SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman implored, encouraged and pleaded on Saturday afternoon as Notre Dame staged arguably its most important practice of the spring, a nearly 60-play scrimmage inside the Irish Athletics Center. As much as no single day can make or break the offseason, the roughly two-hour open practice offered some indications of where Notre Dame is headed and where it needs to go.
All three quarterbacks showed something, although CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey showed the most, even if it wasn’t always good. The defensive line showed a lot, dominating much of the day. And some of the buzz around some young talent got backed up on the field.
As has been the custom with Notre Dame’s open practices, we’ll offer a running diary of the action, trying to find a few signals through all that noise.
12:26 p.m.: Notre Dame begins with special teams work on kickoff return and coverage. As media members arrive, Jadarian Price gets the first rep as the returner, a role he turned into a 99-yard touchdown against USC a couple of years ago. But Jeremiyah Love is back there, too. That’s the kind of special teams we’re here to see.
12:30 p.m.: Notre Dame breaks down into individual drills by position, and Love follows the receivers. As much as Jaden Greathouse looks like the top wide receiver by a wide margin, is Love the team’s second-best wideout? That suddenness that embarrassed linebackers and safeties last year is no match for stationary bags as the receivers work 10-yard comeback routes. Love moves through these easily, even though wide receivers coach Mike Brown asks for a redo.
12:31 p.m.: There’s no Jordan Faison, who’s playing for the lacrosse team in a loss at Syracuse. Removing Faison provides a reminder that, for how much better the receivers have become the past couple of seasons, it’s still a thin group. Will Pauling, a transfer from Wisconsin who is slightly limited by a foot injury, looks like an adult compared to some of the younger talent on hand. Everything Pauling does looks mature, beyond what last year’s graduate transfers showed.
Marcus Freeman is entering his fifth season as Notre Dame’s coach. (Austin Hough / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
12:39 p.m.: The secondary drills coverages against the scout team, with Karson Hobbs and Cree Thomas working as the second-team cornerbacks. Both fit in just fine athletically with a group that includes Leonard Moore and Christian Gray. Not much from Devonta Smith, an Alabama transfer who is limited by a minor abdominal injury. But that opens the door for Tae Johnson. The sophomore kicks it in. Repeatedly.
12:42 p.m.: Greathouse doesn’t catch passes. He dominates the football. Every other receiver lets the ball come to them. Not Greathouse. At the risk of hyperbole, Greathouse’s style of catching the football looks like Michael Floyd.
12:45 p.m.: The offensive line enters the building after drilling alignments outside. There’s no sign of Guerby Lambert, who underwent shoulder surgery on his labrum. Freeman expects the potential starting left tackle back for the season. As for what’s left for spring practice, this might be as rough a practice for Notre Dame’s offensive line as any in recent memory. Your starting offensive tackles? Sophomore Styles Prescod and mid-year enrollee Matty Augustine. Not ideal.
12:46 p.m.: The first-team defense comes out for 11-on-11. It’s something of a hybrid look with Johnson working in the secondary with Moore, Gray and Adon Shuler.
12:48 p.m.: Love tries to get into the 11-on-11 period but is pulled back. Smart.
12:49 p.m.: To understand how mishmash the offensive personnel was on Saturday due to injury/availability, the Irish took the field in 12 personnel with Eli Raridon and Kevin Bauman at tight end, with Jerome Bettis Jr. and Cam Williams and wide out. Carr is the quarterback. Nobody is open.
12:53 p.m.: Before the scrimmage ramps up, Notre Dame does some seven-on-seven work. Minchey and Carr check down almost everything. Angeli does not, cutting up the Irish defense on intermediate throws over the middle. He hits Pauling for a 25-yarder down the seam. He throws slightly behind Elijah Burress, who can’t make the catch. Angeli finishes with a 15-yard completion to tight end Jack Larsen.
If football were a seven-on-seven competition, Angeli won it Saturday.
12:54 p.m.: Love catches a pass in the flat and jukes out a defender, only to crumble to the turf. Love grabs at his hamstring, attempts to get up, then collapses to the ground again. Love was walking around later in the practice without too much apparent discomfort, but that was a wrap of Love for the day. See you in August.
12:58 p.m.: After a couple check downs to Price, Carr hits KK Smith on an in-breaking route over the middle that could have gone for a touchdown. When Carr is on, he can throw receivers open into their routes, basically taking them away from the defender. It feels like a different level of accuracy than the other quarterbacks, but it’s hard to quantify.
1:05 p.m.: Now for the good stuff. The scrimmage. Minchey comes out with the starting offense. And the drive ends in a touchdown, although Minchey’s 11-yard scramble on third-and-8 was probably his highlight. The best play of the series goes to offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock, who gets the Irish defense with a middle screen to Raridon, who takes the perfectly executed call for a 42-yard gain, down the 7-yard line. Saturday is the best Raridon has looked in an open practice in his career.
1:07 p.m.: Johnson drops Price for a 2-yard loss. The sophomore from Fort Wayne is all over the defense on Saturday. Two plays early, Jaylen Sneed drops Price for a 3-yard loss on a pass play in the flat after reading Minchey’s eyes.
1:09 p.m.: Aneyas Williams slips into the end zone on fourth-and-goal from the 1. Charles Jagusah appears to injure his right ankle on the play, but he returns for the rest of the scrimmage, even at less than 100 percent.
1:12 p.m.: Angeli is up next, misses Burress on his first snap and appears to bust the play on his second, although it’s not clear where the breakdown happens. Angeli still moves better than people give him credit for, as he scrambles for 9 yards on fourth-and-4 from near midfield.
1:15 p.m.: Angeli has Cam Williams open over the middle with no safety help deep. All Angeli needs to do is put the ball on the sophomore receiver, but the throw is a beat late. Williams drops the pass after getting inside Thomas. Notre Dame needed a better throw and a better catch. Because it would have been a touchdown with both. Opportunity missed.
1:17 p.m.: Angeli’s first series ends with the play blown up by multiple pass rushers on fourth-and-4. Riley Leonard wouldn’t have been able to make anything out of that protection as the offensive line struggles to keep the quarterbacks clean.
1:18 p.m.: Mid-year enrollee Blake Hebert gets a few reps and looks like a quarterback who should still be in high school. False start, tackle for loss, takes a sack by Cole Mullins in rapid succession. It’s worth remembering this is what it’s supposed to look like for early enrollees in their ninth college practice. It’s just that Carr broke the curve last spring. If Carr was the exception, Hebert is more of the rule.
1:20 p.m.: Carr gets his second series and hits Aneyas Williams for a 5-yard gain to start it. For how good Love and Price will be this year, Williams appears to be in phenomenal physical condition after a good freshman season. This isn’t a Kyren Williams physical evolution from freshman to sophomore year, but Aneyas Williams looks like a more sudden and explosive athlete at running back, well ahead of Kedren Young and Gi’Bran Payne.
1:21 p.m.: Shuler drills Payne in the hole, stuffing him for a 2-yard gain. Yes, Shuler has a lot of room to grow his game after a breakout sophomore season. But the New Jersey product looks like Notre Dame’s next great safety. Freeman spoke after practice about replacing Xavier Watts and how the hardest part will be finding a safety who you trust to make a play regardless of the call, regardless of the opponent. Could Shuler be that level of player? There are times when it looks like it.
1:22 p.m.: Josh Burnham gets across the face of Jagusah to stuff Payne on fourth-and-1 to end Carr’s second series at midfield. Saturday was hardly the best of Jagusah, both because of injury and because of the offensive line around him. As much as offensive line coach Joe Rudolph knew this spring would be difficult to evaluate because of all the freshmen and sophomores on the field, Saturday was a brutal reminder. Jagusah (right guard) and Sullivan Absher (left guard) might be the only offensive linemen who practiced Saturday who will be in contention for time this fall.
1:24 p.m.: Hebert drops a 15-yard completion to walk-on Xavier Southall in front of Gray. Normally, a walk-on receiver making a play wouldn’t be newsworthy, but considering the 105-man roster limit coming, walk-ons have to grab hold of their opportunities when presented. Southall does.
1:25 p.m.: On back-to-back plays, Elijah Hughes, a transfer from USC, helps stuff Young for a 1-yard gain and Jared Dawson, a transfer from Louisville, sacks Hebert. Yes, the weakness of Notre Dame’s offensive line makes evaluating the defensive tackles difficult. But Hughes and Dawson do enough on Saturday to show they’ll both be more than rotational guys alongside Jason Onye, Gabe Rubio and Donovan Hinish. Have reports of the defensive tackle room’s demise been greatly exaggerated? Defensive line coach Al Washington would welcome that potential.
1:26 p.m.: Another series for Minchey, which begins with a deep shot to Larsen that’s overthrown, exposing the tight end to safety Luke Talich, who puts a shoulder into his defenseless teammate. It’s a clean hit. The refs flag it anyway. Freeman waves it off. Yes, we shouldn’t complain about officiating in an April scrimmage, but come on, this is football.
1:28 p.m.: Kennedy Urlacher stalks the line of scrimmage and drops Aneyas Williams for a 1-yard gain as the sophomore tries to bounce the run outside. It’s hard to know what Urlacher can be for Notre Dame. Special teams ace? Run-supporting safety? Future starter? But he’s going to be something. There’s too much instinct here.
1:30 p.m.: Minchey faces pressure up the middle and makes a back-foot throw to the field side … the kind of cardinal sin quarterbacks can’t make. Walk-on cornerback Isaiah Dunn picks it off and falls. If that’s Gray or Moore, it’s a pick six. On a day when Minchey did a lot of good, this interception was how he ended his practice.
1:35 p.m.: Onye puts Jagusah on skates and walks him straight back into Angeli. Onye is flagged for hands to the face, but whatever body part he used to beat Jagusah here, 320-pound offensive linemen shouldn’t be moved in reverse quite like this. The physics just don’t make sense. Onye doesn’t need to be an All-American this season. But he looks like a defensive tackle who’s going to make a bunch of impactful plays.
1:38 p.m.: Noah Burnette, a transfer from North Carolina, attempts a 28-yard field goal from the left hash and sends it over the left upright. The officials signal it wide. Which it might after been. But even if Burnette had made the kick, it would have gone down as a shaky attempt. It’s his only live kick in the scrimmage.
1:39 p.m.: Carr gets the final series and is running for his life behind the offensive line. Dawson gets pressure straight up the middle, forcing Carr to throw the ball speculatively down the field into coverage. It’s not quite a throwaway but not quite a brutal quarterback decision. Still, it’s a ball that cornerbacks like Gray or Moore would pick.
1:39 p.m.: Thoughts and prayers to mid-year enrollee right tackle Owen Strebig blocking Bryce Young off the edge. Also, thoughts and prayers to Carr in the pocket. Sack. Young is barely touched.
1:40 p.m.: Final play of the scrimmage, and Carr is under pressure again, although the Irish block it just enough to give the quarterback time to lob a deep ball to Burress, who catches it for a 25-yard touchdown over Dunn at the back of the end zone. The throw is perfect, in a spot where it had to be. Burress had real estate of feet, not yards, in the end zone to make the catch. This is the basketball equivalent of ending practice on a make, but if the make was a half-court shot. Should Carr’s singular completion change perception of the quarterback race? Probably not. But there’s no point in ignoring, either. It’s the kind of rare pass Notre Dame has been looking for from its quarterbacks.
1:42 p.m.: Freeman gathers the team at midfield to wrap practice, which the coach applauds to the media afterward. The Irish will stage the Blue-Gold Game next Saturday, and it will look a lot like this: offense versus defense instead of Blue vs. Gold. It has been a unique spring for Notre Dame after the longest season in program history, different enough that it’s been hard to get a read on what the Irish might (and might not) be this fall. Yet for about two hours on Saturday, Notre Dame offers a few clues.
(Top photo of Steve Angeli: Austin Hough / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)