There better not be any of this happening this Spring. We’d never understand what Michigan was doing at ND practices anyway.

I think of Spring Football as a tiny island in the middle of an ocean of off-season. It wont sustain us for long, but there’s fruit to be had, and maybe, just maybe after it all, we can have some idea of where we’re headed from here until the season starts.

So here are the rumors and bits of news that I’ll be particularly keen to hear about in the next few weeks:

• Injuries: We all fear them, and many of us tend to sit around in the office, hitting refresh on our web browsers on the various ND Football news sites and forums, hoping to get word of any truly devastating injuries as soon as possible. I don’t know why. Maybe we’ll think it will hurt less if we just get it over with, like a rabies shot, or a break up, or an episode of The View. But as ND fans we shouldn’t fear all injuries this spring. It was evident in 2007 that the off-season wasn’t nearly physical enough. And looking back, the relative lack of practice-related injuries should have clued us into that fact. Hopefully there’ll be a fairly regular stream of nicks, bumps, bruises, and maybe even a few strains or sprains this spring. Nothing that ends a season or even a spring for any player, but at least some solid indication that the guys are really hammering eachother out there.
• A Focus on Special Teams: Nothing in football helps a lousy team become a respectable team faster than great special teams play. In 2007, ND was a lousy football team with lousy special teams play. Coach Weis promised to do all he could to clean that problem up, including visiting Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech. Here’s hoping Coach Beamer has a bit more affinity for Notre Dame than Rich Rodriguez apparently did.
• Weight Gain: We’ve already heard plenty about Sam Young bulking up to 330 pounds. And we applaud that. He and other offensive linemen seemed to be getting nicked up pretty regularly by October. They need some extra armor to protect them against the rigors of a full season. And a guy with Young’s frame, in particular, was probably a bit too easy to get leverage against and push around at or just below 300 lbs. But what I really hope to start hearing about is the bulking up of some of the defensive linemen. Given our serious depth problems there, the guys who are on the roster will need to be able to take punishment and keep on coming. A little added weight will help. A little added weight on Mr. Clausen wouldn’t hurt either, but we’ve heard lots of reports that indicate he’ll be looking to roll up the ole’ jersey sleeves with a little more pride this fall.
• Very Unhappy Happy Linebackers: They got themselves a new coach in Tenuta. I hope to read pieces about how thrilled the linebackers are to be practicing all sorts of exotic blitz schemes while I hear about how a certain linebacker was too sore to move a day after having to run the shed and tackled drill 50 times in a row so that Coach Tenuta could, “ensure that he understood the technique.”
• Little Change(s): Hopefully we’ll hear and read quotes from the QBs, receivers, and other members of the offense that “little has changed” in terms of actual scheme with the transition of play-calling duties from Weis to Haywood. I’ve never thought the scheme, the “Weis Scheme” if you will, was bad. I just felt like there were too many pages in the playbook for this young squad, and I felt Weis made a few (!) head-scratching calls this year trying to “out-call” the opposition rather than letting the team out-play them. If Haywood sticks with the original play-book, and then abbreviates it, his own limitations as a novice play-caller may serve to benefit the team. He’ll be more apt to call things he knows his team can run because, frankly, he doesn’t “know” he can out-call anybody. Neither do we.

That’ll suffice for now. Though as the Spring moves along, and we get wind of various tidbits, our interests are likely to change with the lake-effect winds.

What are you looking for this Spring?

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