The Fighting Irish were back on the practice field Wednesday morning for their 3rd workout of spring following a lengthy layoff due to spring break. The team got a couple of practices in but had to shake off 12 days worth of dust to get back into the groove.
QUARTERBACK
The Dude remains Brandon Wimbush and the on-field reporting for practice number three was kind of light so we’re left largely with remarks made by Brian Kelly following practice.
Wimbush spent his spring break evading brooms and such as he worked out with noted QB guru George Whitfield. Kelly was asked if this bothers him to which he replied, “Nah, bruh” in so many words. Wimbush also spends time with his former high school coach when he’s on break to keep his throwing skills sharp. Who isn’t for sharp throwing skills?
Kelly was also asked about running Wimbush in the offense and his response was there’d be a sharp downturn in the amount of QB Power and designed runs because he’s not as big as Kizer. It’ll largely be option-based runs and trying to get Wimbush more on the edge of the defense.
RUNNING BACK
One quick note from today’s presser in that Kelly mentioned not only that they are hitting and tackling more this spring but that the team was “soft” and getting complacent with bad habits during practices. Tell me how you really feel, right? At any rate, the backs need to get hit more apparently.
Kelly brought out his cheeky side in mentioning the 11-on-11 work being moved to the earlier portion of practice to push the 7-on-7 later in workouts. They won’t throw the ball as well but will get better at running the ball which people will love.
WIDE RECEIVER
Everyone wants to talk about Chase Claypool who was getting reps with the 1st-team during the media viewing period. Kelly was asked about moving the Canadian to defense as is I believe is journalistic law until Claypool becomes a junior and the answer was that the staff felt they needed him more on offense.
Chase Claypool: even niftier in slo-mo. pic.twitter.com/uhHiavzSrs
— Mike Vorel (@mikevorel) March 22, 2017
That’s interesting. It’d be one thing if Claypool was the reverse Onwualu who thrived more and fit better on offense. Maybe that’s the case anyway. But it’s kind of funny how Notre Dame returns roughly -16 sacks from last year—and has a great tradition of big playmaking wideouts—and the thought is we need Claypool on offense.
TIGHT END
Kelly seemed pretty excited about the tight ends when they were brought up, even mentioning all 4 of them could split out wide and catch passes. Sadly, there’s 5 tight ends on the roster and the one not mentioned was Tyler Luatua.
I’m setting the over/under on snaps played in 2017 by Luatua at 8.5 place your bets.
OFFENSIVE LINE
A few things have come into focus on the line where we had the same starting lineup (McGlinchey–Nelson–Mustipher–Bars–Kraemer) as the first practice. However, the competition at right tackle looks to be quite solid between Kraemer and Eichenberg as Kelly praised the latter’s competition level and they’re going through a situation where each player gets a practice with the 1st-team.
Bars sticking at right guard is all but set in stone, so it seems listening to Kelly’s comments. He also mentioned Hunter Bivin being on the Mark Harrell plan whereby he’ll be used at various positions when needed but the team is more interested in developing the youth this spring.
Quick note, Kelly took the time to mention how the offense still has and will continue to have his culture to it so it can be sustained from year to year in the event that Chip Long moves on to another job.
DEFENSIVE LINE
Some bad news to report as rising redshirt sophomore Elijah Taylor was announced as having a lisfranc injury suffered in the second spring practice. He’s already had surgery and will be out for a while. Kelly mentioned they will have him back in July but that seems a little bit of a generous timetable. We will see.
Kelly was willing to praise Micah Dew-Treadway which was nice to see. He said he’s changed his body, had a great off-season, and was really coming on strong last August prior to his injury.
LINEBACKER/SECONDARY
Kelly opened the presser speaking about how they felt Asmar Bilal’s skill-set fit with what they wanted at the Rover position and that they don’t want to lose Drue Tranquill’s veteran ability and communication at safety. At the same time, they want to see a lot of players working out at safety which is allowing Tranquill to move positions from time to time.
Nick Coleman, who has moved from corner to safety, was brought up as someone who has the ball-skills and speed to play safety but has to tackle better. If this practice is any indication tackling is going to be the buzz word this spring.
The Irish will be back on the field this Friday with the first full media viewing coming up on Saturday.
I remember that Ara used to use the best players (Claypool) on D and his teams had great D.
Don’t worry THIS year will be the one where we outscore everyone and average 45 points per game.
We specifically hired a guy who did “more with less” at Wake Forest so we didn’t have to!
How does this get downvoted? It was a solid joke. C’mon.
Lost in translation?
Sorry. Reaching a bit on that one, in honor of KG.
Insufficient harrumph
Love the tackle drill video. St. Brown is shiftier than I thought, I don’t think he was brought down once. From that limited amount of reps, it looks like the safeties really struggle in the open field which is where they are most needed. Hopefully the safeties get all kinds of tackling reps in this spring.
I enjoyed it too. Shocked the facility didn’t explode in a heart vs. grit-gasm when Finke and Tanquill collided.
I bet they have fun competing for being the first-in and last-out.
Not the most athletic guys out there, but they really give great energy. Like having a coach on the field. Hustle players.
Eric,
Thanks very much for this, and these. Really helps fill in during the long dry spell (especially dry now that men’s b-ball is done, and with Brianna down no doubt our women as well).
In the Running Backs para you said, “Kelly mentioned not only that they are hitting and tackling more this spring but that the team was “soft” and getting complacent with bad habits during practices.” Listening a couple of times to his actual remark, it seems to me that he was referring to practices of last season for the “soft” part, leading to the inference that the increased hitting and tackling is part of his off-season top to bottom self-analysis and reset. Not sure if I am correct, and even if I am it is only a nit, but one that adds to the differentiation from the “Hate Kelly and root for the team to lose so he’s fired” bunch.
Yup, pretty sure he was saying last year they got soft.
Holy crap that was some bad tackling. I was just blown away by how horrible the defensive players were at tackling. No wonder we lost so many games last year. They need to work those drills all of spring. They may need to break it down even more, so these guys can get the fundamentals of just simple tackle the guy to the ground down.
That video was very disheartening to me.
Great work Eric.
Man, Studstill looked *terrible* in those “highlights.” At least some of our scholarship players looked better than most of the walk-ons?
It was limited but kind of concerning the corners were tackling better than the safeties. But hey, at least the corners were looking pretty good though on the brightside.
Also didn’t look great for Coleman and White moving back to S but not able to make stops one-on-one. Tough drill but the brief glimpse from today wasn’t promising. I suppose the trump card will have to be the rover working some magic and hopefully a guy like Bilal can roam and cover up mistakes on the intermediate stuff. Definitely looks like that middle level (Coney, Morgan, Martini, Bilal/Tranquill) is going to have to be the strong point of the defense and make the lionshare of the plays.
It’s early. The safeties’ and some of the young corners’ heads were spinning last year in that defense. They picked up a lot of bad habits along the way and probably didn’t spend enough time in practice developing fundamentals as it is.
The need to drill fundamentals never goes away, even in the pros. The bad habits and poor fundamentals weren’t just going to go away after two spring practices with no pads. You simply don’t undo that kind of damage that fast. At least they are acknowledging where the problems are and changing up practice to address them. That can help, but it’s going to take a lot of repetition and results may not be as visible as fans would like to see in the spring.
I think it is safe to say that even by the first game we won’t be a great defense. The thing to look for is continual improvement throughout the season.
Exactly. Remember how good BVG’s defense looked out of the gate? I mean, Michigan has still not scored against a BVG defense at Notre Dame.
We thought we had the next coming of the 85 Bears. How did that work out? It’s a good example of why we need to be somewhat patient with the transition and wait until we have a larger sample size to draw any conclusions on Elko.
Though, even a marginally improved unit might have brought some extra wins last season.
I wasn’t impressed with Wimbush. What is Whitfield having him do out there in SD? It clearly isn’t focused around driving the ball with your legs and getting good zip on your passes. Almost every one of those on film were a weak duck.
That’s an extremely liberal use of weak duck on a couple throws.
Eh, Whitfield is a snake oil salesman
But but but but… he uses brooms! And wears fancy suits! And is called a “QB guru”!
It’s all how you market it! As Kelly sort of alluded to today, I don’t think it will be all that big of a deal. We’ve already seen Wimbush on the field unleash a hell of a deep ball. No doubt he has a great arm, more concerned about his ability to pick up reading the defense, footwork and decision making than any arm strength or this extracurricular tutelage
And, hey maybe for placebo if the “guru” is praising him or “improving” him, he’s improving!
From everything I have heard, Wimbush has a laser rocket arm. On the ISD podcast, Mike Frank said he may have the strongest arm he has seen at ND.
hWolly agree with Publius about Whitfield. Can’t believe that guy is still getting high profile clients.
I blame the music they were piping in there. What the hell was that, Bruno Mars? How about some late 80’s classics? That would fire the lads up.
Oh fun, it sounds like we once again have an offensive coordinator who isn’t actually in charge of anything.
“Culture” just sounds like a buzzword to me. Maybe that just means stuff like they will stick to Kelly’s terminology (since it’s his base of plays anyways, right?) so in case Long bolts for an HC it’s easier to pick up the pieces and carry on. If somehow Kelly outlasts Long…
Anyways, if it’s truly Long calling plays and Kelly in more of the CEO role, that’s a lot of power for the new OC. I think increased tempo and Long-style formations (2 TE) will speak to the fingerprints of someone new having more control. Of course, it’ll be very interesting to see how much restraint BK can have in that department, given the past.
I felt Kelly on that point.
He specifically said Long COULD use different terminology for some things but that it’s not a brand new offense, nor should it be right?
At this point, I think we know Long’s not going to control every single thing with the offense. I don’t think Kelly was speaking to that point at all but was saying more the base offense will always be his (Kelly’s) and it has to be that way for continuity because Long could be moving on to a head coaching position after one year.
Fair enough. And I think that makes good theoretical sense too, Wimbush hasn’t played much but he’s entering his 3rd year in the Kelly system off the field. The rest of the key offensive players are pretty much 3rd-4th-5th year in the program guys.
Radical, wholesale changes made just for the sake of change (to me at least) seem unnecessary and could be counter-productive, putting them behind the 8-ball of the more pressing matters they need to learn and/or improve on. Kind of a “keep it simple, stupid” philosophy, no need to put even more on the plate of these kids, lest run the risk of more mistakes.
And besides, as I think most would agree aside from some execution areas in key times it’s not really the offense that has let the team down in recent years.
I like to think right now, that even though Kelly’s influence and presence will naturally be there, that doesn’t mean the OC has no control or power to, well, coordinate the offense. We all know Kelly isn’t a hands off guy when it comes to QB’s and offenses in general, he’ll obviously be trying to help too but that presence alone shouldn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that Long is cast-off as a figurehead or uninvolved.
It’s also the reason that Kelly hires someone who is on the same page with him. It’s not like he hired a pro-style offense OC. He hired a guy who likes to do a lot of the same things. There’s a blueprint that Kelly has and he found someone that fits within it (without it ever being EXACTLY the same).
I like putting the 11 on 11 in front of the 7 on 7 drills. It makes me think of continuity throughout the offense, not just passing but running too. For some reason I feel like there will be more of an emphasis on running the ball.
I know that lumps me in with the RTDB crowd, but it seems like we have more overall success as a team when we can power the ball on the ground.
I loved Elko’s interview in Scout. When asked if he was happy with how his players are performing, he answers no. He likes the effort but they have a lot of work to do.
For the ‘crootin’ junkies out there. It seems like this is a big weekend for visitors. Got about 11 guys according to 247. This isn’t as reliable as the paysites, but they tend to be pretty accurate.
http://notredame.247sports.com/Institution/Notre-Dame-Fighting-Irish-24064/TimelineEvents
Yep, pretty big weekend.
Speaking of ‘crooting, we’ll be starting up the Big Boards again here soon.
Yippee! You guys are the best. Totally worth the fee.