The Notre Dame Fighting Irish open up spring practice this Thursday and will take to the IAC on campus 69 days after the 40-8 shellacking of Oregon State in the Sun Bowl. The vibe check is positive as the program comes into the off-season out-scoring its last 3 opponents 141-38, but despite a decent 70% career winning percentage, Marcus Freeman has the Irish going into 2024 looking for a lot more.
As of this writing a public schedule for spring practice has not been shared and don’t expect one to come. So there’s that. Let’s preview spring football in South Bend!
New Faces
When we started covering spring practices we were lucky to see 3 or 4 new players on campus that we could talk about. Transfers in the middle of the academic year were rare and early enrollees were just beginning to expand with many fans believing each freshmen would get 30% better automatically due to the college strength and conditioning program.
For 2024, there is a quarter of an entire roster opening up their career at Notre Dame:
QB #13 Riley Leonard (grad transfer)
QB #12 CJ Carr
RB #20 Aeneyas Williams
RB #21 Kedren Young
WR #10 Kris Mitchell (grad transfer)
WR #2 Jayden Harrison (grad transfer)
WR #17 Cam Williams
WR #14 Micah Gilbert
Will Mitchell be a breakout star in 2024?
TE #85 Jack LarsenÂ
OL #54 Anthonie Knapp
OL #71 Styles Prescod
DL #9 RJ Oben (grad transfer)
DL #10 Loghan Thomas
DL #30 Bryce Young
DL #42 Cole Mullins
DL #59 Sean Sevillano
LB #27 Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa
LB #43 Kahanu Kia (returning from mission)***
DB #1 Jordan Clark (grad transfer)
DB #23 Kennedy Urlacher
K #98 Mitch Jeter (grad transfer)
I should note, this is not Kahanu Kia’s first time on campus. The Hawaiian enrolled back in 2021, played in 2 games, and was away on a mission for the past 2 seasons. He’s returned and is listed right around the same size (6-2, 219) as when he left. As a freshman he learned both linebacker and defensive end but the plan for 2024 appears to be just linebacker for Kia. Also, remember the Irish recruited his little brother Ko’o Kia who is currently the lowest rated player in the 2025 class, although that may not last for long.
Scholarships on Campus
There are more than 5 months for Notre Dame to get back down to the 85-man scholarship limit and with all the names listed above flooding the roster we are looking at 87 scholarships for spring practice. If we include preferred walk-on safety Luke Talich, who played on special teams in 2023 and certainly looks poised to be on scholarship, you can make that 88.
Additionally, defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio left the program during the winter and is out for the spring to attend to a personal matter. There’s hope he will be returning to Notre Dame during the summer and we’re keeping him in mind as a ‘saved’ scholarship for the future.
Injuries
QB Riley Leonard?
TE Mitchell Evans
TE Kevin Bauman
OG Rocco Spindler
DE Aiden Gobaira
DE Cole Mullins
S Luke Talich
Leonard had a procedure on his ankle (from the injury suffered against Notre Dame last year) that was reportedly fairly serious but then also not that serious. It was a confusing couple of days there for a while. As it stands, he plans on being healthy and ready for spring practice.
As spring practice opens up, Evans will be 131 days clear from his torn ACL suffered against Pittsburgh and will likely be strolling around the sidelines doing some light cardio work. Bauman will be 7 months clear from his knee injury and should be much further along.
Rocco Spindler hurt his knee one week after Evans and might not be healthy for spring practice.
Like Bauman, rising redshirt sophomore Aiden Gobaira tore his ACL early during fall camp and could be on his way to full health soon. His position-mate true freshman Cole Mullins had a fibula and ankle injury right before his senior season and remarked he’s not 100% healthy in a recent interview with the media.
Back to Talich, he broke his collarbone in early November during practice. These days, a collarbone injury is a pretty quick recovery so we’d expect Talich to be at 100% for spring practice.
True Freshmen to Watch
QB CJ Carr
Maybe Deuce Knight is wavering, maybe not. Either way, it’ll be a long 9.5 months until he can sign with the Irish and even then who knows how things shake out. With or without Knight, the pressure on Carr to be a savior type of quarterback remains. Normally it’d be wise to preach patience, but in this era if there aren’t signs of talent immediately, the worries pile up.
WR Micah Gilbert
This will be a big spring for the receivers as we’ll get to more thoroughly below. Watch out for the physically ready Micah Gilbert out of Charlotte to make some noise. His ceiling may not be as high as fellow freshman Cam Williams but we think he’s more ready to play now.
DE Bryce Young
When Young committed it was a neat story coming after the insanely successful career his dad had at Notre Dame and with the 49ers. Then you popped on the high school tape and your eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Common name, uncommon size and skill.
He wasn’t a super highly rated recruit at the time but finished the 2024 cycle as the no. 73 overall recruit in the 247 Composite and a top 50 recruit from 247 and On3, as well. An instant impact defensive lineman is hard to come by but if it’s going to happen Young is teasing an awful lot of tools necessary to make it a reality.
LB Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa
Notre Dame has to feel like they nailed 2 defensive recruits this cycle and along with Bryce Young we have the MaxPreps’s California High School Player of the Year whom we’ll call KVA the vast majority of the time. He’ll get plenty of opportunity to showcase his skills this spring with the departure of JD Bertrand.
6 Spring Storylines
The Health & Effectiveness of Leonard
Assuming Leonard is full-go and not suffering any ill effects from his surgery we get to see him jump right into a new offense along side new offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock. Everyone knows Leonard is a great athlete and even at full health there’s no need to risk his body during spring. We’ll be watching closely how well he gels with the receiving corps and moves the offense, especially after the shaky spring from Sam Hartman last year.
Rebuilding the Offensive Line
This might be the story line for the entire 2024 team. In addition to losing unanimous All-American left tackle Joe Alt a combined total of 101 career starts also walked out the door this off-season. With the Spindler injury, that’s another 10 career starts sidelined.
A combined 22 starts are healthy for spring, which isn’t too terrible given that several players got their feet wet late last season. The starting lineup from the Sun Bowl should head into these practices as the leaders at their positions but questions will remain for a while, particularly at the tackle spots.
Charles Jagusah had a promising start to his career and has an enormous spring ahead of him. Will the veteran Tosh Baker hold down the right tackle spot or will we be in for a surprise?
The Top Running Back
Even though the electric Audric Estime is off to the NFL the Irish are in great shape at running back although it’s a big youth movement coming into force. Even more so with both freshmen recruits on campus for spring. While Payne and Ford look set to be backup role player types, the battle for the top reps between Love and Price could be super fun. And the skillsets of the freshmen are so different (Young the speedier homerun candidate and Williams more of a do-it-all athlete) that it’ll be interesting to see where they fit in Denbrock’s system.
Trusting the Wide Receivers
Notre Dame won’t have a full house at wide receiver–one of the positions on the roster a little light this spring–but I’m not sure there’s any dead weight from the bunch or any players who won’t be licking their chops to make a connection with Riley Leonard.
Jayden Thomas will look to be healthy and be the top choice from the opening practice. We’re expecting FIU transfer Kris Mitchell to impress immediately. Plenty of pieces can be moved around, like how will Faison, Greathouse, and Marshall transfer Harrison get the ball with their impressive quickness and explosiveness?
Defensive Line Size and Depth
This is a huge spring for defensive line depth to develop and provide an anchor to this side of the ball up front. On the interior, the temporary loss of Rubio shows how much work there is to be done. Someone like Jason Onye looked like he could be a revelation last off-season and then played a modest role with only 155 snaps. Will he make a real jump in 2024?
Last chance for Ford?
We’re keeping an eye on the formerly highly-touted Tyson Ford who could be someone ready to turn the corner. However, the less heralded Donovan Hinish played far more in 2023 and might be the 2nd-team choice to open spring.
The situation at defensive end is far more comfortable with lots of choices. In general though, the D-line isn’t overly large and could struggle against some of the more physical offenses on the schedule.
Surrounding Kiser
If hype were created only by PFF grades then Jack Kiser would be a pre-season All-American. Yet, his role on the defense has not been one to see the field a ton (just 354 snaps last year!) in the past. Almost by default, Kiser has to move to the inside Will linebacker position to provide leadership and command of the defense.
Many people have wanted the younger linebackers to step up and get their chance. Now is the time! Maybe it’ll be up to Sneed to take the vast majority of the Rover snaps now, but maybe he also helps inside with Kiser too? The situation at Mike linebacker is tantalizing from a talent perspective but my goodness Drayk Bowen is coming off 72 snaps last year and is on the baseball team, too.
10 Predictions
- There will be plenty of “are we sure Angeli isn’t the right choice at quarterback” message board posts this month.
- Jadarian Price will create distance as the 1A option at running back.
- One player will leave the program after 3 practices.
- The 3 biggest breakout players of the spring will be Boubacar Traore, Kris Mitchell, and Adon Shuler.
- Al Golden and/or Max Bullough comment early in the spring that KVA will “definitely see the field a lot this year.”
- Eli Raridon will have a couple eye-opening dominant practices.
- Aamil Wagner makes it a real fight for the right tackle position.
- Mike Mickens moves Jaden Mickey to starting nickel where he’ll lock down the job.
- The favorites to be named captains later this year will be Xavier Watts, Jack Kiser, Howard Cross, and Jayden Thomas.
- New athletic director Pete Bevacqua will announce the Gug expansion project during an interview at the Blue-Gold Game.
Hey, I’ll be the first ! For once the time zones play in my favor!
After weeks of wind and rain and snow in the Alps, and mud in Normandy, and farmers on their big tractors blocking the roads, it’s (a) a bright sunny day and (b) 18 Stripes has heralded what we can now feel should be a fun and fascinating spring for Irish fans.
I won’t be the first to post about Angeli, though he does seem like a heck of a great young man — but I will be the first to post about Riley’s passing ability. That’s been questioned, and not having seen any of his games in the past two years except the one against us where he at least showed toughness, I have to be wondering what’s his ceiling re: that aspect? And I have to think that his developing passing game relations with the wideouts is very much a two way street, and as important for him as for them. Like it was with Sam Hartman last spring in a (worrisome) way, as pointed out above.
Thanks for the article, it is a morale boost when most needed (though shouts out to Hannah and Sonia and Maddy in that regard!)
I want to second this, More Noise. Those guys are awesome basketball players.
I do wish there was more coverage of the ND Women’s Basketball Team on ND sites. Since 2000, arguably the most successful ND team has been Women’s Basketball, with two National Championships (who can forget Arike Ogunbowale on the cover of Sports Illustrated?), multiple Final Fours and Final Game appearances, and consistent excellence overall. They have a bright young coach in Niele Ivey (she may “get” ND better than any coach we’ve ever had at the school) who, I think, is building a juggernaut. On top of this year’s immensely talented team, next year, she gets back three players who sat out this year who were expected to play major roles, AND she gets a freshman post player, 6’5″ Kate Koval, who looks to be the dominant interior force we have long looked for.
With almost all of this year’s awesome team coming back, and more troops on the way, the future is so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!
I forgot to add, Cubsfan, how great your post is. Amen to desirability for coverage of that squad overall. I’m glad Muffet got a statue, and Niele is for sure in her coaching tree. We can hope men’s BB may start to find a spark, and as for our fencers, how awesome they have been and continue to be. Glad we have lacrosse superfans to get us oumped up. Go Irish in a many faceted sense!
Yeah, I’m so good with that, More Noise. I know that you and I predate a number of our fellow ND fans. However, whenever an ND team plays, I feel those are my brothers and sisters out there!
Go Irish!
Totally agree on jadarian price being 1A. I think Love is a bigger home run threat, but from what I saw in the bowl game, price has more patience and strength to make the first man miss; when he started getting more touches against OSU, the run game got more traction. I just seemed like every love touch he *almost* broke free in the second level, whereas price was able to execute on the missed tackles.
I’ll give love some benefit of the doubt as it was his first college season, so price has the jump on both vision and strength. If memory serves, estime had a tough time with the vision and patience earlier in his career, but those were probably his biggest strengths this season. Also be interesting to see how much bigger love got this offseason; it felt like he could gain 5-10lbs of muscle to aid in having more authority breaking through LB and safety types.
Ford was pretty impressive with his limited carrie’s at the end of the bowl game too. That dude plays with an edge and I hope the coaches can find a way to get him on the field. Check out the muffed punt/ fumble recovery TD against pitt: ford made the hit/fumble and he showed some spirit on a random pitt player at the end of the play. Hes a dan Campbell kneecap biter, and I’m always down to have dawgs like that on the field.
I agree with you and E on the Price love. I think he has a better overall feel for the RB position and can be dynamic in the role. I do think though Denbrock is going to utilize Love more in a Watters, Faulk, Deebo way which will make him more of a star in the offense than Price and for good reason.
Excited to see Greathouse progress, guy just knows how to get open and use his body in the route tree. He should be healthy and with how he came into last fall, he just seems like a guy who is a craftsman and is always working. The type of guy you see in the NFL for 8 to 10 years.
Second guy I’m most excited for is Christian Gray. He was dang close to having 3 or 4 picks last year and should be even better with a stronger playbook knowledge. Hoping Micah Bell gets some action too, would be nice to keep stacking defensive back hits on the recruiting front.
My prediction thru spring and into fall camp is that reports are going to be that the defense is handcuffing the offense and that Leonard is throwing a lot of interceptions. Now it won’t really surprise me with what the defense has returning especially on the d-line and corner/safety positions, but I think it’s going to be the dominant theme.
You bring up a great thought; new OC coming in with a fresh set of eyes and no preconceived notions on the current roster. Denbrock has champagne problems in the RB room, and its exciting to see what he can do with those guys in asymmetric ways: think back to Prosise in the 2014 music city bowl taking that pop pass/jet sweep to the house when we desperately needed a touchdown. It really foreshadowed his success the next season.
And totally agree on gray: the confidence he showed in the pitt game was amazing; he was an inch away from 2 pick sixes. Definitely my favorite gray corner we’ve had (I’ll never forgive gary for that TD at the end of the 2011 Michigan game)
I think there’s a good chance that 1A status could come down to which guy makes the bigger jump in the passing game, specifically pass protection. They both look like they have star potential on the ground, so if one is looking shakier in pass protection, that could easily be the deciding factor.
On Carr, I think I’ve sufficiently lowered my expectations that, while I can’t rule out savior (there’s always a chance!), I think it seems pretty unlikely at this point. He was old for his class, did pretty good but not great at camps, fell down the rankings a bit over the course of the last year, was drawing pre-2023-season comps to Brock Purdy, and just generally the message board excitement seems to be unusually muted for him other than Tom Loy. What I’m saying is we probably do not have Drew Brees coming, as cool as that would be. Seems more of a high floor/low ceiling prospect. Anyway, I hope I’m wrong.
There was a time where it looked like we were going to get Carr to reclassify to 2023 and get Sayin in the 2024 class; that would have been cool.
I think it’s pretty clear we have entirely too many useless and/or not that important data points for high schoolers before they’ve ever taken a single rep in college.
Recruiting is in a weird place. Like, I don’t think you could explain to a casual ND fan why you’re expectations are lowered for Carr and have it make sense to them.
That’s definitely fair, and I probably overstated things with “pretty unlikely” to be the savior. In part it’s because the message board buzz was very high for Wimbush and basically off-the-charts for Buchner, and if Wimbush was an 8 and Buchner was a 9.8 on the message board hype scale it feels like Carr has gone from a 9.5 to a 5 or 6 over the course of the last year and a half (again other than Tom Loy, who is at a 10 for any 4-star ND QB all the time and turned it up to 11 for Buchner).
But again trying to explain that to a casual would lead to a “are you ok?”-type look. Also, Wimbush and Buchner didn’t work, so maybe we can message-board-hype-Costanza our way to a first round QB here!
There’s a lot to like about CJ Carr without thinking him a “savior”. I’ve never gotten super excited about his HS film but, that doesn’t mean there were many negatives. I often wondered how good his team was. Their offense looked to be, get downfield and CJ will get you the ball. Which he usually did. It’s much easier to be wowed by the athleticism on film, of a Wimbush, Buckner or Knight.
I think that’s all fair – but, just to say it, “savior” wasn’t my word originally. But, I think why it was originally used is that I think there’s a widely held and reasonable consensus that ND is probably a top-10-pick QB away from having a real shot at a natty, and when Carr committed the initial vibes were that he might be that kind of player. My point was simply that there hasn’t really been too much evidence since his commitment that he’s on track for that, but to Eric’s point it’s unclear how much to weigh all those data points.
He committed very early. He dropped some in the rankings. Ok. The ND QB room is in good shape. I’d say best in quite some time.
To make it explicit I guess, I was responding to this sentence from Eric’s write-up: “With or without Knight, the pressure on Carr to be a savior type of quarterback remains”
I don’t dispute that premise, but maybe you’re saying you do? Fair enough, I suppose, though even with the top-to-bottom depth being better than it has been in a while I’m not sure that savior-type QB is in the room. I’m probably most hopeful for Leonard of those in the mix – if he’s a hit and can paper over the potential o-line inexperience (which is certainly within the realm of possibility with his size and running ability), this could be one of the better ND teams in a while.
Mostly I was just chatting. I guess I don’t know how good a savior type QB is. I’m just saying that IMO whoever turns out to be the best QB of this group is going to be very good. Perhaps the hype will get to the Ron Powlus level, for Carr, but it’s nowhere near there yet . Maybe he’ll have to win the job first. It’s probably a good thing that expectations have calmed some since his commitment.
Also, if it gets to the Powlus level maybe another of these guys is Kevin McDougal.
I would think “savior” type QB is for all intents and purposes a 1st round QB – because we have so much talent with the rest of the team but we’ve never had a top-end QB (recently).
Developments I would love to see this spring:
1) O Line holds up well. The middle of the D Line is obviously elite, but I’m not sold that the DE’s will necessarily be more than just “good.” I don’t have the highest expectations for the O Line, so just hearing that they aren’t getting manhandled would be nice.
2) A WR makes his case for being the Guy on the outside. Is the right mix finally there at WR? I’m concerned that the 3 best WRs on this offense (imo Thomas, Greathouse, and Faison) might all be best playing in the slot. Can Mitchell do anything in the Spring on the outside against these elite CBs?
3) The starting SS makes himself known early in the Spring. Is Shuler really going to be the guy at SS? Does Lewis start getting reps back there this late in his career? There’s just so much talent on the roster at DB, and so many options for Golden to mix and match here. I hope Golden is able to pin this down fairly early in the Spring.
I spent all of last year being pessimistic about the WR room, and somehow having them fail to meet my low expectations. I felt like they were all potential.
This year, I get the opposite feeling. Faison, Greathouse, and Thomas have already shown their skills, and I’m optimistic one of the transfers at least is going to impress. That, and I agree that Denbrock is going to get Gilbert and Cam Williams involved, because in this offense there will be matchups for a good OC to exploit. If you’ve got Thomas/Mitchell/Faison or Greathouse to watch out for, you can slip in a Cam Williams play no one is expecting, kind of like how Faison kept getting open when attention was elsewhere.
I would feel a lot better if Rico Flores was still around, but we definitely have good numbers for depth. Will somebody be able to make that leap to a true breakout #1 WR? That could be the difference between a good and great offense this year.
(I also keep forgetting that Colzie is still around. When he’s been healthy, there have been flashes of why he was a top 100-ish recruit. Would love to hear his name a bunch this spring)
Counting the transfers I think Flores won’t be missed that much.
I hope this is true, but I’m not sure. Flores put up more yardage in his Freshman season than Mitchell and Harrison did in any of their first 3 seasons (and against much better competition).
The depth is there now, so I’m definitely happy we got those transfers, but I think there was a higher probability of Flores being a game-changer this year than either of those guys. I do think Mitchell’s big year last year can translate against the tougher (but not brutal) schedule he will see this year, but it’s always nice to have an extra guy who you think has star potential; I think Flores has star potential.
I think Flores came in as a good floor not great ceiling type of recruit. I don’t think that changed. Good player, sure. “Game changer, star potential ” not so much. JMO.
Colzie is still on my pessimism watch, more due to injury than lack of skill. I feel like he has Jayden Thomas type of upside, so overall I’m optimistic at least one of those two will stay healthy enough to be an above average X this year.
Is Rod Heard from Northwestern on campus for the Spring? I forgot about him at Safety.
Yes, but not participating.