Rakes Report #232: Pedal so heavy like the two most wanted (The 2024 Blue-Gold Game Review)
Notre Dame ends spring practice on an optimistic note that includes an improving receivers room and promising defense. Plus, closing the book on the 2024 basketball season.
~optional musical accompaniment~
Per tradition, this will be less a review of the Blue-Gold Game specifically (highlights if you want/need ‘em here) and more a look at where we stand post-spring. It’s hard not to feel good about the state of the program right now and I wanted to begin with a look at one of the major reasons for that as the work Marcus Freeman, Mike Denbrock and new assistant coach Mike Brown have put into overhauling the wide receiver room can’t be overstated.
Despite losing a lot of production and potential to the transfer portal, Notre Dame has put itself in a position where team speed and depth on the outside could be a possible strength as opposed to one of the larger hindrances like we’ve dealt with in recent years. Let’s start this out with a little receiver taxonomy to remind you who is now on the roster.
The rising sophomores who stayed: Jaden Greathouse, Jordan Faison
Greathouse was awesome when healthy last year and from every account has only looked better this spring. He suffered an injury on the final real play of the Blue-Gold Game and we’ll simply hope he’s okay. Could he work his way into being a T.J. Jones clone? Jason Garrett compared him to Miles Austin during the broadcast and I would also accept that.
Faison didn’t participate on Saturday because he was busy helping the lacrosse team to another victory but still putting a check beside his name. Brown praised Faison as being super engaged and was excited (obviously no duh) to get the Sun Bowl MVP back full time for the summer and beyond. I don’t see any reason to expect the guy who was fast and smooth in his routes as a freshman walk-on will not be a lethal threat again after another offseason of polish in a Denbrock offense that has unleashed hell from the slot.
Guys who suffered hopefully minor late spring injuries named Jayden: Jayden Thomas, Jayden Harrison
Two veterans I would very much like to have healthy in the fall. Thomas having a hamstring injury is giving severe flashbacks to last season and I hope it is managed better this time around. Brown was very complimentary of how Thomas had upped his speed and become an even better receiver and his ability to do damage both catching and blocking would make life easier for everyone involved with the offense.
Harrison is the transfer from Marshall who was a kick return specialist and sat out Saturday with a foot injury. Observers have praised his speed and Brown has lauded his attention to detail but I am curious how Denbrock tries to fit him in because his production from scrimmage hasn’t been previously noteworthy. While on the Thundering Herd, he never averaged more than 15 yards a reception nor had more than 28 catches in a season (both career highs came in 2023, so trending in the right direction). Gadget play guy? Serious part of rotation despite a lot of other intriguing slot options? We shall see.
Transfers: Kris Mitchell, Beaux Collins
Jayden Harrison also fits here but it was much cleaner to place him above. Mitchell comes in from Florida International as one of the more exciting transfer additions we’ve had because of both his measurables (real fast) and proven production (64 catches for 1118 yards last season). He dusted a walk-on corner for an easy touchdown on Saturday to close out an impressive spring.
Relevant quote from corner Christian Gray: “Those new receivers are actually fast. They’re fast, fast, fast actually. When I guarded Kris Mitchell, Jayden Harrison, I’m like, ‘OK, wow. I’ve never seen this before.’”
Collins did not participate in spring camp as he works to complete both his Clemson degree and recovery from a plantar fascia tear suffered in November. He’s a larger target who hopefully bonds well with fellow ACC transfer Riley Leonard once both are 100%. I am not projecting anything here but I was curious to compare and these were so similar I am now forced to share.
Player A: 38 catches for 510 yards and three touchdowns
Player B: 37 catches for 674 yards and three touchdowns
Player A is Collins last year at Clemson. Player B is Kaleb Smith’s 2022 season in Blacksburg. He then transferred to Notre Dame and medically retired prior to the 2023 campaign. Collins has a riper pedigree and has the advantage of exiting the shaky Clemson offense for a (hopefully) (please) real one so I think he’ll be a nice fit but those were so eerily similar for big-bodied ACC veterans I felt compelled to include.
Freshmen, redshirt and true: Micah Gilbert, Cam Williams, K.K. Smith, Logan Saldate
Gilbert, the big freshman from North Carolina, impressed enough in camp he was getting social media sizzle reels of his highlights from the official Notre Dame accounts. He followed that up with a great Blue-Gold performance that underlined a lot of what we had been hearing. Can he compete with Collins and potentially Thomas on the boundary for snaps this fall? Seems like good insurance and something to dream on going forward at the very worst.
Williams was one of the top recruits in the class and was electric in the closed scrimmage earlier this month against the reserve defense before sitting out Blue-Gold with a hamstring injury. There was a general sense earlier in spring he would likely need another year of development before being fully thrown into the mix but let’s check in on where that stands come August. As long as communication lines are open, because while there are many different factors, this is what was said last season about Braylon James (highest rated receiver in his class) and he now plays for TCU.
Smith is slight, fast and missed last season with injury. There was talk of him being featured in the Sun Bowl, and that didn’t materialize but he looked comfortable in the Blue-Gold Game. It’s cool to have an intriguing young prospect like this and be unsure where their potential snaps will be versus throwing him to the wolves by default.
Logan Saldate is a lower four-star prospect from California who didn’t early enroll but smart recruiting people are excited for so we’ll see if he can scratch the rotation once he’s on campus.
A running back?!: Jeremiyah Love
The rising sophomore checked the requisite boxes at tailback and was allowed to do some cross-training by Deland McCullough. This seems like a real thing and a good depth move, and also implies that Denbrock sees Love and Jadarian Price as two of his best skill players and wants them on the field as much as possible. Love turned on the jets a few times on Saturday and I am in favor of getting him as many touches in space as possible because his combination of strength and speed is so tantalizing.
Veteran wildcard: Deion Colzie
Brown has had nothing but kind words to say about Colzie’s effort so far in camp but it’s tough to say where exactly he fits in. He looked good in the Dublin opener last season, got hurt shortly thereafter and didn’t have a catch the rest of the way. He popped a few times on Saturday but if you have a strong theory on what his snap count looks like come September I am all ears but happy to have him in the room regardless.
Earlier this month Brown stated he wanted six in the rotation, which would be quite the leap from the “Two and a half healthy bodies? Maybe?” situation we had last fall. Obviously injuries will occur but if I had to guess I would say if everyone is healthy your lock-locks are Greathouse, Thomas, Mitchell and Faison, almost certainly Collins, then it’s a question of whether Colzie or Harrison’s veteran experience trumps the potential of the young guys. (I am assuming Love isn’t counting as a true member of the rotation unless things get desperate, but that’s only a guess.)
Feel extremely good about both the depth and ceiling at quarterback and running back, and anyone who wants to start penning in C.J. Carr for the 2025 opener won’t face much pushback from me after some of those throws. Kenny Minchey got a little creative with his reads at times but he was also a joy to watch, lankily gliding along as a rusher and showing some nice touch. Steve Angeli remains a guy who does all the things you want a quarterback to be able to do and while he seemed like a potential transfer candidate he spoke after the game about competing in August camp so we’ll see.1
As long as there is average health at tight end the tradition should carry forward there, and while so many outside threats were discussed above it would be really fun to see Mitchell Evans and Eli Raridon patrolling the skies in tandem because that is a lot of talented size. Cooper Flanagan taking a leap is more than welcome as well.
The big red flag is still the offensive line. The interior seems to be coming along but questions at tackle are going to remain until proven otherwise. Denbrock can scheme around it to a degree but are they comfortable enough with Leonard’s accuracy to do a lot of quick throws? Does the comfort in the back-ups mean you run QB1 a little more? There are a lot of reasons to feel wonderful about this team but the sentence “The starting quarterback has a shaky ankle and is being protected by two unknown quantities at tackle” throws a bit of cold water onto things.
A final Denbrock positive before we move forward. We spent time last season lamenting how the offense generally lacked creativity and adaptability against any defense with a pulse and while I don’t want to belabor it much further let’s flag this quote from Minchey: “[Denbrock] gives us the ability to check out of plays, flip plays, get us to a different look if we see something different from the defense. We didn’t do as much of that last year, but I’m a lot better with it as far as identifying what I’m seeing on the defense and then flipping a play to get us in the best position.”
While frustrating, it is validating from an analytical perspective that the sense last year was “Notre Dame seems to be going up to the line and just running a play no matter what the defense is showing” and that’s indeed exactly what was happening. Onward and upward.
Defense is going to be awesome? A few potential concerns/nitpicks below but Al Golden’s third season on the job could be one of the best Notre Dame defenses we’ve seen since, uh, Al Golden’s second season. In the early days of this newsletter we were trying to piece together enough bodies for a starting foursome on the defensive line and now there is so much depth up front and so many potential stars at linebacker. In the secondary, all we have is the returning Nagurski Trophy winner at safety and a corner who might be the best at his position in the country.
I can’t really think of any concerns along the defensive line other than maybe not having a pure A1 pass rusher to the level of Julian Okwara or Isaiah Foskey. What’s exciting is there are possibilities for that next season and going forward in guys like Boubacar Traore and Bryce Young. Jordan Botelho and R.J. Oben need to hold up their veteran side of the bargain while we ideally sprinkle in some Joshua Burnham and Junior Tuihalamaka. The defensive tackle room might be the single best in the entire country, no issues there. Initial Sean Sevillano review.
At linebacker, early enrollee Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa is earning raves and was certainly active on Saturday, defending passes 20 yards downfield and looking like a next-gen Manti2. There is a lot to like about many of the fresh options around him with Jaylen Sneed, Jaiden Ausberry and Drayk Bowen. The only worry here is that Jack Kiser is a perfect sixth-year sensei to keep everything organized but if an injury were to befall him you would need someone who has not played a lot of snaps to be ahead of the curve. (Kahanu Kia fits somewhere on the spectrum between Kiser and the youth. Kia played some in 2021, took a two-year mission and returned to the program with great fanfare, putting up a dozen tackles — two for loss — on Saturday.) To be safe, let’s continue to keep Kiser in bubble wrap until College Station.
Safety Adon Shuler was one of the big spring risers (great practice reports followed by eight tackles and a pass break-up on Saturday) and if that performance carries over into the fall that’s a really nice rotation with unanimous All-American Xavier Watts and incoming Northwestern transfer Rod Heard II. Would like to see a little something from Luke Talich and/or Ben Minich for both depth this season and a sturdier foundation going forward but like where this stands.
If Benjamin Morrison is healthy all season, I don’t think there’s reason to have much concern about corner. If he’s not, you then need both Jaden Mickey and Christian Gray to be ready for primetime plus someone else to step up. (Sophomore speedster Micah Bell had a quiet camp but looked good during Blue-Gold.) The staff seems very much aware of this precarity and hosted Rice corner Tre’Shon Devones last week. Arizona State transfer Jordan Clark seems like he’ll be solid at nickel.
One roster issue that shouldn’t take too much to be resolved: Notre Dame has no punter after Bryce McFerson announced his departure last week. Freeman said Saturday they were going to address it via the portal and that seems like one of the easier problems to fix in that you can reach out to a bunch of guys going pro in something other than sports and offer them a very exciting opportunity. Another potential fix for this is to simply never punt. Good to keep all options open, right? I also would support lawyering Jon Sot another year of eligibility.
Overall, there is a lot to like about this team and there’s a reason the expectation is for Notre Dame to at the very least be in the playoff come December if not hosting a game as one of the field’s favorites. Pray for a healthy and boring offseason, a gift or two from the transfer portal and the good vibes to keep rolling.
Additional note from Saturday: Notre Dame broke ground on a new, larger football building to replace the Gug. (If anyone wants to give me a bunch of money to put their name on this digital building, feel free to reach out.) I am very glad we are in an era where facility arms races are considerably less important because players are being paid directly but outside of the specifics of the amenities this seems really important for the future of Fighting Irish football.
Throwing this much money at a sport that could look completely different in five or ten years implies you’re planning on continuing to pursue that sport even if it barely resembles the current incarnation. I don’t know what the interest from the university or its fans will be if college football is a league of semi-pro teams that are licensing their name, colors and mascots from schools, but this new building makes me think at least a soft embrace could be in play.
That is it for our football section so thank you very much for reading. I’m going to close by talking some basketball because this is the first edition since the conclusion of the tournaments. Last time we spoke I referred to the women’s season at that moment as a mild disappointment, as they sat at 21-6 and outside of the benchmarks set for the program. Things changed rather abruptly following that assessment.
Niele Ivey’s team won seven games in a row after that (running the total streak to ten), the first five coming against ranked opponents and the latter five coming in single-elimination tournament games. They decked the ACC regular season champion Hokies (with a healthy conference player of the year Liz Kitley) at home, avenged an earlier loss to Louisville to close out the regular season and then got to the ACC final by beating Louisville again and blowing a Kitley-less Hokies team off the floor by 29 points, the worst-ever loss by a top seed in that tournament.
Because this program is at least mildly cursed, they lost center Kylee Watson to a torn ACL in the second Virginia Tech game just as she was starting to really find her two-way groove. Despite a limited rotation, they rallied late against NC State — who would go on to make the Final Four! Very good team! — to win the title game because Maddy Westbeld and Sonia Citron were and are stone-cold killers and the backcourt of Hannah Hidalgo and Anna DeWolfe was a terror on defense and in transition. If you missed the post-trophy Notre Dame propaganda on the ACC Network featuring Ivey, Hidalgo and Muffet McGraw, treat yourself, as it was a delight.
(Biased because they were covering a Notre Dame victory and Muffet was involved, but the ACC Network crew was a ton of fun. ESPN also struck gold with their primary women’s tournament studio show after failing for over a decade at putting together any kind of enjoyable NBA programming while “Inside the NBA” taunts them from over on TNT.)
The Irish then made the Sweet Sixteen for the third consecutive season, easily advancing past Kent State and walloping an Ole Miss team that had been a trendy upset pick in the second round. Nat Marshall, who found herself in foul trouble much of the season, stepped up in an incredible way to hold down the interior following Watson’s injury. She’s announced her intention to graduate transfer but she was a rock in the postseason, going from playing minutes in the mid-teens to maxing out at nearly the entire game against the deep, tall, strong and wide Oregon State frontline. Marshall played so smart and so tough in critical games and deserves all the flowers.
I will be annoyed about the loss to the Beavers in the Sweet Sixteen forever, probably, mainly because of how a First-Team All-American was forced to have minor surgery performed on her nose* during the second quarter due to officiating incompetence. Despite that, Notre Dame did have the lead late and was unable to sink the dagger. A brutal way to go out, the only balm being the Gamecocks awaited in the Elite Eight and there isn’t much mystery about how a Parisian rematch might have gone.
* The Hidalgo nose ring controversy did highlight an especially annoying archetype of human being, the “Well, it was in the rulebook” person. If that’s what you truly believe, you should be furious that it took until the second quarter of a team’s 35th game for the rule to be enforced because what a misjustice perpetrated and perpetuated for the last five months. Also please reconsider everything about your worldview because you’re doing life wrong.
In the end, Ivey turned a lukewarm fourth season into a triumph, adding the ACC tournament banner, another Sweet Sixteen and a bunch of big wins (including in Storrs and Knoxville). During the desperation of the second half against Oregon State she also turned to something I hope we see going forward, as the full-court press with these athletes was devastating to the Beavers. There were multiple ten-second violations! When people dream about the Hidalgo/Citron/Olivia Miles combination, a lot of attention is understandably paid to what they will be on offense, but defensively they are going to put some opposing backcourts in hell. I cannot wait.
Next year’s team looms as the one that has to break through to the Elite Eight and beyond for Ivey. There still needs to be a couple transfer portal additions but the returning talent is tantalizing now that Westbeld has confirmed she’ll be back for a fifth season. Incoming five-star freshman Kate Koval put on shows at both the McDonald’s All-American Game and Nike Hoop Summit, displaying her abilities inside as the nation’s best post prospect but also demonstrating range from three, passing and ballhandling. Emma Risch and Cass Prosper being healthy adds two more five-star talents. (Risch was casually shooting threes in Albany before the Sweet Sixteen and made about a dozen in a row.) I am giddy with anticipation for what this team is going to be capable of with 75ish minutes of All-American point guard play every game and gobs of talent around it.
Fun, fun season overall for the women’s game. I am fascinated to see what happens going forward with Caitlin Clark moving onto the WNBA after ratings records were shattered for the tournament and draft. There will be a dip in the college interest without her and a bump at the professional level as she ascends but how far those levels change remains to be seen. The college game is in incredible hands with players like Hidalgo, JuJu Watkins, Flau'jae Johnson, Paige Bueckers (I loath that a UConn player is this cool and unhateable), Madison Booker, etc., etc., but losing Clark and Angel Reese means losing two giant figures.
[The Clark/Reese rivalry felt like it was built in a lab to check in on the racism levels of America and folks we might still have some work to do. Reese’s existence inspired so many people (well, mostly white dudes) to ignore everything women of color were saying to announce that as people who didn’t see race or gender they were quite capable of providing objective assessments of how many death threats a 21-year-old deserved for being demonstrative on the basketball floor.]
We went really long this time so if you made it this far thank you so much for reading. All in all, feeling very good about the state of things but wow is that Texas A&M game looming so large. We’ll have some more pods in the coming months and I imagine a newsletter check-in once the latest round of transfer portal activity settles down but until then take care of yourself and each other. Go Irish, Beat Aggies.
The transfer portal is open until the end of the month, if you’re keeping track. It feels like an impossible blessing to take all four of these quarterbacks into the August camp but perhaps it is only improbable.
I didn’t want to commit blasphemy with this comparison alone so I ran this by Jamie Uyeyama and he signed off. Also, Jamie will be joining the pod later this week to talk spring practice takeaways and also Shogun because it’s awesome and we are obsessed with it so keep your eyes out for that.