Rakes Report #291: I'm headed for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains, so come with me and we'll go and see
Marcus Freeman’s fifth August camp is set to start. Plus how to build an elite passing offense and some jersey patch discourse.
~optional musical accompaniment~
Before we dive in on Marcus Freeman’s press conference, I wanted to point everyone in the direction of the podcast feed where we did our best to provide a guide to attending a Notre Dame home game (Spotify) (Apple). Pretty much everything being done by the people running the sport is causing some minor depression so it was good to be reminded of all the fun things you can do with your friends and family when you go to an actual football game. I know we missed stuff so please relay your improvements and we’ll eventually get it together in print form.
Speaking of actual football, camp will officially begin on Thursday but Freeman spoke to the media Tuesday afternoon (full video here). There wasn’t anything too exciting but some relevant information/interesting tidbits:
Wide receiver Micah Gilbert had “as good of an offseason as anyone,” which is great news with all of the boundary receiver reps vacated by Malachi Fields now available. Relevant that Ohio State transfer Quincy Porter, who will also be competing for those snaps, is limited to start practice.
In addition to returning captains Drayk Bowen and Adon Shuler, Freeman listed Jason Onye, Leonard Moore, Boubacar Traore, Anthonie Knapp, Ashton Craig, Jaylen Sneed, Jaiden Ausberry, Bryce Young and Aneyas Williams as players who’ve stepped up as leaders this offseason (he said he was definitely forgetting guys, including initially Williams).
Referred to C.J. Carr as another coordinator on the field and said he was especially pleased with his quarterback’s ability to get the Irish out of negative plays. He added that Carr had to have the freedom to make changes that the coaches might not agree with and/or see.
When asked if quarterback Teddy Jarrard, who enrolled in June, could potentially be the backup quarterback come Lambeau Freeman said it was possible. Jarrard is competing with sophomore Blake Hebert and fellow freshman Noah Grubbs, who was enrolled for spring. Much love and respect to the trio but I hope we do not see them take a meaningful snap until September 2027 at earliest.
Limited to start practice: Craig, the projected starting center, and linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, who are quite important to the grandest ambitions for 2026. Sophomore Elijah Burress is also limited, which could hurt his potential ability to crack into the back end of the receiver rotation but it’s a long season. Freeman said that anyone listed as limited he expected to be full go prior to Wisconsin, so hopefully those healing arcs continue as expected.
Charles Jagusah is out for the start of camp. So is Christopher Burgess, Jr., who moved inside from defensive end and was a potential deep rotation piece there but suffered a leg injury.
Speaking of interior defense, Freeman included Armel Mukam and Sean Sevillano in the mix along with the top four we assumed would be getting heavy snaps (Jason Onye, Elijah Hughes, Francis Brewu, Tionne Gray). Remains wild this was a potential weak point on the team before the portal and NCAA ruling on Onye getting another year.
While we’re talking roster, I wanted to point to this piece at Irish Sports Daily about the possibility of Junior Tuihalamaka returning for his fifth year. If it happens, it would come via a recent court ruling allows athletes who just completed playing four seasons in four years to get the bonus year now afforded to those currently on rosters. He would be a perfect add to a defensive end rotation that has upside but not certainty as far as depth, but we’ll see how realistic that ends up being.
With the Irish having so few on-paper weaknesses coming into the season, I have spent the offseason pondering how the offense is going to look after losing so much playmaking (two first-round running backs plus a pair of Day Two NFL Draft picks and a sturdy slot receiver, all of whom would have certainly had gaudier receiving stats if not for the power of the ground game). Mike Denbrock’s unit was excellent last year, finishing third in F+*, a year after finishing sixth, showing it’s very helpful to have Jeremiyah Love on your team. Even if offensive line improvement and a more advanced passing attack keeping the defense honest means the running game falloff isn’t as severe as you would expect from losing Love and Jadarian Price, there will still be some dip, especially when it comes to explosivity.
* A reminder as we get close to the season and more folks lock in: The short explanation of F+ is that it’s an advanced stat that does a great job of telling you how good a team is overall and on either side of the ball, absolutely passing the eyeball test and far exceeding someone who is trying to explain the sport to you via points or yards per game. The nerdier explanation of F+ is that it combines the per-play efficiency metrics of SP+ with the per-drive efficiency metrics of FEI, both adjusting for quality of opponent and filtering garbage time.
There are a lot of reasons to feel good about the offense. They’re bringing back C.J. Carr and Denbrock from their fruitful partnership last year. They have a lot of options to catch the ball at receiver and tight end, which is good to avoid a 2023 situation where all the wideouts had fallen and it’s just Mitchell Evans and Rico Flores against the world. However, having a bunch of solid options at wide receiver in itself has not traditionally been enough to field an elite passing offense. It’s good to have a large and talented pool from which to work, but in the end you need one or ideally two capital-D Dudes to emerge and power the offense with Carr.
Barring some level of malfeasance or chaos I do not want to consider, Notre Dame is going to have an elite defense this season, which means the offense doesn’t necessarily have to be number one to win a title. But the offense does have to be close to that if history is any precedent as the six national champions this decade had F+ offensive ratings of first, second (twice), third (twice) and sixth* (a team that cheated). Apologies for the rest of this section because I’m going to be throwing a lot of numbers at you.
The defending champion Hoosiers were No. 2 in F+ offense, behind Vanderbilt (we’ll talk about them in a moment). Their receiver distribution — and this is including all 16 games — was NFL Draft pick wide receivers Omar Cooper Jr. and Elijah Sarratt both with at least 65 catches and 830 yards then three more players (two wideouts and a tight end) with between 32 and 36 receptions. No other non-tailback had more than 14 catches.
Going back the last couple years, Miami had the No. 1 F+ offense in 2024 with Cam Ward and three receivers with at least 53 catches, and a fourth with 36. Oregon had the No. 1 offense in 2023 with Bo Nix and a pair of Day Three NFL picks (Tez Johnson and Troy Franklin) both having over 80 receptions. There’s a bit of a chicken and egg conversation with this in “Are the receivers making the quarterback look good or vice-versa?”, and I think in most instances it’s a little bit of both. Carr being a no-brainer first-round pick like Fernando Mendoza, Ward and Nix would be quite helpful to the cause.
(The top-ranked 2025 Vanderbilt Commodore offense is an exception to the rule, as second round pick tight end Eli Stowers led them in receptions with 62 for 769 yards, then two wideouts kicked in 54 for 784 and 46 for 806. Does Notre Dame have a Stowers-level tight end on their team? Maybe, because they have some tremendous talent at that position, but that’s an incredible season. The other giant difference is Diego Pavia rushed for nearly 900 yards, something I don’t anticipate Carr approaching despite the fact his NFL prospects are much rosier.)
Let’s look specifically at how the best non-Love Denbrock offenses have been formed. In 2023, LSU finished No. 2 in F+ and Jayden Daniels won the Heisman. That pass distribution was first-round pick Malik Nabers (89 for 1569) (are you kidding me), first-round pick Brian Thomas Jr. (68 for 1177) (and 17 touchdowns), tight end Mason Taylor (36 for 348) and the late Kyren Lacy (30 for 558). No one else had more than 14 catches.
In 2015 at Notre Dame, Denbrock dealt with a lot of injuries, including needing to turn to an inexperienced quarterback by the end of the second game. The Irish still had the No. 7 F+ offense and were also, to use a technical term, Really Fun To Watch. That reception breakdown looked like Will Fuller (62 for 1258), Chris Brown (48 for 597), Amir Carlisle (32 for 355), Torii Hunter, Jr. (28 for 363) and C.J. Prosise (26 for 308). Perhaps this is a framework the Irish could aspire to in 2026, but that would require someone to be as good as Fuller as your clear-cut alpha who is drawing multiple defensive backs on a lot of snaps and running by all of them anyway.
Denbrock made the four-team playoff with Cincinnati in 2021 with four receivers (including future Day Two NFL Draft picks Alec Pierce and Tre Tucker) and two tight ends all between 26 and 52 catches. Another potential framework, but quarterback Desmond Ridder was a rushing threat and that offense only finished 17th in F+. The Irish have to aim higher to win multiple playoff games.
A lot of time for Carr and Denbrock to sort things out, but if the running game indeed takes a step back they’ll need to settle on at least one and ideally two dudes at receiver through which to run the offense. Maybe this will be an exception to the rule but the idea of a half-dozen different wideouts kicking in a couple dozen receptions each has not traditionally been the path to an elite passing offense.
As a reminder, taxonomy of where Notre Dame stands at wide receiver as camp opens.
Produced/healthy/didn’t play lacrosse this spring
Jordan Faison - 49 catches for 640 yards in 2025
Produced/hasn’t been healthy/could be, though
Jaden Greathouse - 42 for 592 in 2024, 4 for 73 last season
Ohio State transfers who were big-time recruits and buried behind a bunch of first-round picks
Mylan Graham - 6 for 93 in 2025
Quincy Porter - 4 for 59 in 2025
Light production/wasn’t healthy but seems so now and just got praised by his head coach
Micah Gilbert - 9 for 93 in 2025
Juniors who have a shot
Logan Saldate - 1 for 2 in 2025
Cam Williams - 1 for 6 in 2025
Underclassmen whose dads played in the NFL
Jerome Bettis, Jr. - 1 for 6 in 2025
Elijah Burress - 3 for for 21 in 2025
Kadon Finley
Devin Fitzgerald
A safety/quasi-linebacker who converted a fake punt into a touchdown who’s not involved in this but hey we should still mention
Luke Talich - 1 for 84
My initial reaction to Notre Dame announcing a jersey patch sponsorship deal with SoFi was a sigh and acceptance that this was the price of doing business because if you want a top-level roster and coaching staff then that money needs to come from somewhere*. European jerseys are festooned with logos, we’ve seen professional sports adding patches in recent years and it’s not a large amount of area being covered. I also try to run college sports items through the lens of “How would you feel if you explained this to a normal person?”, and you want to be careful with talk of desecrating a football jersey. But the more I thought about it, the more I soured.
* This move is the result of an NCAA decision in January that allows schools to put up to two commercial patches on their jerseys.
I’m not opposed to a patch in general, but I wish the sponsor had any previous relationship with Notre Dame and wasn’t a 15-year-old student loan company founded at Stanford*. (Culver’s sponsoring Wisconsin is perfect, similar to the Pittsburgh Pirates having Sheetz patches.) I also understand the entire point of sponsorships generally is to hype up the company giving the money but a video narrated by Hannah Storm and noting that SoFi is sponsoring two scholarships for walk-ons (cool and good, but also a drop in the bucket of what we’re talking about here) seems like overkill. I know you can’t approach this from a position of shame but I don’t follow sports so my favorite teams can brag about signing “landmark multi-year partnerships” and diversifying their revenue streams, even if the downstream effects of that in theory lead to winning and that winning makes me happy.
* Pete Bevacqua said that the university sought out SoFi, whose CEO just had a kid graduate from Notre Dame. Whether that’s actually what happened or if this is just a thing he’s saying to make the deal seem more firm after a survey of other options, I do not know. This Golf Digest interview with Bevacqua gives some insight into his view on balancing tradition (ctrl+F “tradition” to skip down to the specific answer) with modernization and revenue.
I don’t love slippery slope arguments but once you sign off on being blindly cool with anything that helps the Irish work toward more wins you could be in trouble because the term “keeping up with the Joneses” is neither aspirational nor complimentary. You can’t say Notre Dame has to do whatever it takes to keep pace financially with every other top team because at that point you’re saying the university should hand over all their agency to other programs. Winning is cool and fun, but continue on down the path and I’m not sure I’ll get the same thrill from the Notre Dame Fighting Palantirs presented by NOEM advancing through the playoff. It is also fair to give the Powers That Be credit for the stadium environment not being plastered with ads like you’ll find nearly everywhere else across the country.
My feelings curdling on this is also a symptom of broader issues with the sport and society at large. “Well, I could not take this money for a moral reason, but then I wouldn’t have it and someone else likely would” is a race to the bottom, and that’s especially true with college football, where there is no end in sight to the spending. Head coaches now make eight figures, every major assistant makes seven and we’ve seen reported roster costs swell from the national champion Buckeyes’ $20 million in 2024 to numerous teams over $40 million two years later. People love to say things like “Well this can’t possibly keep up” and that’s true over a long enough timeline but who knows how long the money incinerator will rage and what will be done to feed it for the sake of fandom and winning.
(I did appreciate that the news came a few hours after Ohio State announced their own jersey patch sponsorship, allowing just enough time for Notre Dame fans who view their support as a sign of moral superiority versus being a slightly different strain of deviant sicko to bash the Buckeyes before the karmic bill came due.)
While this will help schools increase revenue, it’s not going to help close the revenue gap and is in fact almost certainly going to widen it. Notre Dame is getting a reported $18-20 million per year for their patch, Ohio State is getting nearly $17 million, Illinois is getting $6 million, Michigan State is looking at up to $4 million and Big 12 schools are getting about $1 million for the conference’s Monster Energy deal. A number of other deals have been announced without the details disclosed, which leads me to believe they are not approaching the Buckeye or Irish range. This isn’t quite a K-shaped athletics economy, but it’s an alligator opening its jaws even wider while tilting its head up. Obviously doesn’t hurt Notre Dame’s cause, but if you like the sport they’re playing generally I wouldn’t say this is ideal for its long-term health.
That’s it. Southern Cal back on the schedule but at the wrong time, Indiana chickening out, whole thing bums me out even if it’ll be nice to play for the jeweled shillelagh again.
Apologies for the erroneous accompaniment link at the top of the previous edition. I was attempting to send you to the title sequence for Jackass: Best and Last, which is set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” but that version of the video got pulled sometime between when I inserted it and publication. Here’s the late, great Tyler in her full glory for a proper tribute.
I’m not sure how much additional camp news we’ll have but unless we’re buffeted with it I’m thinking there will be two more newsletters before the season kicks off, with depth chart power rankings coming in a couple weeks and then the formal season preview kickoff on Friday, Sept. 4. Keep an eye on your podcast feeds (Rakes Report on any app), check out the merch and spread the good word to the other Irish fans in your life. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.