idea of what to expect. This is condensed and edited from the end of the podcast episode with the Notre Dame Our Blogger gentlemen and I highly recommend listening to that in full, but if you’re pressed for time, here are the Irish’s 2019 opponents broken down by tier.

TIER 1

@ Georgia – The Bulldogs might have the best left tackle, running back and kicker in the nation. They sport a Kirby Smart defense loaded with elite prospects projected to be near the top of the S&P+. They lost all their receivers but the guys they replaced them with are five-star recruits and they’re being thrown to by likely first-round pick Jake Fromm. Also, it’s a night game on the road, the biggest home contest of Smart’s tenure.

But other than that, not much to worry about.

TIER 2

@ Michigan – The hype for the Wolverines as a potential Big Ten title and playoff contender is based on two theories. The first is that the offense, which returns Shea Patterson, most of his receivers and most of the offensive line will take a big leap under new coordinator Josh Gattis, who’s never called plays before and will have Jim Harbaugh over his shoulder. The second is that the defense will continue to be great under Don Brown despite losing the engines of that unit (Chase Winovich and Devin Bush) and giving up 103 points in the last two games of last season because they can’t defend crossing routes.

On the positive side, Michigan travels to Happy Valley the week before they host the Irish. On the negative, Notre Dame is 1-7 in their last eight trips to Ann Arbor.

@ Stanford – Some smart football people tell me not to worry about this game because the Cardinal have depth issues and the Irish potentially broke them in the fourth quarter of last year’s game but I will believe Brian Kelly can win in Palo Alto when Brian Kelly wins in Palo Alto. They have potential stars at left tackle (Walker Little), quarterback (K.J. Costello) and corner (Paulson Adebo) along with O Street and a bunch of tall guys to serve as targets for Costello. Notre Dame hasn’t won their regular season finale in consecutive years since 2000-2001 and that was only because the Purude game got rescheduled to December because of 9/11. (They lost the scheduled finale in Palo Alto to Ty Willingham.) You can make the case this should be down a tier but due to the psychological abuse this series has caused I’m keeping it here.

TIER 3

Virginia – Remember how annoying those old Bronco Mendenhall BYU teams were to play? Well guess what it’s that kind of defense combined with a legit dual threat quarterback in Bryce Perkins, who a few ACC writers actually picked over Trevor Lawrence to finish as their league’s Player of the Year. The Cavaliers are projected to win the Coastal Division and this game being the week after Georgia is just a perfect nightmare storm.

Southern Cal – Well, on the one hand, they have all kinds of talent (particularly at receiver with A Street and Tyler Vaughns, as we saw last year) and a hip new offensive coordinator in Graham Harrell to attempt to utilize it. On the other hand, their schedule is a ton of coin flip games and while they could be 5-1 coming to South Bend off a bye they also might have an interim head coach for the third time in the last four trips and be in total disarray. Thankfully the Irish have this wedged between a functional bye and a real bye.

Virginia Tech – The Hokies bring many people back from last season’s youthful disappointment. Some folks might suggest this go down a tier but between this being defensive coordinator Bud Foster’s farewell tour and my general belief (despite some mounting evidence to the contrary…) that Justin Fuente is a good coach I will retain concern. If they can win a trip to Miami there’s a decent chance they’re 7-0 when they come to South Bend, off a bye, seven days after Notre Dame’s Michigan trip. A potentially dangerous cocktail.

TIER 4

@ Duke – You wouldn’t think a David Cutcliffe team would be led by its defense but that will be the case here. The offense has to replace Daniel Jones and almost every receiver of note, but at least we’ll know whether they have figured that out or not by the time Notre Dame travels to Durham, where the Blue Devils are coming off a bye.

Boston College – On one hand, it’s the Eagles, with star tailback A.J. Dillon coming off a bye (surprise!) to attempt to ruin someone else’s senior day, the sort of thing this program which doesn’t have the juice to serve as its own protagonist must do in order to justify its existence in the college football world. On the other, this team wins seven games every year, lost a bunch off last year’s team and has been knocked around for most of the Kelly Era.

TIER 5

@ Louisville – The Cardinals will be hyped up for the debut of new coach Scott Satterfield, who actually likes his players, a jarring reversal from the previous administration. But there is a talent deficit and I assume an early Irish surge will be able to shake the faith of all involved. Still, a road night game against a team that won eight games in 2017, so it could prove it belongs a tier higher if things are still dicey midway through the third quarter.

Navy – The Midshipmen are always annoying but they were 3-10 last year and it looks like things are starting to fall apart for Kenny N in Annapolis as he is going to attempt to diversify his offense, an act of either innovation or desperation. They’re also, surprise, coming off a bye. (Well, two byes if you consider they play Randy Edsall’s UConn before their off week.)

TIER 6

New Mexico – How is Bob Davie still coaching this team, which has gone 3-9 the last two seasons? They’re also going to try and incorporate more passing into the offense. Good luck!

Bowling Green – Brian VanGorder is the defensive coordinator.

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I believe that is it. If you’re wondering where our annual Freshman Orientation podcasts are with Jamie Uyeyama of Irish Sports Daily, fear not: They’ll be dropping at the end of next week after Jamie gets done scouting the new guys in person. Barring news of either the unbelievably good or bad variety, there will probably be one more edition between now and kickoff in Louisville. In the meantime, here’s the link to the Rakes store and here’s another plug for the pod.

Go Irish, Beat Cardinals. Getting to be about that time.

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