Freeman indicated he wanted him to fall down short of the goal line to burn more clock and then kick the winning field goal?? Does that make sense to anyone else, especially when you have a shaky field goal kicker? Sounds like playing not to lose which Freeman says he won't do? If Estime scores, it forces Duke to go all the way down the field and score a touchdown as opposed to a field goal. I really don't get the logic? Also factor in how well the defense was playing, especially against the pass.

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Pete Byrne of WSBT and I discuss No. 10 Notre Dame's offensive struggles against Duke and how the Irish can get things rolling in the running game against No. 25 Louisville on Saturday.

Inside ND Sports is partnering with WSBT to provide even more coverage of the Notre Dame football season. A segment with James and Byrne will air every Monday on WSBT22 News at 5.

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We need up to 6 tickets but do not have to be together. email mavrick1220@gmail.com with specifics. Lower bowl only

GO IRISH!

Koval is a 6-5 center from Ukraine who plays her high school ball in New York at Long Island Lutheran. She's the No. 1 post player in the 2024 class and the No. 5 prospect overall in the class, per ESPNw. She took an official visit to Notre Dame this past weekend.

Announcing next Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. ET


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We probably won't stop thinking about the last football game for some time, but the Irish have to move on for Saturday's game at Duke.

Let's get some score predictions in here.

@Eric Hansen and I shared our score predictions in this week's Place Your Bets video.

Eric went with Notre Dame 30, Duke 21.
I went ND 27, Duke 21.

What say you?

I'd be very interested to hear your analysis. Maybe it's ND's play calls? I don't understand why ND continues to try and punch it up the gut when the three guys in the middle are not moving anyone? Why not run behind Alt or do more unbalanced looks with Alt and Fisher? Their best linemen are outside, so why not run behind them? It seemed the inside guys were getting moved quite a bit on the pass rush too.

Irish open the season on Saturday night at home against Clarkson (6 p.m.)

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How could the punt that was called out of bounds at the two foot line be reviewed and reversed? I thought those calls were not reviewable.

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Gerad Parker spoke to local beat writers Tuesday evening. Here’s a transcript of that conversation. Questions may be paraphrased. Quotes aren’t.

GERAD PARKER

What was supposed to happen on fourth-and-16? And what actually happened?

“Well, there's not many calls for fourth-and-16. But we have calls ready. We got one we liked out of our three-by-one set. Drop eight as the story has it, right? Everybody, to be fair, was probably thinking exactly how Sam [Hartman] did, which was stay back, find a throw, find a throw. Which then he hesitates like, do I try to rip it across my body to Mitch [Evans] or do I see? And he said, 'Go.' The thing is, what do you do? You have to keep the ball alive. Gotta keep it in bounds. And if you run you got to make it. It worked out for us. Certainly helped TV ratings, I'm sure.”

Were you anticipating drop eight?

“I didn't. I think they did it one other time in that when we got another throw, I think, to Rico [Flores Jr.] on the dig. So, we knew that was part of who they were. They've shown in two-minute studies from last year and before. You do your research. They have that in their calls, so we had calls for it. So, it was kind of one of those 50-50s on a fourth-down call. It was in there. It was in for us and planned for us to be a possibility.”

You mentioned not a lot of calls for fourth-and-16. How many fewer calls were there when you can only play three wide receivers?

“Yeah, well. Yeah, you're right. Anytime you — I want to answer it honestly — it reduced us a little bit. That's fair. But as you all know, you all write it and report it, you guys don't care whether we're short or not, nor does the fan base. So, we've got to play better and be more productive, regardless of who it is. And that's what we talked to the guys about. And it starts with me. Did it reduce us some in what we could call and do and how we had to do it through personnels? Yes. But, we got to be more efficient and be better, and we know that.”

Do you remember when you first saw Jeremiyah Love out on the field once he got here? Was there a moment where you knew he would play right away?

“Yes. It happens with guys like that that have that much of a skill set and are that fast. When you saw him in summer running, when we first got a chance to do it, it was kind of one of those moments where we're like, 'Wow. He can go.’ And then to go on with it, which is a testament to Deland [McCullough] and him, he picked up on it pretty fast. He's at a point now where he understands most of it. He's done a really good job learning, and he's gifted. So, we've got to keep finding ways.”

How important is Audric Estimé's feel for pass pro versus when you slip out? When you get behind the chains it seems like he's the guy who's made it third-and-manageable?

“Yeah. You saw it in the first series of the game, we got ourselves in a situation that's not friendly. He's able to check out, we get something, pick most of it up, get ourselves into an efficient fourth-down call, which led to the fake punt and got it. If you don't pick that up, you don't get to do it. He's crafty. He's a veteran, he knows how to find ways out when he needs to pick up or not, and he has really good ball skills. It's just added to what he is.”

We saw on the Twitter video that it was discussed that Rico Flores Jr. was your best zone beater while shorthanded. What does it say about a true freshman that you go to him in that situation?

“I've said it from the start of it. Not only him but others, but for sure for Reek, he has no performance anxieties, he believes and has confidence in himself and he's so eager to learn. He's so fun to coach. And in that situation, you're trying to find different answers, because things change throughout the game. He found a way. One of our pillars is details. It’s to make plays work. He made the play work against a bad look. It's a testament to him and Sam.”

How was it a bad look?

“We would rather have had head up to inside leverage. And at the last second you saw the defender bumped outside, which was what we said of him, to hit it and get out. So we kind of hit it, poked out and got back out of it and made it go. Pretty slick.”

You had to lean on both Rico and Jaden Greathouse this season. How much does that underscore what Chansi Stuckey was able to do last year on the recruiting trail, and then what those guys have done from January forward to be in a position where you can trust them?

“Well, first to Stuck, like Stuck has done an unbelievable job changing the culture of that room. He just has. And how we caught balls over the summer, how we pushed our details to show up on time and be where we got to be in our route details. Do we have plenty of work to do? Absolutely. But Stuck, it starts there. And then with those young guys, I think they operate with such confidence and poise as if they're not freshmen. So, for them to have already been here in January helped them get there quicker. Because they were swimming early, but now they've really kind of grown into themselves and started operating with confidence. And now you see that they're a big part of what we do.”

Did you get to a root cause of the presnap penalties and a plan to solve it?

“The deal is like, have we had an issue? No. So then you try to make sure everything is good. But we had an issue, and you can't ignore it. So, the root cause is being in that type of environment certainly had a factor on us, right? Not to give away what we have to change to obviously develop what we're going to do with our cadence and how we're going to snap the football. But, we have to adjust some things to make sure we can operate in a hostile environment, which is happening Saturday night. We will change and how we'll change, to be fair, will be off record.”

It was fairly clean at NC State, though, right? Was the environment different? Different approach?

“No, we didn't have a different approach. One piece of it was different. Again, I wouldn't want to discuss on record. But there was a difference. So, it taught us a lesson. And, after the storm, it wasn't near as rowdy, you know what I mean? And then we got the noise turned down by how we played and finished the game. You hope you can operate that way to turn the noise down as you play. But it's going to be loud early, and we know that. We've got to adjust some things to make sure this doesn't happen again.”

What did Duke do to make it tough to run the ball at times?

“With anything, they were downhill on us and fit us well. That involves their scheme, which they did a great job, and we knew they would. They're a great operation, too. They've got good personnel, and they're really good. And then to go along with us, there's some stuff we got to execute better too, right? And that goes with me, too. I've got to be better in the game, in-game adjustments to help us get through to find ways to maybe get the ball off the spot a little bit more to give us some air. And then, no excuses at all, but to be fair to it, when you're inefficient, and you have the amount of penalties we had, and you get — why were we bad on third down? Because we were in third-and-long eight times or more. We're not going to be good on third down. So, those are the things that we've got to make sure and be better at. But I think that leads to that. It was a mixture of about three or four real things. How they fit us, how they put us down, and us not maybe missing on a couple throws that didn't give some air to it that we normally have hit or not caught, and all those things lead to kind of feeling like that by the end of the third quarter, if that makes sense.”

When we talked to Mitchell Evans after the Ohio State game, he seemed to think a lot of those plays he made catches on were ones he wasn't very high in the progression, but Sam found him. With the last two performances he's put out there, do you have to maybe rethink getting him higher along in the progression?

“Yeah, it's like anything. As a guy develops, and you see things happen, you better, right? So, it's our job, my job, to make sure the guys that can make plays for us, and we believe in, you better do that, especially as the year progresses. We've got to make sure we find ways now to where there’s a target number that we have to get him to because he's been too valuable and he's too good at making plays vertically down the field for us not to.”

(more)

Notre Dame's offense should have more weapons available Saturday at Louisville.

Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman is expected to address the media at his Monday press conference at 12 p.m.

I'll provide live updates from the press conference below in this thread.

You can also watch live on YouTube using the link below.

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Notre Dame 2024 safety target Davis Andrews announced his verbal commitment to Utah on Monday. Andrews chose Utah over Notre Dame, BYU and UCLA.

The Irish hosted Andrews on an official visit in June and welcomed him to campus again for the Ohio State game last month.

Andrews, a 6-foot-3, 197-pound recruit out of American Fork (Utah) High, is rated as a three-star recruit by Rivals.

With Andrews' commitment to Utah, Notre Dame has three safeties committed in the 2024 recruiting class:

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UteNation will have coverage of Andrews' commitment.

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It's almost hockey season, which naturally conjures up thoughts of college football offensive coordinators. Having a little fun here. Here is the blind statistical data for four of them. The numbers reflect their respective team's standing in five key offensive categories out of 130 FBS teams at roughly the halfway point of the season. Can you guess who they are? I'll put the answers in a separate post below.

RO PO TO SO PE
25 29 15 14 46 Coordinator A
33 44 26 25 12 Coordinator B
54 103 85 50 90 Coordinator C
82 120 126 117 112 Coordinator D

RO: Rush offense; PO: Pass offense; TO: Total offense; SO: Scoring offense’ PE: Team pass efficiency.

Hint: All but Coordinator A are on coaching staffs for teams currently in the Top 25. Coordinator A’s team is receiving votes in the AP poll.

Here's everything Notre Dame defensive coordinator had to say after practice Tuesday night.

Q: Javontae Jean-Baptiste came from Ohio State to Notre Dame with the reputation as a pass-rush specialist, which probably drives him crazy.

Al Golden: “It should drive him crazy.”

Q: But his game has evolved, right?

AG: “He's also done a lot to dispel that. It's easy to say someone's raw or someone's talented or someone's a pass-rush specialist. That's what all those taglines suggest, but we haven't seen that. We've seen a kid that's trying to do the tough things really well. Certainly, he plays 9-technique for us, but we ask him to play 6-technique, which is tougher. That’s head-up on the tight end. So, he's shown toughness there.

“He's tackling better. He's finishing plays better. He's making plays down the field or laterally. And he's just been a pleasure to work with. He's just getting better. As a coach, if you see guys getting better at that age, it really has to be a commitment for them to get better at that age, because it doesn't just happen naturally as you get older. So, he's definitely committed, and his teammates appreciate it. We appreciate it.”

Q: Certainly, opportunity has helped him. He probably didn't get many opportunities to defend the run in his previous place. How has that contributed? And how has D-line coach Al Washington helped him?

AG: “You'd have to ask him about the opportunities, and sometimes when people change, sometimes they grow. Sometimes they make opportunities or sometimes they seize opportunities or sometimes their purview changes. I think in his case, he's done everything that coach Wash has asked him to do, and coach Wash has been tough on him. They have a relationship, and he can be tough. There's trust there. And I'm just proud of the young man, because it's really not easy to do, to come into a new place, learn a system, fit in, find a role and then cultivate it from there. And he's done that.”

Q: Marcus Freeman sometimes talks about analytics. I'm wondering, as a guy who's been doing this for so long, maybe are the analytics running in your head? Do you lean into that? Do you want to know what the numbers and the percentages are in critical situations? Or do you rely on your experience?

AG: “I think there's definitely merit to knowing what the probabilities are. But I think sometimes you just have to trust what you see or what you feel in the game, but there's no question that, definitely, analytics has a part in football. I don't think that's ever going to be divorced, now.”

Q: In terms of practicing tackling, getting better at tackling, is it similar at Notre Dame to what you did in the NFL in terms of the amount of physicality and full speed involved?

AG: "I think we work hard on it. I think we're tackling better than we were a year ago. Is that like a question?

Q: Yes, I’m questioning. I’m asking.

AG: “No, that's fine. I mean, I thought we had some uncharacteristic missed tackles the other day, which were disappointing. I'm going to be honest with you. And I'm not talking about at the end, when the running back was running really hard and we were kind of hanging on. I'm not talking about that. That's a different deal. I'm talking about when we had opportunities in the open field, and we just did not trust our technique and bring our training to the game and we didn't really press it. We got crossed over a couple of times, and I think that would be the only thing that would be disappointing about that.

“Big quarterback, rotated a bunch of backs in there. I thought they were a really good team going in, thought they ran the ball hard going in. And I would say, I don't know how many runs they had in the game, but I would say all but five or six I like where we were at. It wasn't like there were 12 of them. But there was a couple that got out, and that skewed the run game for us. Can't happen.”

Q: This is the third year Marcus Freeman has game-planned for QB Jack Plummer with a third different team, the second year for you. How is he different for Louisville than maybe he was with Cal?

AG: “I think he's playing fast. I think he trusts the cast that he has around him. I think they have speed on the perimeter. They're explosive. The running game, running backs run strong. They press it. So, I think he's doing what they want him to do. He's being efficient. He's making good decisions. He's distributing the football. I think he's playing really well. And I think with experience comes maturity. That's what we're seeing from him right now.”

(MORE)

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Remember submit your questions there ... and you can do so now or live on Wednesday.

@Eric Hansen and I will record our weekly Inside ND Sports podcast Tuesday. Send us some questions you'd like us to discuss. We like to give priority to questions submitted on The Insider Lounge.

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ND Brethren:

I have 4 USC Tix that I will sell only to ND fans at face value and a hotel for a Friday and Saturday night at the Hampton Inn and Suites - cost me 399/night. 2 nights; close to ND!

Hotel address (Hampton Inn & Suites South Bend):


Seats are Level L, Section 23, Row 17 (and are first four seats on the end…so you have the absolute easiest access to bathrooms and concessions).

I have everything to show and transfer to anyone interested; last minute family situation is preventing us from going.

Please email me at coach43@gmail.com with serious inquiries only! Go IRISH!

Someone on the board had brought up Ian Book earlier and compared him to Hartman. I'm not responding to that, but it did make me think about that run. As we all know, Ian was a very good runner. Still, in my opinion, he never would have made that first down because Duke's defense wouldn't have been concerned with him beating them with his arm. Honestly, I think that goes for all Kelly QB's. None of them would have made that first down because once they took off running, the defense knew they weren't going to throw downfield. Hartman froze the defense by pumping the ball a couple of times which gave him the room to get to the marker. Like I said, I'm not taking a dig at Ian Book. I like Ian Book. However, I am certain Ian never would have had a chance there because the defense would totally commit to the run. Ian also never would have made the slant to Mitch that kept a drive going. He just didn't have the courage to force it into a tight space between the hashes. Hartman is really a special player the likes of which we haven't had in SB in a very long time.

Opened it up with the radio call of Estimes touchdown……bragged on the game, bragged on Hartman. I found it on You Tube, would post but dont know how too….was just awesome

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Notre Dame 2025 defensive end target Damien Shanklin informed Inside ND Sports on Tuesday morning that he plans on visiting Notre Dame for its game against USC on Oct. 14. It will be his first trip to campus.

Defensive line coach Al Washington offered Shanklin in August. The 6-foot-5, 225-pound defender attends Indianapolis Warren Central, the same school that produced former defensive tackle Sheldon Day. Shanklin spoke about his excitement immediately after the offer.

Shanklin, a three-star per Rivals, is ranked as the No. 16 weakside defensive end in the 2025 recruiting class. Shanklin has 38 tackles and three sacks in seven games played this season.

Shanklin has 15 total offers including Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Iowa, Louisville, Purdue, Texas and USC. He visited Purdue on a game day visit in September.

We will continue updating the running visitors list thread as more visitors set visit plans for Notre Dame’s remaining home games.

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