We’re halfway through the spring practice season. The 7th practice took place this past Saturday and the first of the next 7 practices will take place today in South Bend. As quickly as the break ended after the loss in the title game these workouts are now almost over. Once the Blue-Gold Game arrives and passes (Saturday, April 12th at 2 PM ET) we’ll enter the long and dark off-season without much to talk about for football. Give or take it’ll be roughly 100 days until the start of fall camp.

What have we learned this spring? Not much! But we’ll try our best to pick out the top updates and reports from practices, plus a quick look at Notre Dame’s Pro Day held late last week on campus will finish things up in today’s article.

What is a Veteran?

As anticipated, the big quarterback competition going on right now has been largely crickets. Thus far, the media have watched the opening 4 periods of the first and fifth practices, that’s it. This really puts into perspective how little amount of practice is available during the off-season and how little of a window of insight anyone will get before a starter is decided.

As a result, the player with the most experience is going to have a significant leg up. Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock admitted as much recently after meeting with the media, insofar as it pertains to redshirt junior Steve Angeli’s confidence and feeling like he has to be the favorite to become the starter.

With nothing to really go on with performance that’s led to a spring of debate surrounding the experience of Angeli and how much of a factor that should play in the competition. In the history of college football, it tends to matter quite a bit.

I’d be really surprised if it’s anyone but Angeli starting in Miami. We’ll see if word starts leaking out from the program about someone making a move because in these situations an unexperienced and younger player winning the job has to be super convincing. First the players start to buy in and then the coaching staff comes around to the decision. There won’t be much time during fall camp to wait around to make that decision, either.

When is the last time we saw this (a younger quarterback with no experience grab a starting job over someone with experience) happen–Everett Golson in 2012?

Gilbert Out

There haven’t been any competitive reps on display yet so no earth shattering news is available at wide receiver so far this spring. However, at the most recent media availability rising redshirt freshman Micah Gilbert didn’t participate as he’s reportedly dealing with a non-serious injury. Not the worst news in the world but something to note for a player who was hoping to make a big jump this spring. There’s a world where he is the no. 1 receiver on this team in 2025 and I’m sure he’ll want to be back to full health as soon as possible.

Learning to Catch

One of the themes coming out this spring has been the offense working on improving catching the ball and reducing the number of drops from 2024. Beaux Collins was one of the worst offenders from the wideouts and has moved on from the program. He wasn’t the only repeat offender with issues with their hands, lest we forget the absolutely brutal drop by Jaden Greathouse against Northern Illinois.

On this topic, one of the beat media mentioned true freshman Scrap Richardson really struggling catching the ball and looking like an unnatural pass catcher. Scratch him off the list of potential receivers in the rotation this year, or is it a case of freshmen nerves? Remember, he didn’t play a ton of receiver in high school and in our 2025 recruiting round up I predicted he’d eventually move to cornerback.

Tight End U Continues

There’s a common route for off-season hype whereby a player is mentioned by a coach and it’s preceded by or followed by said player being interviewed after a practice. For spring especially, this is where the Kool-Aid can be guzzled down. So it happens for tight end Eli Raridon who is entering his 4th year with the program, coming into a starting role for the first time, and crucially finally 100% healthy.

Is it Raridon’s time to shine?

We’ve seen some very brief flashes from Raridon among his career 16 receptions, 141 yards, and 3 touchdowns–plus he’s improved as a blocker. I won’t say an emerging Raridon will be a x-factor but I’m excited to see the top Irish tight end coming into a season fully healthy, something that hampered the offense a bit last year with a recovering Mitchell Evans.

Center Depth

A lot of talk this off-season surrounds the situation at tackle, specifically left tackle, and we’ll get to that below. Things might be even more difficult to figure out at center when the season starts, though. One of the more definitive things to come out of spring practice so far is Charles Jagusah (3 career starts all at left tackle) practicing at right guard with the staff liking his potential inside. We can infer from that information that they must feel awfully good about someone else playing tackle then.

Where does that leave center?

With 2024 starter Ashton Craig recovering from injury we’ve seen Joe Otting move up to the nominal no. 1 center position this spring. However, I found it interesting that they are also cross-training Sullivan Absher at center, as well. It might not mean that much (there is a pretty severe lack of depth this spring anyway) but I’m curious if this is a sign that they don’t plan on working Anthonie Knapp at center when he’s 100% healthy and ready to return.

He’s Called Guerby

Looking back at the 2024 recruiting class nearly the whole top half of the Irish class enrolled early, but the highest rated player not to do was offensive lineman Guerby Lambert (top 100 overall recruit). As incoming 5-star tackle Will Black may find out, making an impact without a spring in your freshman year is nearly impossible. Now, Lambert is coming up on a year with the program and apparently making a big move to start.

One thing that’s clear is Lambert is absolutely massive. As a recruit he was listed as little as 280 pounds but on last year’s roster he was already up to 323 pounds. For the new 2025 roster he’s listed at a refrigerator-sized 334 pounds on his 6’7″ frame. Lambert has been practicing with the first-team at right tackle and cross-training at left tackle, too. If they have moved Jagusah permanently to guard this still potentially leaves 2 tackle spots for 3 players among Lambert, Wagner, and Knapp. Is Lambert going to be impressive enough to grab a starting position outright?

7-Technique

New defensive coordinator Chris Ash has met with the media a couple times since being hired this off-season and his comments have largely remained the same. To wit, the scheme isn’t changing much, some terminology is changing, a nickel-based defense will continue as this is the way in college and the NFL, plus the fundamentals and level of play were so high prior to his arrival that only minor tweaks need to be made.

Interestingly, one of the points being discussed is working in more 7-technique for the defensive ends. I’m sure someone will eventually work out how often Notre Dame used a 7-technique during the Al Golden era, but apparently it’s something Ash wants to use more of this coming season. He mentioned specifically trying to get some more matchups pass-rushing against a tight end with that 7-technique lining up on the inside shoulder of that blocker.

I’m prepared for this to be the buzz word for the defense going into fall camp.

An Early Leader in the Clubhouse

Ash was asked about someone emerging on defense and he didn’t seem to struggle at all to mention linebacker Drayk Bowen. The rising true junior is coming off a nice season starting at Mike linebacker (78 tackles, 4 TFL, 2 PBU, 3 FF) and decided not to try the dual-sport athlete life and isn’t playing baseball anymore. He’s all-in on football now.

Bowen may be on track for a captaincy. 

Bowen might not leap immediately to mind when thinking about the freakiest athletes on this defense but he has well above average Mike linebacker playmaking ability and could be poised to take a big step as an upperclassman. We know he’s got a fiery playing style, and Ash commented on his comfort within the defense and leadership ability. There aren’t a ton of obvious leaders on defense for 2025 so maybe Bowen becomes a captain in 2025?

5¢ Switch

One of my main points from the spring practice preview article was the crazy amount of depth at safety, especially relative to most other positions, and how something was probably going to happen with the personnel there. I thought Tae Johnson would remain at corner after filling in there late during the 2024 season but he appears to be back at safety.

One move that seems to have happened already is redshirt sophomore Ben Minich to nickel. That makes some sense. Minich has shown some nice explosiveness and might fit better in this role. We know Alabama transfer Devonta Smith has the starting nickel position on lockdown but we did need to start building depth behind him for 2025.

Joy in Cody, Wyoming

We will stress how much we can’t read into the depth chart right now (although what else are we supposed to do?) given the restrictions to media viewing. However, I will note that we have seen junior Luke Talich working with Adon Shuler so far as the 1st-team safety grouping. Let’s not forget that Virginia Tech transfer was penciled into a starting position but needed to have a clavicle injury cleaned up recently and isn’t participating on the field right now.

I thought there was a pretty good chance rising sophomore Kennedy Urlacher would move into a starting role for 2025 after some hefty praise thrown his way last year by the coaching staff and a handful of impact plays of his own. The problem may be that both Shuler and Urlacher are super effective, downhill tackling strong safety types. At 6’4″ Talich is definitely the more rangy free safety type so I’m curious if he’s going to play a lot more this year than some may expect.

Notre Dame Pro Day

Notre Dame held their Pro Day this past Thursday inside the Irish Athletic Center with corner Benjamin Morrison absent from the non-bench press workouts (17 reps is really good for a corner!) as he’ll do a private workout later this spring. I had noticed Xavier Watts cut off his dreadlocks prior to the NFL Combine, then forgot about it, and couldn’t figure out who the person was when he was working out in the highlights!

A sub-4.6 is a good time for Watts and he looks to keep improving his NFL Draft stock. He ran with his shirt off (this seems less aerodynamic to me, I’d be wearing an aero suit) and while he has a big upper-body I was surprised to see him not as cut in his midsection.

Evans measuring only slightly over 6’3″ has to be an error?

Hey, that’s X.

Neither Jayden Harrison or Kris Mitchell breaking 4.5 in the 40-yard dash shows they may be decently quick but not really as fast as we thought they would be when coming to Notre Dame. Especially for smaller players.

Those are quietly pretty impressive numbers by Beaux Collins who has the athleticism and looks of a future NFL receiver. The production in college may not quite match but he’s probably on track to stick around the NFL somewhere for a while.

Jack Kiser is DGT™ in the lead up to the NFL Draft and I’ll continue believing he’s going 20-30 picks higher than many anticipate. We know he’s off the charts intelligent and he’s showing the athleticism is there for a mid-round pick.

I’ll be the one to say it. The backwards hat while doing a passing workout (it seems to be Riley Leonard’s thing as he did it at the Combine and in numerous workouts in the past) is very on brand for Leonard’s golden retriever energy but it looks a bit silly and should be avoided.

Just a super chill guy out here making some throws.