(upbeat music) - Hi, being a nation. Welcome back to another edition of the Irish Breakdown Podcast. It is August 1st, folks. We are in a new month, which means we are in the month in which college football season is going to start. I'm super excited. I hope you guys are excited about this too. I just think this is gonna be such a fun college football season, not just for Notre Dame, but just in general. As I'm going through my conference predictions, we're gonna have the big 12 still coming up with Vince gets back in town. I'm gonna kind of redo my rankings a little bit, put them on the site, put them on the message board, got some really fun stuff planned. I'm just excited. I'm just excited about what this season is going to be in college football and really looking forward to it, just in general, just as a football fan, as well as a Notre Dame fan. I'm just very excited about what we're gonna see. But obviously, right now, the focus is on Notre Dame. And today, Notre Dame had their second practice of fall camp. We got to see the first five periods of that. So I'm gonna part of today's show. This is gonna be a super, super long show, but part today's show is gonna talk about what I saw in practice today. And I focus mainly on the offense. I'll explain why that is. And then in part two of today's show, I'm gonna talk about the injury to Gabriel Rubio, specifically what that is. And we don't know how long he's gonna be out, but basically what does Notre Dame do from here? And what does this mean from Notre Dame? That'll be part two of today's show. So I'm very much looking forward to that. And then tomorrow, I'll be back for a mail back. Vince, we'll be back with me tomorrow. So that'll be good. And so we'll have a full mail back tomorrow. You guys get all your questions in. We'll have a five period availability again tomorrow, I believe. So we will be able to get started at one o'clock tomorrow. We'll make sure we get that prexport up a little bit, a little bit sooner than we did today, but so that way we can be ready to rock and roll for tomorrow's mail back. So I'm very, very excited about that. Just like I said, 30 days away from Notre Dame, kicking off the 2024 season. Just extremely fired up about that. And I believe Notre Dame is considered week one. And so we are actually even closer to just the kickoff of the college football season overall. I believe, and I'm actually pulling this up now, but I believe the first, yeah, the first game of Saturday, October, August 24th. So we're almost three weeks away from being able to wake up and watch Florida State and Georgia Tech square off against each other in Ireland. There's also Montana State and the Mexico game. I may watch that. SNU Nevada will also play that way that day, Delaware State, Hawaii at midnight that day. So very, very much looking forward to that and to Florida college football season kicking off. So I hope you all are ready. Hope you guys are ready to go. I'm excited about what we're gonna see. And I look forward to tomorrow's practice as well. I'll try to focus a little bit more on the defense tomorrow than we could today, but sometimes it can be hard, but I'm ready to get rocking and rolling, folks. So let's talk some learning football. All right, as I said, part one today is going to be about the nerding football practice. Today we got to see five periods of today's practice. And just a couple observations, you know, look, you always kind of have reactions to the first day. And one of the concerns about kind of taking conclusions from all practices, you don't know what the coaches are building on. And I'll talk about, you know, some of the reasons why that can be challenging, but also it's like, why you evolve, your opinion evolves. So, you know, just one of the big takeaways that I had for today was similar to yesterday. It was good to see Notre Dame do something today that built on one of the takeaways we had in day one. So it's kind of good to see confirmation that this is continuing. And one is obviously Marcus Freeman's always valued competition, but what we're seeing today is we're seeing an even greater emphasis on maximizing reps and working with tempo in practice. And when I mean tempo, I don't just mean, you know, you have an up-tempo offense, but just an aggressiveness about the way you're going about things. And, you know, so yesterday we talked about how they were actually practicing on two parts of the field. And we saw a little bit of that today. When you get to practice, they're working on some inside run stuff and some handoff stuff and some throwing game stuff. And they've got two fields going. As we go outside, you've got, you know, one group down working on run game stuff on the end zone. You've got another group down here working on things. You've got, I think it was Kenny Minci and CJ Carr and Anthony Rizak were with one group and you've got some of the GAs and analysts working with that group. And then the other end, you've got, you know, Steve Angeli and Riley Leonard and sort of the first and second team group and then the, you know, the main assistant coaches down there. And they're just getting a ton of reps. And then we go to the individual period. And Notre Dame is working on a concept or various concepts, but basically the way they would go about it is they would line up in this particular plate. I'm sure that, you know, they can do it out of empty. They can do it out of three by one. But for this particular day, they were doing two by two. So you have two receivers to one side, two to another. So what they were working on is just a typical two by two formation that Mike then Brock does. So you've got the slot and the Z to one side and you've got the boundary, the X and the tight end to the other side. And they're just working on different past concepts. And the way they were doing it was, is instead of just having like, you know, you kind of run around in combination, they were running a route combination about one guy at a time. And so Riley Leonard jumps up first rep and he's getting a chance to work with at that time, which is sort of the first group of receivers, which for today, and I'll get more into this was Mike Gilbert. And it was, I think it was Mitchell Levens. Mitchell Leven's a tight end. Jaden Greathouse at Z or at the slot. And then you had Chris Mitchell at the Z. So he lines up and just takes a snap, makes the cage, takes a snap and then boom, throws a quick route into the boundary to, it was a, on this particular one, it was a, it was a comeback to Mike Gilbert, then the very next play. Actually, the first one, it was actually all hitches. So it was like, quick hitches and options. So boom, hit a quick option to, to Mike a Gilbert lines, quickly lines back up, boom, hits a little quick option to Mitchell Levens, boom lines back up, hits a little quick option to Jaden Greathouse, boom, hits a far hitch to Chris Mitchell. I mean, it's rapid fire. He's taking a snap, throwing the ball, getting it out, and then quickly lining up. Next guy's ready to go, get the cage. So there's working with some urgency, some tempo, while also not rushing and making sure that, hey, once we line up, we're ready to go, but we're not like, oh my gosh, I gotta quickly get the ball out. But there was tempo in between each rep. So as soon as you're done throwing, get lined back up. And then now there's some calm, let's go boom. And then we're getting the ball out. And what that's doing is that's getting a ton of reps. You're getting a lot of action in, but you're also allowing the quarterback to throw to every route in the route tree, or not shouldn't route tree, the route in each concept. So first time, as I mentioned, they had some quick throws. Next time he goes out there and he bangs a comeback throw to Mike a Gilbert. Then he hits a scene ball to Mitchell Levens. And then there's a stop route to Jaden Greathouse. And then a comeback to the field to Chris Mitchell. And so they're working on all these different past concepts that we all know that Mike Denbrock runs. But it's one guy at a time and then boom, boom, boom, boom. And so that way you're throwing every route. So a lot of times in the past, you'll kind of run it where you have two guys go to time. And he'll kind of read it and you'll throw to one. And then maybe somebody else is the other. That guy doesn't get a ball. Other times you may do it to where you throw. So you have, let's say you've got your four quarterbacks. You've got Leonard and Jelly, Munchi and Carr. They line up and it's okay. You're working on your boundary hitch. So let's say you're working on a boundary smash, just for an example. So you've got a number one's going to run a little smash, hitch concept, number two's going to run a corner. Okay, so you drop back and then I throw the hitch and then next guy goes up, he throws a hitch, next guy throws a hitch or I throw the hitch, come back up, throw the corner and then the next guy goes. And then later on you work on your back. So this is just getting a reppin with every throw. And I really liked the way they were going about it 'cause there was an emphasis on tempo and there was an emphasis on making sure that everybody's running the right route. And then obviously an emphasis on Riley Leonard, then Steven, Jelly, then Kenny Munchi, CJ Carr getting a chance to throw every route within a concept and within a scheme, which I thought was really good to see. So I was pleased by that even like a running back, a receiver, the way that Mike Brown's going through drills, it's just getting work and getting reps in, but still teaching, a lot of teaching. Joe Rudolph doing the same thing with the offensive line. You can see Al Washington down there at the D line, just it's getting work and getting reps in, but not doing it in a way to where you're so emphasizing reps, reps, reps, reps, reps, reps that you're not getting teaching in. And as I thought about what we talked about with yesterday's show about why we heard so much vocalness from the coaches, I think this is part of it because if we're gonna get a lot of work in it, we're gonna be working with tempo and it's isn't like old school football or you run a play and you're gonna run it five times in a row until you get it right. You know, you're kind of focusing on, you're focusing on just reps over quality. And the back in the day, it was quality over reps, right? Now this is kind of like a little bit of both. So you're going fast, you're going with tempo, you're doing what you need to do, but you've got to make sure that you're still teaching. And so that would make sense why the coaches were so much more vocal yesterday because you've got to go out there and figure out, hey, how do we teach, but also get all the reps that we need and it looks like that's what Notre Dame's trying to do. So I'm just really impressed with the pace of practice and I'm impressed with the amount of teaching that's going on. You think about why am I hearing Mike Denbrock so much, Mike Mickin so much, Al Washington so much yesterday of practice and then again today, it's that right there. It's we're trying to get a lot of work done, but we've got to teach, teach, teach, teach, teach. And it was good to see that evidence and kind of out there for us to see again on day two. So let's kind of get into some specifics. I focus mainly on quarterbacks, running backs, receivers and offensive line today. Offensive line was more about who just who was out there, spent a lot of time watching the quarterbacks. The reason I didn't watch a lot of the defense, just so you guys understand is so when they're inside, so like during the spring, I'm able to get like kind of like a full practice report, even in five periods. I can see the offense, I can see the defense 'cause they're in just on that one field and then we're up above looking down so I can kind of see a little bit of everything. Well, today they obviously did the stretching and things and some special team stuff inside, but then we went outside. And so when they go outside, they've got two full practice fields outside as well. And so the offense is on one and we can stand over there and then on the far field is the defense. And so the defense is on the far field. And so it's kind of, and there's like a big tower and there's just a lot of things kind of in between that make it hard to just see what's going on on the defensive side of the field. So it's just, it makes it tougher. And today they did a little bit of work between the offensive defense and the secondary, which I'll talk about here in a little bit, but that's why with a lot of the drills and the reps and the things along those lines, I focus on the offense today. So starting with the quarterbacks yesterday, the quarterbacks not sharp, going through warmups today. Well, I shouldn't say the quarterbacks. I thought Kenny and CJ were fine. It was Riley and Steve were not real sharp yesterday. Today, during drills, a lot sharper. I thought both quarterbacks were a lot better, just kind of a lot, a lot more crisp. You know, Riley wasn't rushing his mechanics, which was causing balls to failure. One mistake like that, which I'll get into during a throw, but you know, Steve was better today. He was a lot more sharp. He was snapping the ball off, it was coming down. Nice trajectory out of his hands. He wasn't sailing like he was yesterday. So that was good to see there. Just was a bit more calm today in the quarterback room than there was yesterday. And so I thought the result was the quarterbacks by and large, just looking sharper than they did yesterday. Getting into some of the specifics I talked about, just the different routes that they threw. Speaking of Riley Leonard, I thought he looked much better today. He had two misses today that I thought were balls. He's got to do a better job on. Number one was he threw a far field comeback, far hash comeback, where he drops back and he opens his hips too much. And the ball kind of dives down on Chris Mitchell. Now I thought Chris should have still caught it, but it was not a good ball by Riley. And so he just kind of opened it up too much. And you heard the correction. I don't know what specifically it was, but it sounded like they were kind of correcting that. But it just opened his hips. And when your quarterback opens his hips too much, especially when you're a guy with a lower arm angle, like Riley does, it's going to kind of drive that down and cause the ball to sail and go down. And that's what happened to Riley on that. And then there was a post throw that he threw too far in. He needs to get it back out and kind of over the top a little bit more to Chris Mitchell. I thought Chris should have done a better job making a play on that one as well. But that was a ball that he needs to miss. Outside of that, I thought Riley was pretty sharp. He threw a gorgeous seam throw to Mitch 11s. They had, they were running a burst corner at one point time. Burst corner is an outside guy kind of works in, vertical, then breaks of the corner. So it looks like this. He just drilled Bo Collins, perfectly paced place ball. The next three, the next two-quarter back Steve and Kenny both missed it and they missed it by a bunch. So he certainly, through the best ball there, his seam stuff was really good through a really nice outcut, like deep outcut to J and Great House, 10 yards beat out to the field. Good zip on the ball, got it out there, Jaden caught it and was able to catch it and get upfield. A lot of time, the other guys, all the out throws were kind of right on the sideline. So they were catching it and then two step in and going out of bounds. Riley threw his with enough time where Great House could catch it and then turn up field and stay upfield. So it was good to see that. His far field comebacks, again, as I said, he was opening up a little bit and he wasn't quite as sharp there, but a lot of his other throws, I thought were very good. Steve, on the other hand, I thought through the ball well on the field stuff. So I thought Steve, you know, got decent zip on the ball, but he completed a couple of those deep comebacks, thought decent ball placement, his outcuts were, for the most part on target, he was late throwing an outcut to Jordan Faison and he kind of carried him out of bounds, Jordan tried to stay in bounds, couldn't stay in bounds, missed on a corner throw. He threw a really nice scene ball too. I believe it was Kevin Baumann. Steve threw a really nice boundary scene throw to Kevin Baumann, which is good. That's a ball that Steve is a little inconsistent with in the past, but today he was right on point with it. And honestly, I thought at first that he overthrew him, just 'cause, you know, Steve has a high release and sometimes guys with high releases, the ball can look like it's gonna go a little bit, but it dropped perfectly onto Kevin. Kevin ran underneath it and made the play. So I thought he was good. Kenny again was very sharp today. I thought Kenny meant you. He had one miss on a burst corner that I talked about, but other than that, Kenny was sharp. He looked confident. This is the most command that I've seen from Kenny from just a present standpoint. You know, there's just not a lot of, and the passion of Kenny kind of throw, and he just kind of going through the motions. Today, Kenny looked like he had purpose to his actions today, and that was very good to see. Getting into the team period, as I mentioned, Riley had the deep miss to Chris Mitchell. I thought he was good outside of that. He was accurate. He was getting the ball over the middle. He was on point making his, you know, his reads and things along those lines. So that was good to see. When we got to the team with Steve, it was kind of the same thing. It was that we talk about a lot. He threw three balls during the team period, and every single one was to the checkdown. Every single one. And one of them totally made sense. The other one was look like a good read. He looked deep, came down underneath, and then the third one was just, you never even let the play develop. You just kind of bang the checkdown. And that's something that Steve is going to have to be more willing to do is like, look, we know you can hit the checkdown. You've got to be willing to try to get that ball downfield. Now, what I don't want him to do is kind of what CJ Carr did. And CJ, during his period, had a really good read where he kind of came back to a deep stop route and just fit the ball in between three guys. Okay, good. You went with the read, you did it with good timing, and you were able to fit it in. Then later, CJ saw the seam, and there was maybe like a little tiny window there if he'd have thrown it on time, but he didn't. And he forced it into triple coverage, and Rod heard breaks it up and honestly should have picked it off, to be honest with you. Like, so there's that fine line between being aggressive and taking those shots and forcing the ball. And then there's a fine line between, okay, I don't want to force a ball, and I'm now I'm too conservative with my throws. And that's always been the criticism I've had of Steve. And we saw it in the spring game, we saw it in the Jersey scrimmage, and then we saw it again yesterday and today. So I just want to see him be a little bit more comfortable with the progressions where he's just reading things a little bit quicker. He's going to have to speed that process up because when you're playing against this secondary, those windows close up quickly. And we've seen that the last couple of days from this Notre Dame team. And when you talk about the defense, for example, and what you see from the secondary today, just from the five periods we saw, if you don't throw the ball on time, the window's gone. I mean, it's just, it's gone. I mean, we saw I was really impressed with watching Rod run around today. Just the feel he has for the defense closing on the football and just the different things he's doing. You see Xavier Watts obviously driving on routes. Jayden Mickey, I thought I had another good day today. I saw Jayden Mickey run step-for-step with Chris Mitchell on a post route. That was good to see, you know, just because we've seen on film that Chris can run. We've seen on film what Chris can do to see Jayden Mickey. I thought, you know, when he had this, you know, took the step on him, Mitchell had a, Chris Mitchell had just a step on Jayden, not even a step. And Jayden did a really nice job of staying underneath him and Chris should have worked back over, but it would have been tough to work back over because of the way that Jayden Mickey played it. So the point is you're just not gonna have a lot of room to work against this secondary. And then I don't know if you guys saw the tweet noted and put out from practice today, but they had Leonard, you know, Leonard Moore intercepting the pass intended for Jayden Thomas today. So, you know, this secondary, it's really good. It's very good. And you're just not gonna have a lot of room to work. And so I think that's a thing where Steve is gonna have to get a lot better about that. But it's also a good thing that the secondary is the way that it is because it's gonna force Steve to read quicker. He has to read quicker if he's gonna have success with his defense. And so I think it's gonna be in good form as long as he's willing to, you know, hey, man, let's maybe get this ball over the middle a little bit. Let's try this throw. Let's not be afraid to make this throw. 'Cause Steve, when he's got a one-on-one, is an aggressive downfield guy. He just, within the process of reading a defense, there's not that same level of aggressiveness. And he's gonna have to do that. But then you, well, 'cause CJ and I thought he forced a couple balls during the team period today. Kenny kind of took what they gave him. I thought he did a good job of that when there was a chance to get the ball downfield. He did, but he took kind of the, he was willing to take some of that short stuff, but he got it out quick. Loud guys to catch, square up and get vertical. So it's good to see that today. And then of course we saw, we saw Riley being aggressive throwing the ball down the field as well. So I thought overall, I thought the quarterbacks had a solid day and did some solid work, looked sharper than they did yesterday. Still a work in progress as you're always gonna be in day two. But it was good to see that. Receiver wise, both columns have pressed me again today. He's not, again, not an, like an elite athlete. He's not, you know, you're not gonna confuse him for Will Fuller or anything like that. And he's not like, as explosive as like Chase Claypool was, reminds me a lot more of Miles Boykin than he did. 'Cause I was surprised that Miles Boykin ran as fast as he did 'cause Miles didn't show that type of explosiveness on the football field. But he's still very good, very good player for Notre Dame. He reminds me a lot of Miles in that regard. I love the work I'm saying for Jane Greyhouse. Still the number one guy going through drills. I mean, every day, Jane Greyhouse, number one guy. He looked good. Jaden Thomas again, smooth, fluid, caught the ball relatively well. You know, today in the boundary, they kind of yesterday it was Jaden Thomas. Bo Collins was two, Jaden Thomas was one, and then Michael Gilbert was three. Today from what I could see, it was Michael Gilbert one, Jaden Thomas two and Bo Collins at three. And then another drill, they were flippered, Bo Collins was two, Jaden Thomas is a three. So you're seeing them kind of, you know, mixed guys around trying to get different receivers work with the different quarterbacks, which is what you wanna see. I wouldn't read too much into that as if, you know, this guy's here, here, here. I think it's really comes down to when we would do this in fall camp or when I've seen Notre Dame do it in the past, it's, hey, look, we've got these different guys. I wanna make sure that Mike is getting reps with Riley and that Mike is getting reps with Steve and Bo's getting reps with Steve and Bo's getting reps with Riley and same with Jaden Thomas. And because all three of those guys, I think are gonna play this year in the boundary. And so we saw a little bit of that today. We saw him in the offensive line as well, which I'll get to, but so that's kind of the way that they worked in the boundary. But I thought Mike Gilbert had looked sharp today. He's plays a lot of confidence for a freshman. And I also liked what I saw from Cam Williams today. You know, the thing with Cam is when, when Cam is just like, hey, you're running a go route or you're running a post route or an over route, like Cam looks really good. You can see the elite athleticism. You can see the speed. You can see the burst. But there's a lot of times where Cam just didn't look comfortable with what he was doing. He'd run a post, but maybe not break it off at the right angle or, you know, he'd run a, you know, have a go and he'd look great doing it in routes on air, but then he's got to beat a press and he doesn't look as great beating the press. He's not as comfortable and it slows him down. I thought today, you know, this is probably the most assertive that I thought Cam has been, these four of the periods that we saw and he caught the ball really well. He kind of fought the ball a little bit in the spring because I think he was in his head. He was thinking a lot about I got to do this technique wise. I got to do that technique wise and all those different things and that would kind of slow him down a little bit physically and he would kind of fight the ball today. He was catching it clean. He had a really nice, I think it was Kenny threw him a deep comeback and on a deep comeback, you don't want to like, you don't want to receive or stopping on a comeback. Meaning like he gets out of his break and the angle the ball forces him to stop and kind of go back. You want to kind of run him into the ball. So your throw needs to be, he's coming out of his break at a 45 degree downhill angle. You want to throw that ball so when he gets out of his break, he is running to the football. If you throw it and stop it, that allows the DB to kind of recover and get his hands in the football. And so what can happen with a young receiver is if you throw the ball to where he's got to run to the ball, the young receiver sometimes will not accelerate out of that cut and then he's late getting to the ball. So to see Cam today get out of that cut, accelerate downhill and get to the football, I thought was really good to see 'cause he hasn't been doing that a lot. And then he snatched the ball of the air, made a really nice catch on it. So it was encouraging to see Cam starting to, you know, at least on some reps, it's starting to look like, okay, I've kind of figured out some of this stuff. And so that's obviously a positive for what he's doing. Like KK Smith looked really good going through drills. He's a very explosive guy. He's just got to play stronger. That's a thing with KK as far as when it's just drills or one-on-ones or routes on air. He looks really athletic, but he's just going to have to be a little bit more, you know, physical working against defensive backs when they're getting hands on him. That's something that KK is going to have to work on. There's no doubt about it. But I mean, I just, Jordan Faison looks real comfortable outside, you know, his route running is sharp today, sharper than it was last year. KK, like Jordan was a good, like a good route run on certain areas, but they were certain little things that they were working on. One of the things I love today, I won't get into too many specifics 'cause I don't know what they would want me to say publicly or not. But one of the things that I like today that they were doing with the receivers was Mike Brown. So they were running like in-breaking routes. Okay, I'll say which one, but they're working on in-breaking routes. And so Mike Brown would get up there and Jayden Greathouse would go. And so he would kind of line up over top of them, but then at the snap, he would kind of widen. And then Jayden would have to attack his leverage. You guys have heard me say, you know, what do I always talk about? So, so for you young receivers coaches, there's two things that you want to say when you're teaching the receivers, they're release, right? It's you want to attack the DB leverage and have a specific gaming point. I've always thought the aiming point should be your outside, kind of your outside armpit, just 'cause it overemphasizes what, you know, kind of really pushing that guy. So you're not, if you attack his inside armpit, then you're still inside of him. He's not threatened. Even though you're attacking his leverage, he's not threatened by you. But in this case, if you kind of attack that outside armpit, outside shoulder, how do you want to say it? I like the armpit 'cause it gave him a look, outside shoulder, he starts attacking out here, might be a little too wide. And so I know I've said outside shoulder on the show before, but when I talk to my citizens really outside armpit, 'cause I want him kind of aiming here as opposed to getting outside. 'Cause if he goes outside, then now he's too far outside. And so we saw Mike Brown teaching that today. So you saw on this end-breaking route where Jaden Greathouse starts to work vertically, but he's working for width, attacking the leverage that Mike Brown was lined up at. So I actually thought it was gonna be a seam route, the way that he was attacking. And then he quickly snaps it off and works back inside. And I was like, all right, like I love to see that. Well, then the next rep lines up the same way, but at the snap, he kind of squats inside. And then the receiver was like, not quite as sure what to do. So you saw that he was working with the receivers on, hey, you've gotta understand how to get open. It's not just you're coming off and 'cause the problem with routes on air is like, there's no thought, you're just, you know what you're doing. But the way that Coach Brown was doing it with them today, it was, hey, you've gotta be, this is a thinking man's game. You've gotta still be thoughtful of how you're attacking this route. So I was very happy to see that. And the receivers, you know, we're hit or miss on how they did it. I thought Jaden Gradehouse looked very comfortable with it. Jordan Faison looks very comfortable with it. Jordan's having a greater instance where it started to come, that part of the conversation started. But Jordan's starting to show a little bit more of an understanding of some of the nuanced parts. Like Jordan was a good route runner when it came to the top ends. He was quickening out of breaks. He, you know, you think about snapping that post route off against you again. So it was kind of more of a back side scene, but really snapping off the top end when he got to, got the leverage with him. You think of the little quick pivot route that he ran against Oregon State for the touchdown that he had. You know, it works kind of like a reverse pivot. Go beats a guy back inside me. When he's doing that stuff, he's really good. But Jordan had to learn some of the nuances of, you know, proper stem and things along those lines. Today he looked really sharp with that. Looked really comfortable with that. Doing that outside. So I was happy to see that. I mean, I was really overall pleased with what we saw from the receivers. I thought Chris Brown had two drops that I didn't like. There was another time I thought he should have played the ball better. He's just the, you can tell the timing is off a little bit with him and the other quarterbacks, you know, with both Steve and Riley, but especially Riley. But then there was another throw later where Riley was rolling left and he threw it and it just kind of, it kind of went down. And Chris did a great job of accelerating downhill and just snatching his arms down low and making the catch for what would have been about an eight, nine yard gain. So I was happy to see that. 'Cause you could tell he was frustrated with the two early drops. He was frustrated with it with himself and probably a little bit with the ball. But to see him kind of bounce back and make a couple really nice throws was good to see from Chris Mitchell. But you know, solid day from him bounced back. I guess I bounced back from those two early drops, but I do want to obviously see him not have those drops. But his quickness is good. His feel for the game is good. Like what I've seen from him so far for Notre Dame so far in practice and trying to think of a couple of other guys that we saw today that I wrote about. Let me just check my practice report notes and see if there's anybody that I'm missing from here. So yeah, Logan Saltatte when he's running routes, he looks a little, not slow. That's not what I wanted to use. He's thinking way too much. Real choppy, just uncertain of what he's doing over exaggerating the routes, things along those lines. But when he's going through drills, you can really see the quickness from Logan. Like he moves pretty well and he's a little bit taller, a little bit longer than I thought he was going to be. So he's got some athleticism. He just has to just, he's like kind of like we're deliberate. Yes, yes, USMA thank you. Yes, deliberate. He's a little too deliberate in how he's kind of going about things. So I appreciate that. We're talking about Saltatte, but that's where Cam was in the spring. Like that was the issue with Cam Williams in the spring, is Cam was real deliberate. He was thinking you could tell he wasn't turning loose 'cause he was like, okay, what am I doing here? Am I on the fourth step? Am I on the fifth step? I'm, hold on, am I going to the cone? Am I going past the cone? Like what am I supposed to do here? And you start thinking and it slows you down. And so Logan's going through a little bit of that first two days as well. But when it's just like, hey, you're doing a cone drill, you're just coming off at speed and he looks really quick, really athletic. Just overall looking at this receiving core, I really like just the athleticism of this group. You see a lot of good quickness. There's different types of athletes. You've got guys like Bo Collins and Jaden Thomas, who were more smooth and fluid. Jaden's a lot better coming out of his breaks than he was before. You've got Jaden Greathouse, who's just really like a unique athlete. I don't, he's not like Jaden Thomas. He's a little bit twitchier than Jaden Thomas, but he doesn't have like the burst of like a Jaden Harrison or Jordan Thason, he's a very unique athlete. But just knows how to play. Then you've got those kind of long striders, speed guys like KK Smith and Cam Williams and Chris Mitchell. So very unique group, very unique group. And then Jaden Harrison's kind of off on his own thing too is a little bit different type of athlete. Almost looks like, almost kind of looks a lot like Chris Tyree did last year. He's a little bit shiftier than Chris was. But what I mean is, you know, Chris looked like a running back that was trying to play slot. Jaden Greathouse is more of an, or Jaden Harrison's more of a natural receiver than Chris Tyree was, but like his bill, you know, shorter, it kind of has a running back body a little bit, but he's got that explosiveness and, you know, he's caught the ball pretty well coming out of breaks too. So I really liked what I saw from him, him today athletically. Now where you saw Chris, Jaden Harrison struggle a little bit today was on some of the times when coach Brown would move and make him have to read and react, he wasn't quite as comfortable with, okay, what do I do? So you can tell he wasn't really, didn't really have that hammered in to him at Marshall where he could just kind of use his speed. He's going to have to obviously continue to learn that. So these things are going to be, you know, these type of drills are going to be good for him. Another some concern yesterday about Mitch 11 is not going through, you know, going through practice. My understanding is he's healthy. It's just, there's just patience with him just kind of getting him up to full speed. I don't know if he went through team or anything seven on seven like that today, but he was out there doing routes on air and he looks athletic and fast and you caught the ball well. So it was good to see him. Kevin Bauman was out there. It was good to see Kevin going through everything. And then, but the problem with him is he's, you can see the effect of the injuries have had on Kevin Bauman. He just lumbers when he's running and he catches the ball very well. He knows how to run routes. He just lumbers. He's just not the athlete he was when he first came to Notre Dame. And so that was a, now he may get better. You know, again, he has to play football in a while. So he may, he may get some of that juice back. He, you know, maybe has a little bit of, maybe too much weight on him right now, which can happen when you've had as many lower body injuries he's had. So he may work back in the shape, but right now he's just lumbering a little bit, trying to kind of get back into where he needs to get to. So that's kind of what I saw from the past catchers today. You know, outside of that, not a whole lot to see from that group. Let's talk about the running backs. Gosh, I wish you guys could see like what we're seeing from the running backs. Like this is such an impressive group. Start off with Jeremiah Love, wrote about this in the Prague support. He is filled out really nicely. Like you look at Jeremiah Love and he looks like a completely different athlete. You guys are going to see it when the season starts. But then I don't know, like if there's videos out that have Logan, Jeremiah Love in it, I'm not quite sure. But he's really thicker up here. Like he's got a lot of extra armor on it. He's filled out in the chest. His arms are thicker. You know, he's a really good looking athlete. And anytime you see a guy go from like, you know, like 195 ish to like 210, 210 plus, which he did. This off season, like I know, I know the roster has not been updated yet. Actually, I want to check it again. Now I'm checking it like every hour, right? I go and check the roster and see if they've updated the heights and weight yet. And they haven't. Let me just check here real quick to see if it's updated. Nope, still the same thing. They've got him listed at 206. He looks a lot thicker than 206 to me. He looks to be at least 210, 212 to me. You know, I was talking to Ryan earlier today. He was talking to somebody said he's up to 215 right now. But the thing is, is he has not lost the juice at all. If anything, he's got a little bit more juice now than he did 'cause he's got some now grown man strength and weight room work to him super explosive. That's not gonna surprise, that's gonna surprise a grand total of zero of you in the audience. None of you are gonna be like, oh Jeremiah loves explosive, who knew? Here's what's been encouraging to me is obviously the filling out of the frame. That's huge. He's gotta be, he needed that extra armor to be able to go through a full season. Here's the other thing I've liked about Jeremiah. He's the number one guy going through drills. He's starting to show more of a leadership by how he goes about his business type of manner. You can see a command of that room coming from him. Like he's, he is taking on sort of that, hey, I'm the guy and what comes with being the guy. What comes with being the normal guy in the room is, dude, we need you to be the leader. You've gotta set the tone with how you prepare each day. I don't know where he's gonna be in practice three and practice four and practice 20 and practice 25. But yesterday and today, especially today, 'cause I focused a little bit more on him, you're seeing that, you're seeing that level of, okay, I've gotta, when it's my rep, I gotta jump up in there and be ready to go. And I've gotta give great effort, you know, when it's, when you're seeing a little bit more in some of the inside run stuff, where Jeremiah is just more willing to kind of hammer up into the line, you know, than he was before, where maybe he would try to make that big cut, but I love the quickness and the explosiveness you're seeing from him. Very talented guy, still need to see a little bit more patience from him on some of the inside zone stuff, but he still looks, he looks really good, athletically so far and just starting to show a little bit more, more, not maturity, 'cause I mean, he's freshman, but just, he understands the role that's in front of him. And he's starting to show that he's embracing that role beyond just, hey, I gotta be a playmaker. And if it wasn't for Jeremiah Love, I mean, we'd just, we'd be doing nothing but talking about Jadarion Price. I mean, he looks great. Now, I think Jadarion has, I mean, he was good last year with the burst. I mean, you saw it in games, but like, he's back to the juice he showed as a freshman. He's an incredibly, incredibly explosive player. His, his ability to take that first step and explode downhill is really impressive. And there's a run yesterday. Actually, I think you guys might have seen it. We talked about it, if you watched the highlight, the little highlights that Nurnay put out, you guys saw him talking about. There's that inside zone run where there's alignment that he had to hop over the guy and he hits it and he just goes. You can just see that balance. His agility and balance takes a back seat to nobody. I put that in my practice report. And he looks great, but you're also seeing Jadarion start to be a little bit more vocal, a little bit more assertive and how he's going about his business. And it's just a one, two punch that has you very excited about what this group can be. And, and those two guys are just dudes. And, and they're not getting talked about a ton outside of Notre Dame. You know, there's top 10 lists coming out, running backs, and they're not getting talked about. But, I mean, let's see what happens on the pads put on folks, but I'm telling you, I'll be shocked if there's a more explosive one, two points of running back than this duo. And they both look good. I mean, they're not just these little guys. I mean, Jadarion's short, but he's a, he reminds me a lot of Terrell Davis physically. You guys remember Terrell Davis with the Broncos. Like, Terrell was strong. Like Terrell was muscular, he was strong, but he wasn't real big. He was 205, but he was a workhorse. And Terrell was absolutely a workhorse. Jadarion reminds me a lot like that. He's 205, 210. He's not real big, but he's really put together well. And he's got some workhorse traits to him as a player. And this one, two punches really good. Jadarion shows more patience right now as a runner than Jeremiah. So Jeremiah's gonna have to continue working on that. But those two guys are, are really, really impressive looking and, and you know, Anneas Williams steady today. You know, he, he looks clean and criss going through drills. I love what I've seen from Keydron. He looks healthy. You don't see a lot of 230 pound guys that have the kind of nimble athleticism that Keydron showed in drills. Now, at times his footwork is still kind of not where it needs to be. He's still learning what Coach McCullough wants. But when he's just kind of one step and go, quick plant, you know, they do this thing where the backs have to attack coach running back coaches all do this. You got to attack the bag and he'll move the bag to one side and they've got to cut one way or the other. One thing that Coach McCullough really emphasizes is being real tight with that cut. You know, a lot of guys think this crazy, you know, jump cut on that. That's not what he's looking for. You do jump cut some different drills. He's looking for attack, attack, attack, plant and cut off of that. Keydron, you know, really impressive when he makes the right decision, really impressive there. I love the athleticism, athleticism and balance. And then what I'm gonna talk about Devin Ford is also really quality athletes. So that's, that's one of the, just, just athleticism. Just how do they look going through drills? How do they look athletically? I don't know that there's a more impressive position group on this team than the running backs. Again, we're just talking athletic ability. I'm not saying they're going to be the best position group. I'm not saying they're gonna be the number one running back tandem in the country. I'm just saying athletically, talent-wise, this is, there's nobody more impressive on this team athletically than this group. I mean, when you're talking about Aneas Williams and Keydron Young as you're three and four and whatever order, Devin Ford being your five, you know, right now, talent-wise, fucking talent-wise. You've got a heck of a room, a heck of a room. And so I was able to watch them go through drills today and, well, they're an impressive group. And I just, I love how much Coach McCullough still emphasizes the little things in practice. I mean, he is on them nonstop about just the little things. And so I'm confident that coach, that coach McCullough is gonna get Jeremiah Love going on just to patience and things like that. So, you know, we'll see how they go. And somebody asked them about PassPro in the check. No idea, Ray, that they're not doing a lot of that right now. There's no pads on. So I don't care what they're doing in PassPro right now. I'll care more about that when the pads come on and we see that. So I don't have an answer for that. They weren't doing a lot of PassPro in the period that we saw today. They've been doing a lot of stuff getting them out in space and letting them catch the football. So I don't have anything on that. Last thing is about the offensive line. It's all the offensive line today. So yesterday I was a little concerned about they had Pat Coogan at left guard and Rocco Spindler is the number two right guard behind Billy Shroud. And I'll be honest with you, I was a little bit nervous about that and I spoke about that, but I should have taken my own advice of not overacting too much to one practice. That's on me. I should have taken my own advice 'cause today we saw Rocco Spindler with the ones at left guard and Pat Coogan as the number two right guard. So what that tells me is they are going to give a legit battle there, but they're also making sure that whoever doesn't win that battle is prepared to be sort of that swing guy. So that was good to see from them. You still had a meal wagners number one right tackle, Jagasal still is number one left tackle. Seven abs were still the number two left guard. So yes, that's on me. I assumed something about just Pat Coogan being the guy. And I don't know if I said it during the show, but I definitely said it on the message board. So that's why I should always take your own advice, Brian, right? Let it play out, right? Love it, Tommy Guns has it in there. Let it play out and see what happens in practice two and practice three. And then if it's the same thing, then you can say something. So that's on me everybody. I take that one. It was kind of good to see that today. Now again, best man win, right? Best man win, but at least you feel like there's an opportunity there. From a performance standpoint, I thought Rocco looked good today, he got good movement. He still has a tendency at times to stop his feet when he has contact, but overall played with good base and got pretty decent movement in the run game. You know, Pat battles hard. The problem with Pat Coogan is just, it's the same thing as you always do. He just is not a great athlete. And his lack of athleticism results in him being on the ground more than it does Rocco, neither of them are very good athletes. But with Pat, it's again today, they're running, I think it was an inside zone plane. He's coming off and he just kind of loses his balance and he just goes flying down and just clogs up the lane and your coaches, you know, get off the ground and stay off the ground and not so much from a like don't tackle standpoint, but you don't want offensive lineman going to the ground right away. You want them getting movement. You want them, especially when you're a zone team. In the zone, like if I'm running inside zone and the defensive tackle causes us to stalemate, that's a borderline win for the defense. If not a win for the defense. When anytime the zone stops and you've stopped there being any movement, that's a win because zone is meant to be move, move, move, move, move, cut, right? And so when a guy goes down, that stops movement. You can't move anymore at that spot. And so you saw that today from Pat, he just got to do a better job of keeping his balance and staying up and just gets a little bit overextended, right? A little bit and just got a little upper body got too far away from his lower body and he just went down. And those are the kind of things you're gonna have to avoid. And that's something that was an issue for him at times last year. And it was at least an issue for him on a few snaps a day. But overall, I thought the O line did a nice job of getting a decent push in some of the drills they had. I wasn't paying attention to who the defensive players were, to be honest with you. I didn't know if they were going against backups or first teamers or whatever. But I did think they did a pretty decent job today on the zone stuff of getting a real nice push inside. But so center left tackle, right guard, right tackle, all the same today with the first and second team, left guard and number two right guard were a little bit different from what we saw today. I did see a couple of nice blocks from Sam Pendleton today. When I was kazook, they were going some run game stuff at the same time they were doing some past stuff. So I'm kind of going like this, right? Going like this and trying to get a look and figuring out kind of what they were doing. I did look over there a couple of times I saw Sam Pendleton get a couple of really nice blocks in there at centers with the number two group at center. So that was good to see as well. And so that's what I saw on today's practice everybody. I think secondary wise, a couple of things from secondary. Now, Jaden Mickey has been good the first two days, running vertically on stuff, coming downhill quickly, closing on things that are sort of in that no cover zone. He's got to fly downhill, make a tackle. Rod Hurd was super active today. I liked what I saw from Rod. That was good to see. I thought the linebackers are doing a better job overall as a unit of kind of getting up underneath stuff and closing on routes. Couple of times they were late at will of responded to a frontside crosser. You have to obviously get a little bit quicker reacting to that. But overall, I thought the defense is kind of what you'd expect early, right? Like they're on top of it, they are experienced. They know what they're doing. And so that was good to see. And you're seeing a lot of different linebackers doing a lot of different things for them. So that was what we saw today. So it was pleased by what I saw, a lot of competition again. But a lot of athleticism and really like what this team looks like. So again, so far and that's day two with no pads on, right? So everything should be taken in proper context. Really impressive what you saw on day two with no pads on. And like what I see from this team, tempo wise, work wise, they're getting a lot of good work in so far and camp. And that'll certainly make you happy. So that's what it is, right? You want to win the day, you know, win the day. Did we get better today? That's, that's your focus as a coach. Did we get better today than we were yesterday? And from at least through the first five periods, the offense was sharper today through five periods than they were yesterday through five periods. Now again, we don't, I don't know what they did during the team period. I don't know what they did on some of the other stuff, but just as far as how they looked through the first five periods of practice today, a little sharper than they were yesterday at all spots. Quarterback, running back, receiver, O line, all of it. And that's where you want to be. And tomorrow, the goal is going to be, be better tomorrow than you were today. And that's kind of what you're doing, you know, building up to that point of time in the season. So now that's my practice report for today. Our five periods, I'll have another one. So tomorrow's mail bag, what we have not decided yet, is if we're going to start off practice with a, or the mail bag with a little mini practice report, or if we may record something and just kind of put it out separately, most likely what we'll do at the beginning of the mail bag. Tomorrow is just start off with a, like a 20 minute practice report and just kind of go through some of the things that we saw in practice tomorrow. So hopefully we'll get a chance to see that. And it's going to be Vince's first practice of the season. So he might be a little bit more talkative about practice and what he sees. And I'll probably kind of queue him up for some stuff tomorrow to let him give his impression since you've guys have heard from me for the last two days. So I'm looking forward to having Vince at practice tomorrow with me and kind of see how things go. So before we move on to our next conversation, folks, do me a favor, hit the, yeah, I wish Tommy, I wish I could do a live practice report, but I don't want to lose my credentials to Notre Dame. So appreciate the idea, buddy. But hey, here's what we want you guys to do. Do me a favor, hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell, share this podcast, give us a five star review. I would greatly appreciate that. I don't know your favorite podcast platforms, including Spotify, who's a great partner of ours and has been this year. So we really appreciate them. If you have not done so, it's not for the message board. It boards that are straight down the comma. I always put my practice report first on the message board. Then I go in and write the story and tweet the story out. So you always get my practice reports first. And if you have any questions and things like that, not so much about what I, what's not in there, because if I had notes on a guy that were worth putting in there, I'd put them in there. But if you want to, you know, talk about kind of what I saw as questions, whatever the case may be. If I write a word that I think you should know, but you don't know, please feel free to ask. I'll clarify what that means and those type of things. So hopefully, hopefully you guys enjoy that and check out today's practice report of practice report tomorrow. And as we get closer and closer to kicking off the 2024 season. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
