(Weird disclaimer: Photographers weren’t allowed in the stadium today, so we’re rolling with a photo of last year’s game.)

ND’s off-season lasted just over eight months. It was only two weeks longer than it would’ve been in a normal world. It felt a lot longer.

But the wait ended Saturday, and Notre Dame dispatched Duke 27-13 in a game that never really felt in jeopardy but also didn’t really feel secure until Chase Brice pulled a Tommy Rees and empty-hand fumbled the ball to the Irish with a couple of minutes to go.

YouTube Highlights:

In a season that, thanks to the #goacc schedule Notre Dame will play, is basically defined by the scheduled Nov. 7 game against Clemson, Notre Dame definitely didn’t look remotely good enough to go toe-to-toe with the Tigers. (That being said, Clemson has yet to play Wake Forest at this writing and was hit with dozens of COVID cases on the football team at the height of the pandemic. So we’ll see how they look.) But they won.

Some of the big things that stood out to me from this workmanlike victory:

Holy cow, Kyren Williams is good

I’ll be honest – I didn’t really know what to do with all the hubbub coming out of ND last month about Kyren Williams. All we’d seen of him at that time was a kid who wasn’t at all ready for the CFB stage against Louisville in last season’s opener, and by the way, had a bunch of baby fat to shed.

That guy is a distant memory now after watching Williams today. The redshirt freshman was the best player on the field, and it really wasn’t close. Like everyone else on the ND offense, he got off to a bit of a slow start, but all game long, #23 made extra yards out of very little, ran with attitude, and showed off both some nifty speed (on a 75-yard screen catch-and-run from Ian Book) and great vision (that 4th-and-1 burst to the outside for six was a thing of beauty). All told, Williams totaled 205 offensive yards, scored twice, and alleviated just about any worries Irish fans had about the team’s running back corps this year.

Then again, the day wasn’t all worry-free:

Kyle Hamilton is a monster (please be OK), and he’s not the only young stud

We know Kyle Hamilton is great. Hamilton’s haha-no-but-seriously Heisman campaign pretty much originated on this site. I’m not sure even we anticipated what he was doing in the early going Saturday, though. On three successive plays early in the game, Hamilton lasered in to make a third-down stop to force a fourth down, stormed in like a bat out of hell to break up a pass on that fourth down, and then forced a high throw by Duke QB Chase Brice on the first play of the next drive. And those were far from the only times he made his presence felt.

Then, of course, because this is 2020 and everything is terrible, Hamilton’s ankle was rolled up on by a Duke receiver and he walked gingerly off the field. Tweet reports were that he never went to the locker room, which is somewhat encouraging, but he obviously never returned to the game. He likely won’t be needed to beat South Florida, or Wake Forest, but we want to see him doing awesome things on a football field again ASAP. So let’s not have this be serious, Football Gods.

(Update: Brian Kelly said in a radio interview that Hamilton had a sprained ankle and could’ve returned but the coaches chose not to put him back in. Hopefully he’ll play next week.)

Hamilton, though, wasn’t the only young dude to flash today. True freshman tight end Michael Mayer immediately made clear he’s the best one we’ve got (sorry, Tommy Tremble), highlighted by him taking a third-and-8 crossing route that seemingly had no chance and shaking off a tackler as if he was a pee-wee, gaining the first down easily. He had only three catches, but it felt like more. Dude’s going to be good.

And true freshman running back Chris Tyree quickly showed what he can do, ripping off a 40-plus yard kickoff return on his first career touch. He also had a sweet 25-yard run. Of course, he also gained minus-5 yards on his other five carries and missed a blitz pickup that led to a sack. Starts and stops.

Decent start for the defense

The defense has had its questions in the off-season. Today wasn’t a brilliant performance, but it’ll do. ND’s run defense certainly looked up to the task, allowing only 2.5 yards per carry in the game. The pass defense was less great, but there were moments where you could see what Nick McCloud and TaRiq Bracy might do, and do well, this season. Also, Chase Brice is just good enough to be really annoying. He reminded me a little of Virginia QB Matt Johns, who tortured ND in 2015 by tossing up ducks that consistently found their targets, although he’s probably a bit better than Johns.

Isaiah Foskey made a couple of man’s plays – I particularly enjoyed his eating Brice for lunch on the third-down play in the red zone in the first quarter – and it was good to see that from the highly recruited but sparingly used (in 2019) defensive lineman.

All in all, Clark Lea has given ND enough at this point that I’m just not very worried about the defense. They’ll be somewhere between very good and excellent, and that’s that.

Rust wasn’t surprising

ND didn’t get a first down until faking a punt on its fourth possession of the game (a truly ballsy call from the head coach – he joked in the press conference that his thought process behind calling it was “I hope to heck it works”) and didn’t look much like the Irish we expected to see until the fourth quarter, when they pulled away, as widely expected. Things weren’t terrific – ND’s lack of any big-time play from the WR position was concerning, and Ian Book certainly didn’t crown himself in glory, though he as usual did enough to win – but that was to be expected given the nature of the off-season.

Considering everything, I’m basically willing to count this as a ‘let’s be happy and forget it’ type of win and withhold any deeper concerns unless they show up again next week against South Florida.

What did everyone else think?