Recently, the NCAA ruled that players will not lose any eligibility by participating in this post-season of college football. With the amount of opt-outs and transfers growing every year I would expect this to become a permanent rule at some point. For Notre Dame, it won’t change anything since the only true freshman player who could lose a year playing in the Gator Bowl is out long-term with a knee injury.

So, we know the redshirts for the 2022 football season. Starting next month we’ll take a look at the freshmen who saved a year with more in depth analysis. Today, we’ll have an overview of the 2022 class and their status moving forward.

Burned

CB Benjamin Morrison – 12
LB Junior Tuihalamaka – 12
CB Jaden Mickey – 10
TE Holden Staes – 9
WR Tobias Merriweather – 6

Morrison was a freshman All-American, picked off 5 passes, and finished 2nd among the corners with 30 tackles. It was a wildly successful season for the native of Phoenix. There were high hopes for Mickey going into the season and he struggled at times while also dealing with an abductor injury that caused him to miss the Stanford and UNLV games.

Junior’s stats (6 tackles, 4 solo) don’t really show how much the staff believed in his abilities on defense and special teams. In a very good linebacker class, it’s a good sign that Tuihalamaka played so much as a true freshman. He’s been reportedly getting some reps at Vyper during bowl prep but we’d expect him to return to middle linebacker this off-season.

There was probably a scenario where Mitchell Evans came into the season fully healthy and Staes didn’t burn a year. He looks so much like former Irish tight end Tommy Tremble–and despite just 1 catch on the season–was a trusted blocker early in his career just like the current Carolina Panther.

Merriweather also caught just 1 pass and burned a year, too. He had a slow start to the season and wasn’t able to build off that big touchdown catch against Stanford before a concussion forced him to sit out several games.

Played But Saved a Year

TE Eli Raridon – 4
RB Gi’Bran Payne – 3
LB Jaylen Sneed – 3
QB Steve Angeli – 2
CB Chance Tucker – 2
CB Philip Riley – 2
DT Donovan Hinish – 2
LB Nolan Ziegler – 2
LB Josh Burnham – 1
DE Aiden Gobaira – 1
DT Tyson Ford – 1

Raridon tore his ACL at the halfway mark of the season and surely would’ve been the 6th person in the freshmen class to forego a redshirt. With back-to-back knee injuries you wonder if he’ll have a very slow and methodical start to 2023.

The rest of these freshmen were never seriously in consideration to play more than 4 games. Virtually all of these situations where they saw the field were being featured in blowouts late in games. The only rare exceptions would be Angeli being inserted against Syracuse while Pyne was briefly dinged up and Sneed seeing some early action against the Navy triple option.

We can re-visit the decision not to play Angeli against Boston College. There was a really vocal minority who wanted to see the freshman get some work but with Buchner’s injury–and a grad transfer likely coming in soon–it didn’t make any sense to put Angeli in a situation where he’d have to burn a year and be on the same eligibility clock as Buchner.

No Games

RB Jadarian Price
OL Ashton Craig
OL Billy Schrauth
OL Ty Chan
OL Aamil Wagner
P Bryce McFerson

This is a pretty small group and it could’ve been even smaller if Price didn’t tear his Achilles tendon during the summer (all reports point to him being in the mix for running back carries) and McFerson was used on kickoffs, like it appeared would initially be the plan.

I believe Marcus Freeman has already mentioned he expects McFerson to be the starting punter for 2023, and assuming 14 months is long enough to recover, Price should be expected to have a productive redshirt freshman season.

All of the offensive linemen taking a redshirt year is the least surprising roster management decision in college football. There will be 2 starting spots opened on the interior with Schrauth getting a strong look at minimum from this group. There won’t be much discussion about the tackles with Blake Fisher and Joe Alt returning but I’ll be curious to see how the progress with someone like Chan is going, particularly if there’s some transfers at the position from the upperclassmen ranks.