It turns out, we didn’t need to worry about Purdue.
Last Saturday morning, we sat and we wrote down all the things concerning the Boilermakers we felt we should be scared of. We didn’t really admit this was what we were doing, but we acted as though by taking Purdue seriously ourselves, we could make Notre Dame take Purdue seriously on the field as well. This had no effect on the outcome of the game, but we are scared enough of cosmic and karmic forces to do it again this week:
Miami–Ohio’s defense is supposed to be respectable even by Power Four standards, much like Northern Illinois’s is now that they shut down a team who went on to score 66 against a Big Ten foe. Chuck Martin knows Notre Dame well, even though he hasn’t coached in South Bend in eleven years. The RedHawks have played a Big Ten team and a Big 12 team tough, and Notre Dame has shown how low its floor can go. These are the exact types of games Notre Dame should never lose, yet Marcus Freeman has lost a lot of them. Tomorrow’s is a different kind of test than Texas A&M or Louisville, but it’s a test nonetheless, and it’s quite seriously a serious one for Notre Dame. Notre Dame needs to beat teams like Miami–Ohio soundly.
The primary concern for Notre Dame, the nine–more–games concern (and hopefully a few more), is the health of the offensive line. Ashton Craig’s down for the season. Billy Schrauth’s out a few weeks. The line already wasn’t drawing rave reviews, young and inexperienced, a work in progress.
Youth and inexperience aren’t any more a concern now, now that Pat Coogan and Rocco Spindler will backfill Craig and Schrauth. Coogan started all thirteen games last year. Spindler started ten before suffering his own injury. In a way, their reinsertion into the starting lineup is a helpful reminder. Notre Dame’s offensive line had a lot of upside coming out of summer practice. The starters Mike Denbrock and Joe Rudolph chose were good enough to beat out two of last year’s starting five. No, those two weren’t Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, but the Knapp–Pendleton–Craig–Schrauth–Wagner unit had upside.
Anthonie Knapp, Sam Pendleton, and Aamil Wagner still have that upside. They’re relatively young, but that’s a good thing in the long run. The line which did enough at Texas A&M and dominated Purdue is still developing. The concern isn’t about Coogan and Spindler as major vulnerabilities themselves. The concern is about cohesion within the unit, about these guys being accustomed to working with one another and working with Riley Leonard. The other concern is what happens if someone else goes down. Until Schrauth comes back and pushes someone to the bench, Tosh Baker is the only second-stringer who’s used any of his collegiate eligibility. Notre Dame’s offensive line reserves are long on potential and short on experience. We also know that in the eyes of the staff, two of the three best interior linemen and one of the two best tackles—Charles Jagusah—are already out. The head of the snake is bleeding.
Against that backdrop, this should be a useful game. The first priority is finding a way to win, but the second is getting these guys reps alongside one another, building continuity and confidence. Again, this Miami’s got a good defense, one worth taking seriously, one much better than Purdue’s and probably a little better than NIU’s. (We tend to trust ESPN’s SP+ when it comes to comprehensive offensive and defense ratings.) But Louisville’s is better. This is the game to figure things out before next weekend. Winning comes first, but a win alone is still not enough.
It was great to see Riley Leonard run so much last weekend. Hopefully Denbrock isn’t shy about doing more of that tomorrow. Leonard is a runner first and foremost, and he’s great at it. Most importantly, he seems willing to run. He seemed very willing to run in West Lafayette. This is good. With most quarterbacks, the fear is that they’ll panic too quickly and beat themselves up chasing short yardage instead of trusting their pocket and giving their coordinator time to get the receivers open. With Leonard, the fear is that he’ll try to court NFL scouts at the expense of first downs. It would be a shame if Notre Dame regressed to not running Leonard so much out of fear for his health. The guy’s built like a tight end. Don’t be afraid to use him like one. Steve Angeli has more than shown himself capable of running an effective offense, and while he lacks Leonard’s game-changing abilities, that cuts both ways.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Angeli get a series here and there, in kind of an inverse of the wildcat quarterback role. When the running quarterback comes in, defenses get ready for the wacky. When your starter’s the runner, though, and the backup’s the passer, defenses might have to respect the deep ball? This is the thought: One series of Angeli each half in a competitive game, with at least some attempt to throw downfield, might open up the box for Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price. Coach Denbrock, let me know if you need my number.
Defensively, losing Jordan Botelho hurts, especially on a personal level for him, already playing in his fifth year. Hopefully he comes back next season. In the meantime, Bryce Young is one of the best raw athletes on this roster, and it’s exciting to get to see him fill some of those snaps.
Looking back at the NIU game, the sense is that there needs to be a little more meanness around the front seven this week. There was only the one legitimately bad defensive play against NIU, and that was an aggressive mistake in the secondary on a well-designed play. The bigger issue was NIU succeeding in picking up those small yards they needed on the game-winning drive. The Irish defense needs to assert its will over Miami’s line the same way it did against Purdue’s.
Overall? It’s a tune-up game, even if the opponent must be taken seriously. That’s the key: Take the opponent seriously, get a big number on the scoreboard, and then turn the focus to working on things. Winning is the most important thing. But the best thing to do is to win in a way which sets next week up well.
Deuce Knight Watch
I want to reiterate that for as great a quarterback as Deuce Knight is, and for as much as I dream about what Denbrock might see in him, there is a lot more to the 2025 recruiting class than Deuce Knight.
Five of the ten committed composite four-stars already play in the trenches. Among the other five, three are defensive backs. Those positions—offensive line, defensive line, secondary—tend to be graded differently than the quarterback position, with more of a focus on raw athletic gifts: speed and size and strength. As we often say around here, those are the resources Notre Dame needs more of. Notre Dame needs more speed, more size, and more strength if it wants the national championship talk to ever become realistic. Quarterback is the most important position, sure. But there are more ways to play to a quarterback’s strengths and adjust to his weaknesses than there are to cover for corners who aren’t fast enough or offensive linemen who aren’t big enough. Similarly, playing time is more binary at quarterback than that at any other position. For the most part, either the QB’s the starter or not, and the dropoff from Knight to CJ Carr is negligible on paper. The dropoff isn’t bad from Knight to 2026 commit Noah Grubbs, either. It would suck to lose Knight. But if Notre Dame does lose him, it’s hard to fault Freeman’s staff for taking a shot. Notre Dame will come out of the Deuce Knight recruitment knowing a lot better where it stands relative to the SEC and how things work recruiting in the South.
Knight’s visiting Auburn practically every weekend, and it does seem likely he’ll flip, with Auburn the clear leader and Mississippi still potentially in the picture. The reasons cited range from immediate playing time to proximity to his home in southern Mississippi. Still, he’s technically yet to say he’s decommitting from Notre Dame, and the Auburn sphere seems to remain puzzled by its inability to land him. There’s definitely still a chance Notre Dame keeps him, and it might be higher than crystal balls imply.
For what it’s worth, a Knight decommit would drop Notre Dame from 9th in the 247 Composite rankings to 13th. Again, though, I think the concerns are overblown. Maybe I’m the biggest idiot in the world, but I’d like to see separate recruiting rankings which take the quarterback out of each class.
On the Pitch
We talked about the women’s soccer team last week. They’re playing well heading into a big one tomorrow night in Charlottesville. The game starts at 7 PM Eastern, and it’ll be available on ACC Network Extra. In the ten-game conference schedule, Notre Dame managed to avoid all of Florida State, UNC, and Wake Forest, making this one of two remaining Irish games against a team ranked ahead of them in this week’s coaches poll. The other is against top-ranked Stanford, but the nice thing about that one is that it’s in South Bend. It’s important to stress, of course, that those rankings aren’t the most predictive things in the world. Still, knock off Virginia, and the Irish have an early angle at the ACC, even with that tie at Boston College.
Adding the men’s team to our field of awareness…
They play Chicago State tonight, which is a good chance to get used to winning. Last weekend’s matchup with Stanford went rather well. Notre Dame hit a crossbar early and got the Cardinal shorthanded for most of the second half thanks to a second yellow card. But Stanford already had the 1–0 lead at that point, and the Irish failed to break through. The loss dropped ND to 1–1–3 on the season, with the three ties coming against a Duquesne–Indiana–Akron trio who combined to receive zero votes in the coaches poll this week. Again, those polls are imperfect and it’s early in the season. But in a season so short, three bad ties is a concerning number of bad ties. I would guess that missing the NCAA Tournament is a real risk.
We’ll take a look at volleyball next week. Early results are inconclusive, but there’s some hope there. As for basketball, I have nothing to report except that our namesake, Micah Shrewsberry, still has great vibes.
