This article would’ve come a little earlier except Notre Dame football was too busy being awesome and extending the season all the way to the National Championship Game. Now, we re-group and take a quick peek at the 2025 season prior to spring practice further down the line.
For this new winter depth chart I’ve removed the walk-on tag (because what does that mean anymore?), early enrollees used to have a (*) symbol and are now in italics, plus we no longer need the Covid extra eligibility symbol for anyone. We are free from that madness! Except, well, we’re not really sure when eligibility truly ends for someone who continually gets hurt. Could Kevin Bauman come back in 2026 for a 7th year if he misses this season again??
NOTE: I’ve left players in their places on the depth chart despite injuries.
Injuries
Parts of the roster were looking quite dire towards the end of the season with all of the injuries. Such is life when you play 16 games with a bunch of college kids not fully committing to football-only activities. A reminder once again that 2024 was pretty rad.
We’re unlikely to get injury updates until practices begin again, so this is where we left off:
Entering year 2 of the Landow S&C program.
RB Gi’Bran Payne (knee)
WR Malachi Fields (TBD?)
TE Cooper Flanagan (Achilles)
OL Anthonie Knapp (ankle)
OL Ashton Craig (knee)
OL Styles Prescod (shoulder)
DE Jordan Botelho (knee)
DE Boubacar Traore (knee)
LB/DE Kahanu Kia (knee)
CB Chance Tucker (knee)
S Taebron Bennie-Powell (shoulder)
Both Prescod and Bennie-Powell had shoulder surgery towards the end of fall camp and into the early part of September 2024. With more than 5 months of recovery we should see them ready for spring. This was around the same time of Tucker’s ACL tear, as well.
Knapp’s injury was a high ankle sprain with no talk of surgery so he should be fine soon, if not already.
Payne’s knee injury was quite a while ago, suffered during last year’s spring game. He might be a borderline case for practices next month but surely ready for the 2025 season.
As mentioned, in the James Flanigan recruiting review, it might be tough for Cooper Flanagan to be ready to start the 2025 given his Achilles injury occurred just 240 days before the opener at Miami. Given the fact that he was thrown into the fire as freshman, I wonder if the smart decision will be for him to preserve eligibility in 2025?
While the 59-point win over Purdue was fun, less cool were knee injuries to Craig and Botelho. Can they be back and ready in 11 months? With today’s modern medicine let’s hope it can happen.
Traore’s knee injury came a couple weeks later against Louisville. If the Irish can get Botelho and Traore back for August it would be massive.
Kia the Older (younger brother Ko’o is an incoming freshman) suffered his second ACL injury of his career back in 2024 summer workouts. Last time we saw him in the spring he was still a linebacker but being used a lot as a pass rusher on the edge.
We should note, a recent Irish Illustrated podcast mentioned off-season surgery for an unidentified injury to incoming transfer wideout Malachi Fields, although he won’t be enrolling this spring and will arrive during summer workouts anyway.
Transfers
With the pending roster limit increase this seemed like it could’ve been an off-season where Notre Dame pushed well past 10 transfers. We may see further movement after the spring semester but for now we’re sitting on 8 new players:
WR Malachi Fields
WR Will Pauling
TE Ty Washington
DT Elijah Hughes
DT Jared Dawson
CB Devonta Smith
S Jalen Stroman
PK Noah Burnette
Room available?
With all the freshmen and incoming transfers listed the team looks deep just about everywhere!
For last year’s article, the team was sitting at 91 scholarship players, or 4 fewer than Notre Dame sits at right now. If the 105 roster rule passes and things remain the way they are today, it would leave only 10 spots for “walk-ons” in this new world. For comparison, after our winter depth chart preview last year the Irish lost Andrew Kristofic, Tyson Ford, Aiden Gobaira, Micah Bell, and Bryce McFerson from the roster. I’m guessing we’ll see at least a couple more players leave after fully graduating this spring.
I think everyone was interested in more defensive linemen in the transfer portal but when you look at the depth chart now it’s more about quality versus quantity. There are 21 players along the entire line! I have to think there might be more losses here and I’m curious about the likes of Burnham or Tuihalamaka who might be playing a lot in 2025 for Notre Dame, or maybe not, and could leave with their degree in hand.
Well, 10 safeties seems like an excessive amount. We saw Tae Johnson getting some work at corner when numbers got uncomfortably low late in the 2024 season–will he make that switch permanently in 2025? It seems like a good idea to me, as a pair of freshman corners aren’t enrolling early and who knows if Tucker sticks around after spring.
Numbers are very high at linebacker, too. We’ll see how new defensive coordinator Chris Ash deals with this abundance.
I’d love a stud or two at receiver or on the defensive line but that doesn’t seem like it’ll be happening this spring in terms of transfers.
Random Thoughts
*You can count corner Karson Hobbs and defensive end Loghan Thomas as the “wow they just burned a year and are true sophomores now” group. Thomas at least saw the field a tiny bit!
*On our Discord server I put up a poll about where Knapp will play in 2025. It was pretty evenly split between left tackle, center, or right guard. I put him at RG for this since it’s the only true open spot (and I’m guessing they’ll want to keep Jagusah on the left edge). But, I could be wrong. Or, maybe Craig just isn’t healthy for 2025 and Knapp is a natural fit for center? In that case, who will play right guard in this scenario? We’ll be learning some stuff on this front once spring practice begins.
*I wish things looked differently at receiver, I really do. It continues to jump out as one of the team’s biggest weaknesses. I’m as pro-Greathouse as they come but I don’t think he’s suddenly a 1,200 yard machine as a junior, nor does a Greathouse-Faison-Fields starting lineup seem that intimidating. And that’s with a given that Fields, God willing, is at least a plus-version or better than Beaux Collins.
Deep thoughts.
*This changes daily. Right now, I feel like all 4 of these quarterbacks are staying on the roster for the 2025 season. I remain a bit perplexed by Kenny Minchey’s role. In the portal world, he had the perfect opportunity to leave last year. Now, he kind of has to stay or at least it makes sense to stay through 2025 and get your degree (if he’s close enough which is probable). He’s played about 8 snaps to date and might as well stick around now, graduate, and have 2 years somewhere else.
*Notre Dame looks like they’ll hold on to their top 3 running backs. It’s refreshing in this day and age to see guys who want to stick around just because they like playing ball for the Irish, among other things, and maybe that’s the case with Payne? I said this last year…prior to 2024 he was playing quite a bit and that didn’t look like it was going to continue…then he got hurt. Now he’s returning from injury and there’s really a logjam ahead of him.
*Matt Salerno was the holder last year so that will be a new job for someone. Will it be Buchner coming off a dominant 293.2 passer rating on special teams last year?
*Based on size, Greathouse should be the field receiver and Faison in the slot. The offense spent 2024 continuing not doing that as most (if not all) of Greathouse’s damage in the playoffs came out of the slot.
*I’ll be interested to see the competition between incoming transfer Jalen Stroman and rising impact player Kennedy Urlacher. Most expected Rod Heard to be a starter this past year and that didn’t happen. Stroman is on campus for spring football, too.
With Faison (lacrosse) and Fields (not arriving til June) time for Williams, Saldate or Gilbert to make a move.
OL L-R Lambert, Scrauth , Craig , Jagusah, Wagner…..Knapp & Absher next up.
Don’t count out Talich at safety. Onye back would be big.
We saw last season with Raridon and Evans , these knee injuries take closer to 16 months than 12 for guys to be “totaly” back.
I expect Raridon to look like what we hoped for 2 years ago this fall.
How about the starters as Greathouse at field, Fields at boundary, and Pauling at the slot?
Here’s a question — can Greathouse achieve TJ Jones level of productivity this year?
Jones had 1,150 yards and Davaris Daniels had 745, along with 500 from Troy Niklas (from the golden arm of Tommy Rees, over 3,200 yards that year) in 2013.
I just don’t see either Fields or Greathouse going over 1,000, but I feel like the ceiling is 800 yards for each, with 500 each from the TE and the combo of Pauling/Faison.
Add in the running backs and other receivers and you can easily see a 3,000 yard season from our QB in that scenario, without the playoffs included. If Tommy Rees can do it…
We just have to go back to an immobile quarterback running 30% of the plays out of an empty backfield
Memories!
Unless that injury lingers I put the odds Knapp doesn’t start *somewhere* next year at approximately 0.1%
Gentleman’s bet ?
/handshake emoji
/prepares to eat crow
Just as that WR group doesn’t seem intimidating, I’m not sure that any team is going to be scared of that D Line. I would imagine Ash is going to need to blitz those athletic LBs quite often; let’s hope that one of the safeties can cover even 80% as much ground as Xavier Watts.
Al Washington has done a nice job of developing talent on the D Line, but he absolutely needs to step up his recruiting, or Freeman should start thinking about finding a replacement.
The interior might not frighten opponents but Botelho/Traore/Young on the edge definitely will
While I would love to see Botelho and Traore come back as their old selves for the start of the season, I’ll believe it when I see it. I can imagine at least one of them playing at the start, but like Evans last year, it might take a chunk of the season for them to return to their old level of playing. I hope I’m wrong and they are quick healers
I sure hope so, but I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic. 4 sacks is the best season from that group so far. I don’t think too many teams would consider that intimidating, especially when 2 of the 3 are coming off injuries. I sure hope I’m wrong.
Back to back shower pics for headers. What are you trying to tell us?
I have a bad feeling about fields. He was already set to miss the spring and have fewer reps with whoever the starting qb will be, now there’s some kind of surgery. I can’t see how he’s going to get enough practice time before the season starts to really integrate into the offense and be a difference maker.
You make a good point. We saw that missing spring clearly handicapped some of the portal acquisitions this last year. Also — I wonder if Faison is playing lacrosse again. Basically, it’s gonna be a challenge to build a better set of WRs, even if JG continues on that path he showed during the playoffs.