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Friday Roundup: The “Notre Dame Fall Camp 2014 Catch-Up” Edition

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Friday RoundupOnce WatchND started pumping out Notre Dame football fall camp practice videos, I was all in for breaking each one down. It worked great for the first two practices, but then practice #3 happened and saw the video breakdown was a position profile for the CBs.

Don’t get me wrong, the feature was great, but a basically started at my title of “Fall Camp Practice Report #3: CB Report” for about an hour and realized there was no way that I could even drag 100 words out of the topic.

So I passed on the post. Ten more practices are in the books (ND completed practices #12 and #13 yesterday) across the past eight days and quite a bit has happened. It’s time to play some catch-up.

So today, it’s time to enjoy a very Irish-centric special edition of the Roundup. Think of this as the quick way to catch up the past week of fall camp.

The Roundup

I will never cease to be amazed at the freaks of nature we have at TE. Koyack should not be able to move as fast for how big he is. Tyler Luata is also an absolute freak of nature. Just check out the pancake he delivers at 3:20 in the clip. Yeah, that’s a freshman.

The first day of practice in full pads is probably the real first glimpse of what we can expect this season. I think this goes double for defense. For most of the videos to this point, we’ve seen the secondary just abuse receivers with incredibly physical play. Throughout this clip though, they seem to have backed off behavior that would draw out more defensive PI flags than Sparty trying to stop Tommy Rees. Other highlights that I liked: Sheldon Day looking like a beast and Ishaq Williams putting some good rushes together:

The August 9 practice gave us a peak the Irish in the red zone. Spoiler alert: THEY RAN THE DAMN BALL! In all seriousness, the last bit of the video has Greg Bryant flat out GOING OFF on two great runs. Once the Irish got inside the 10, we saw Bryant get a blow and Cam tried to punch it in. The next play featured Bryant in a personnel package that included freshman beast Tyler Luata that got the TD. As for the rest of the practice? Probably the most physical highlights we’ve seen thus far:

The RB profile gave us no clues on the depth chart battle. The combination of Cam McDaniel, Tarean Folston, and Greg Bryant make this position one of the most exciting on the team. With their talent though, it’s hard to project who is going to come out of the gate as the starter or how all three will rotate. If I could read any of the tea leaves that Tony Alford was throwing out there, it appears that Bryant might have the most work to do out of the trio.

The profile on the safeties led me to an interesting conclusion. Kerry Cooks said a few different things that jumped out at me. Firstly, Austin Collinsworth has clearly jumped out as the QB of the defense. The mention that he can play both positions jumped out at me as well. Cooks also mentioned that Max Redfield was making noticeable improvement. Mathias Farley was listed in the video as a S/CB. Finally, Cooks touted Shumate as the most talented of the group. All of this together leads me to believe that nickel and dime packages might feature some hybrid roles that we haven’t seen before. Either that or we are going to see a crazy, constant rotation:

Here’s a shocker, Everett Golson is your starting QB for Rice. Yes, “for Rice”, much like the same language Kelly used in 2012. That’s fine, I’m good with it and I’m sure Malik Zaire is going to see the field a fair amount this season (hopefully not due to injury). Want to know what really stood out to me though? The managers got to play the pitch man for the QBs during an option drill and I’m forever sad that I didn’t get to do that:

Yesterday’s practice video focused on the defensive line. Honestly, I thought this was one of the more enlightening position profile videos to date. The D-line has to be the lead as far as question marks go considering all the talent that was lost. Listening Mike Elston break down everyone’s performance and what they expect of everyone was great. I know Andrew Trumbetti made a lot of waves this week (more on that later), but it’s good to hear that another freshman, Johnny Williams is standing out a bit as well, even if it appears he is behind a touch on the learning curve:

And here’s your main event: Brian Kelly’s August 13th presser. Loads of information in this one, including our first peak into portions of the depth chart. I had a few things that stood out to me:

  • Kelly talked a lot about rotations on defense, especially in the front seven.
  • Mentioned that VanGorder’s defense allows the young guys to just go and play on instinct.
  • In fact, for all that’s been made about how complicated the schemes on defense are, I have a feeling VanGorder is scheming to his talent.
  • Kelly seemed frustrated with questions about if ND had their base defense installed. I read that as “we won’t have a traditional base”.
  • Everett can check out of plays, but he probably won’t need to due to the way the offense is designed.
  • No major injuries on the O-line, but with various guys being out for a day, the starting five is still up in the air.
  • Kelly is taking a look at individual competitive drills before he decides who is on the special teams units.

With all that in mind, here’s the depth chart. Or rather, what Kelly confirmed explicitly thus far:

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And now you’re moment of Nix…

The Booze

Summer is nearly done and I haven’t yet had one of my favorite summer whiskey cocktails, the Lynchburg Lemonade:

1 part Jack
1 part Triple Sec
1 part Sour Mix
4 parts lemon-lime soda

You can sub in Jack with a bourbon as well (obviously it kills the Lunchburg namesake, but whatever).

Cheers.

Ryan Ritter
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About Ryan Ritter

Editor-in-Chief
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.

First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.

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Comments

  2. trey

    I thought the exact same thing a out Luatua from that video. I was wondering if that was actually Heurmann vpbecause I couldn’t believe a Freshman had that kind of skill and power. I’m wondering now if we can’t use him as an extra blocker on power looks.