The sound of cleats clattering, loud voices, and pads popping is coming back soon as Notre Dame spring practice begins Wednesday, March 19th. It’s a short turn around for the program after taking the 2024 season all the way to January 20th and the National Championship Game, but the show must go on and preparations now officially begin for 2025.

Outside of a brewing quarterback competition (more on THAT of course) this should be a very relaxed and subdued set of spring practices for the Fighting Irish.

New Faces

QB Blake Hebert, Freshman
RB Nolan James, Freshman
WR Elijah Burress, Freshman
WR Jerome Bettis, Jr., Freshman
WR Antavious Richardson, Freshman
WR Will Pauling, Graduate
OL Cam Herron, Freshman
OL Owen Strebig, Freshman
OL Matty Augustine, Freshman
DT Davion Dixon, Freshman
DT Jared Dawson, Graduate
DT Elijah Hughes, Junior
LB Madden Faraimo, Freshman
CB Devonta Smith, Graduate
CB Cree Thomas, Freshman
S JaDon Blair, Freshman
S Ethan Long, Freshman
S Jalen Stroman, Graduate
K Noah Burnette, Graduate

We will be welcoming 19 new players to their first spring practice at Notre Dame. From the 2025 recruiting class, 11 of those players are not on campus yet. Additionally, incoming transfers Ty Washington (tight end) and Malachi Fields (wide receiver) have not arrived yet, either.

Injuries

Team doctor Rob Hunt provided updates to a bunch of players with their medical situations which was nice to see. That included some new injury information previously unknown, as well.

RB Gi’Bran Payne (knee) – Presumably healthy for the spring, he was not mentioned by Hunt and his injury was longer ago than anyone else on the roster.

WR Will Pauling (foot) – They found a stress fracture in his foot during his physical, he’s missed off-season conditioning, and he will be only doing some light drill work this spring.

TE Cooper Flanagan (Achilles) – Out

OL Billy Schrauth (ankle) – They cleaned up his ankle during spring break and he won’t be getting much work until the latter half of spring practices.

OL Ashton Craig (knee) – Out

OL Anthonie Knapp (ankle) – He had surgery right after the Orange Bowl, missed winter conditioning, and will be slow to come back during spring practices.

OL Styles Prescod (shoulder) – No mention by Hunt, he should be healthy.

OL Chris Terek (foot/shoulder) – Out for the entire spring and beyond with surgeries to both his shoulder and foot.

DE Jordan Botelho (knee) – Out, but expecting an unrestricted summer.

We won’t see him for spring but being ready for the fall would be huge for Botelho.

DE Boubacar Traore (knee) – Out, but expecting an unrestricted summer.

DT Cole Mullins (knee) – Limited early during the spring but they expect him to ramp up participation. 

DT Davion Dixon (pectoral) – Injured recently and will be out for the spring following surgery.

LB Kahanu Kia (knee) – They are being really intentional with his recovery following a second ACL injury last year and he will not participate during the spring.

CB Chance Tucker (knee) – They are looking for him to be healthy for the summer but he’s not playing in the spring.

S Taebron Bennie-Powell (shoulder) – He wasn’t listed by Hunt on their injury report so he should be 100% healthy now.

S Jalen Stroman (collarbone) – They had to fix a previous clavicle injury and he’ll be no-contact throughout spring practice.

Spring Storylines

7 topics for Irish football this spring…

Take It Easy

Rosters are larger than ever during these spring periods, however, with the deep run into the playoffs leaking into late January there has already been word from Notre Dame’s training staff that a bunch of players are going to be rested a lot over these set of practices:

I think we all saw this coming. There’s been a great devaluation of spring practice anyway. Some schools are cancelling spring games, we don’t see many spring practice reps anymore, and this time of year has never felt more like a necessary slog.

I’m a little surprised not to see Jeremiyah Love on that list from Dr. Hunt, though. Surely he’ll be resting a lot this spring!?

Chris Ash

Notre Dame has a new sheriff of defense in town and he met with the media on February 26th. So far, he’s not coming in to rock the boat while mentioning that he doesn’t plan on changing the scheme too much, although there will be some differences in terminology for the future. Interestingly, Ash talked quite a bit about having to get caught up a lot with the game of recruiting since he hasn’t been in the college game for the last 4 seasons–a lot has changed!

The shoes are large to fill on defense. 

With a new defensive coordinator perhaps we can look for some shuffling among the depth chart. Will a veteran begin to resurrect his career with this move? Will Ash suddenly love a player that hasn’t seen the field that much? Which freshman will catch the eye of their new coordinator?

Catching the Ball

We’ll get to the quarterbacks in a second but you couldn’t create a worse set up for that positional battle with the spring availability at wide receiver. With players leaving the program, injuries, and transfers not here yet we’ll have the following wideouts catching passes this spring:

KK Smith
Micah Gilbert
Cameron Williams
Logan Saldate
Elijah Burress
Scrap Richardson
Jerome Bettis, Jr.

Career receptions: 3 (all coming last year from KK Smith).

Yes, this includes the absence of Jordan Faison with lacrosse and the above mention of Jaden Greathouse being rested during spring, but still. I think we can count on very little from those veterans which leaves so many reps to so many unproven receivers. I think an obvious move will be to give some of the running backs a lot of reps at receiver this spring.

Competition or Controversy

Let the quarterback battle begin! I’ll try to lay out the situation for each quarterback as this crucial (or not!) set of practices begin:

Steve Angeli – By far the most experienced quarterback on the roster with 80 career pass attempts, including 10 touchdown passes, as he enters his redshirt junior season. He’s shown good accuracy (72.5% completions) with a very smooth, catchable ball and with 1 interception he’s protected the ball through the air well. However, there are concerns about his lack of pocket presence and penchant for taking sacks and losing fumbles. He’s shown solid-to-good running ability in brief moments, although without a rocket arm he gets tagged with the low ceiling among our candidates. In addition to the experience working in his favor, he’s shown he has that dawg in him over his last 2 extended off-season appearances going 21 of 26 for 276 yards with 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions.

Kenny Minchey – One year younger than Angeli, and with very little playing experience (3 career pass attempts), Minchey has been more of a mystery than most quarterbacks in South Bend entering year 3 with the program. The only extended work we’ve seen from him was in last year’s spring game where he flashed in a couple moments of brilliance but also threw a bad interception and was outplayed by both Angeli and Carr to most onlookers. Still, he has the most live arm of the bunch and it’s understood behind the scenes his ceiling is the highest in this competition.

CJ Carr – Labeled as The Future since stepping on campus, Carr impressed throughout his first spring practice a year ago but wasn’t receiving enough reps during practices to really threaten to see the field when fall arrived. Then he looked quite phenomenal during the spring game going 15 of 23 for 165 yards with 1 touchdown. An elbow injury throughout the bulk of the 2024 fall probably slowed his progress although he’s been given a clean bill of health coming into the spring.

Blake Hebert – You might want to check out the walk-ons on the roster because that’s probably the only players Hebert will be throwing to in team work this spring.

Can there be a winner this spring?

PREDICTION…

It’s been so long since we’ve seen a legit quarterback competition at Notre Dame where any of 3 players could win the job. From a national perspective on the outside looking in this has the chance to light up spring practice or even bring some controversy to the future of the offense. However, as we’ve seen with *gestures wildly at the receiving corps* and as we’ll get to with the offensive line there just aren’t the ingredients to hold a proper judgement on any of these quarterbacks. As such, I’d expect a really muted spring practice without much headway for anyone. Someone is going to have to be so on point and amazing to shake up the depth chart before summer–I just don’t see it happening.

Center of Attention

Before attrition came there were so many players ready for the offensive line this spring. Then Rocco Spindler (Nebrask), Pat Coogan (Indiana), Ty Chan (UConn), and Sam Pendleton (Tennessee) all entered the transfer portal. Now, Craig, Schrauth, Terek, and Knapp are injured and probably won’t participate fully this spring with Aamil Wagner on the resting list.

That leaves Charles Jagusah as the only experienced player on the offensive line, so this should be a fun spring! Perhaps we’ll open things up with the lines looking something like this:

1st-Team OL 

LT Charles Jagusah (r-Sophomore)
LG Sullivan Absher (r-Sophomore)
C  Joe Otting (r-Sophomore)
RG Peter Jones (r-Freshman)
RT Styles Prescod (r-Freshman)

2nd-Team OL 

LT Guerby Lambert (r-Freshman)
LG Matty Augustine (Freshman)
C Cam Herron (Freshman)
RG Max Anderson (r-Freshman, walk-on)
RT Owen Strebig (Freshman)

Safety to Corner

If there’s a glimmer of hope for the receiving corps this spring it’s that they might have some pretty good matchups against the cornerback room. With a resting Moore and Gray we have the following availability:

Karson Hobbs
Devonta Smith
Cree Thomas

Perhaps Moore and Gray won’t be resting so much!

On a more serious note, the team will have a little more flexibility at safety where there are 7 players scheduled to be available full-time this spring. It’s possible we see redshirt freshman Tae Johnson back at corner this spring for a possible full-time switch or maybe true freshman Ethan Long at boundary corner to plug some of these holes before summer arrives.

Step Up 

There will be a big magnifying glass on the defensive line this spring as this unit looks to regroup after suffering a litany of injuries in 2024. This will be year 4 for Al Washington as defensive line coach and I’m sure he’ll be looking for more stability in 2025.

Can anyone step up this spring?

By my count there are 11 players on the defensive line available this spring who aren’t injured or on the resting list. That seems pretty good, except there’s an unbalance to the roster with little to no options this spring at strong-side defensive end. Vyper (will Ash still call it this, please change it!?) isn’t in a much better situation where only Junior Tuihalamaka and Logan Thomas will be practicing. That leads me to think we’ll see a lot of heavier interior players like Brenan Vernon or Armel Mukam getting lots of reps as jumbo ends this month.

The good news is that with the arrival of Elijah Hughes and Jared Dawson the interior is in good shape for spring and should be winning most of the battles against a weaker 2nd/3rd team offensive line. Those interior spots should have the top 6 guys healthy, so there aren’t as many excuses for them this spring.