Two weeks have passed since our last depth chart update and now we’re mere days away from the beginning of the 2017 Notre Dame football season. Before kickoff here’s the final roster updates and predicted pecking order for the Irish.

Let’s start at safety where it’s been a strangely quiet August for a position with so many question marks. That’s because despite an injury early in camp Nick Coleman has locked down the starting position next to Jalen Elliott for the bulk of August. It’s not clear how many snaps both will take against Temple, but probably the bulk of them. Studstill really hasn’t seemed to take the next step and it’s unlikely the true freshman Robertson is going to get thrown in there before garbage time.

As you could probably guess the NCAA still hasn’t made a ruling on Alohi Gilman’s eligibility. Whether it’s from a lack of reps (why waste them if he’s sitting out?) or otherwise we may have gotten a little ahead of ourselves in thinking Gilman could come right in and be the best safety on the team.

PREDICTION: With over a decade’s worth of pre-season predictions in my memory it seems like Notre Dame’s corners are generally hyped and then fall short of expectations. I can’t shake the fear that the Irish are set to give serious minutes to really tall corners–Watkins at 6’1″ and Vaughn at nearly 6’3″–and they will struggle quite a bit in a game that is seriously unforgiving to secondary players through the air. At least one of these guys are going to have big struggles in 2017.

Speaking of hype let’s hope the linebackers live up to their potential. This could be the best the Irish have been here since 2012. There’s talent, depth, stability, and leadership. Morgan & Company have to run the show in 2017.

We haven’t had to shuffle the defensive line depth chart from two weeks ago although since the New & Gold scrimmage there’s been some hope that the younger guys have made strides and could see the field a lot more than previously believed.

PREDICTION: Don’t expect a real deep defensive line rotation, it’d be silly to think it’ll happen. There were will be a Top 6 (D. Hayes, Tillery, Bonner, J. Hayes, Trumbetti, plus an additional backup) in the rotation and no one else will see more than 150 snaps total on the season.

For approximately the 47th straight time Brian Kelly was overly optimistic with an injury as Elijah Taylor is not available for Temple and hasn’t been truly active during August practices. He suffered his lisfranc injury on March 10th so Taylor is looking at a layoff of at least 6 months before he gets healthy. We’ve seen this before, it’ll be tough for him to get in game shape coming off a foot injury.

Following Brian Kelly’s presser from last Thursday things got a little bit more interesting on the offensive line after redshirt freshman right tackle Tommy Kramer had a “meh” August and the head coach declared true freshman Robert Hainsey WILL play in 2017. I seriously doubt Hainsey actually plays legit starting minutes but it’s a somewhat curious decision that is probably made to set up the 2018 line more than anything else.

Real quick a look at next year’s line and most expect the Top 5 guys to be Mustipher, Bars, Kraemer, Eichenberg, and Hainsey. The most common thought is that Kraemer will move to left guard but that might be a little too crazy. First of all, Hainsey is a bit short at 6’4″ 1/2 to be a tackle and with improved strength he could be a good guard at the college level. Additionally, most are expecting Eichenberg to jump right in at left tackle to fill McGlinchey’s shoes and that might be a tall order. Both Hainsey and Eichenberg have arguably had much worse August practices than Kraemer and they’re going to be the starting tackles next year? Well, someone has to play there, I suppose. Okay, now back to 2017.

The long and winding road for Kevin Stepherson’s fight for playing time does not appear to be coming to an end any time soon. Kelly said he’s not suspended, but maybe kind of suspended, but not really, but maybe. Early Saturday morning WNDU reported via a source inside the program that Stepherson is suspended for the first 4 games of the season due to violation of team rules.

A traditional depth chart by position doesn’t really work for wideouts anymore with guys lining up all over the field on a consistent basis. What we do know is that sans-Stepherson there’s a Top 7 of (no specific order) St. Brown, Smith, Boykin, Finke, Sanders, Claypool, and Young. Yes, true freshman Michael Young will be in the mix.

PREDICTION: Arizona State transfer Cam Smith has been a quasi-starter for most of August. He will finish no higher than 6th on the team in receptions this fall. I’m skeptical that he’ll have a super large role with so many options at receiver–and Stepherson likely coming back for hopefully 9 games.

For a week or so there was some concern about the future of Alize Mack due to a nagging hamstring injury and his checkered injury history in high school. However, Kelly would lead you to believe everything is pretty awesome with Mack, besides the fact that he apparently doesn’t have great stamina.

PREDICTION: I fell in love with Alize’s snap-to-catch ratio as a freshman and I bet he will finish 2018 with the 6th most receptions in a season by a Notre Dame tight end. That would put him somewhere in the 41 to 46-catch region.

It’s been a long off-season and I’ve tried to remain calm about the official debut of Brandon Wimbush as Notre Dame’s starting quarterback. Every once and a while you’ll read something about him blowing up on the national scene but in a lot of ways he doesn’t have a ton of hype surrounding him given how heralded of a recruit he was and how impressive he’s been as a leader with command of the offense.

PREDICTION: Wimbush breaks the Notre Dame single-season record for total offense in 2017. I believe the record is held by Brady Quinn (4,009 yards) from 2005. Something in the ballpark of 3,700 passing + 450 rushing yards is entirely workable for Wimbush as the offense moves quicker and is likely backed by a not-great defense.