The 89th annual Blue-Gold Game will be held inside Notre Dame this Saturday (12:30 PM ET NBC Sports Network) marking an official close to yet another spring football campaign. The Fighting Irish have had an unseasonably quiet spring coming off a 10-win season, solid recruiting finish, with most of the drama saved for off-season coaching changes at defensive coordinator and offensive line.

As always, we’re here to preview the action.

Quarterback “Race”

As websites and magazines gear up for the summer preview season the word has already spread that Brandon Wimbush is a near-lock to start for Notre Dame in the opener. For us, the spring quarterback race hasn’t been much of a race nor brought any fun storylines. It’s kind of just existed.

My focus for the spring game quarterback play is broken down into three parts:

1 Lack of Rhythm

The Blue-Gold Game is notorious for an off-kilter passing game featuring a lack of rhythm due to the outline of the rules, mess of substitutions, and the fact that the quarterbacks are almost never live and much more willing to hold on to the ball in the pocket.

We should expect this every spring game. If any of the quarterbacks deviate from this typical outcome then we’ll discuss how and why that happened just don’t expect it all that much.

2 Make the Easy Look Easy

This applies for Brandon Wimbush in particular. Everyone knows how poor his completion percentage was last season especially on short-to-intermediate routes. If we are to assume nothing is going to knock our socks off (see below) he at least should take care of business on the easy throws.

We should be looking for Wimbush to complete 90+% of his passes at or near the line of scrimmage with no ugly looking efforts. That’s going to be a big area of improvement for him in 2018.

3 Anything Short of Lamar Jackson 2016 Spring Game

The spring game is a ritual on how not to take big performances seriously. By canon law someone will bring up Junior Jabbie on every single Notre Dame spring game preview. It just happens all the time, many performances do not translate to the fall or for a player’s season or career.

From a public perspective, not much can change the outlook at quarterback unless one player does really poorly and the other does really well. And it’d have to be insanely well.

You may have read some comparisons between Wimbush’s first year of starting and Lamar Jackson’s first season at quarterback for Louisville back in 2015. While the comparison falls apart pretty quickly after a cursory look at numbers (Wimbush was 2 years older which should matter a lot) there’s no denying Jackson made his talent known in the spring of 2016 finishing the Cardinals game with 519 yards and 8 touchdowns on 24 of 29 passing in just over one half.

Many eyebrows were raised, but not many thought too much of it. Yet, it did signal the arrival of a player who would account for 10,375 yards and 96 touchdowns over the next 2 seasons to go with a Heisman.

If Wimbush has an outrageously impressive passing performance in the spring game I’ll take notice. Anything less, we’ll be moving on to other off-season topics.

Top 25 Roster Players With Most To Lose/Gain

This section is for starters, or projected starters, who should make most people’s Top 25 Notre Dame players in August but whose performance could really tilt their ranking in either direction.

LT Liam Eichenberg

It’s been a quietly crazy 2.5 years for Eichenberg who arrived on campus as an elite recruit but like many linemen he spent a year in anonymity and out of the spotlight. He appeared to be ready for a breakout 2017 this time last year, then fell back into the shadows so much so I was worried he was going to be the second coming of Hunter Bivin.

Now, Eichenberg has quickly (in a matter of 2 weeks) apparently sewn up the left tackle job and is about to go from 0 to 60 in terms of experience. The spotlight is going to be white and hot now that he’s in one of the most high profile positions on the team and has to uphold the legacy of Martin, Stanley, and McGlinchey.

FS Alohi Gilman

The transfer of Gilman to Notre Dame from the United State Naval Academy took place just about 10.5 months ago. Despite an early glimpse in August last year he was shut down in the second half of fall camp and ruled ineligible to play on September 5th. He was praised late during bowl prep by Brian Kelly as someone who would’ve started at safety and now he’s performed well enough during spring to do just that.

This is pretty rare air for an Irish player, as you’d expect for someone who transferred from Navy. He’s good enough to virtually walk in and and start at safety but we’ve yet to get to know him and see how good he really is at Notre Dame. That’ll change soon.

WR Miles Boykin

I can’t remember the last time I saw reports from the same practice differ so much on a player. At times you’d read, “Wow, Boykin is taking the next step!” while another set of eye balls at the same workout said, “Yeah, he’s fine.” If you do a Google news search you’ll read about “growing confidence” and “No. 1 receiver” from reports all over the country.

I don’t really buy any of this to a major degree–it feels like a common media storm of A) a huge play in the bowl game and B) coaches injecting confidence into an upperclassman and good kid–so I’m of the mind Boykin won’t be someone in the Top 10 player rankings. Being able to see him live in a game-type of situation and assess if he’s taken the next step is important for the offense.

Fringe Top 25 Roster Players with Most to Lose/Gain

This section is for players, likely starters, who may not have enough confidence of the public to make the Top 25 and we’ll need to see more from them during the spring game.

S Jalen Elliott

When Elliott came out of high school there were a couple of overarching themes with him. One, he was a multi-dimensional athlete and two he was also a huge leader on his football team. We haven’t really seen his leadership blossom at Notre Dame just yet but he’s persevered through a tough first season of starter reps and has at least appeared to solidify similar levels of playing time for 2018.

I don’t believe I put any safeties in my Top 25 rankings last year and if I did it was at the very bottom. I’d put Elliott in that fringe 26-35 group as someone who should play a lot early but we’re still not sure if he’ll be in that position by the end of the year.

WR Michael Young

Here we have a player that is like the younger version of Boykin in that he doesn’t have much production to his name but he caught a big touchdown in the bowl game and with our short-term memories we believe he’s now on the rise. Young did miss a nice chunk of spring with a concussion and overall didn’t really take off the way someone slated to be a starter at receiver maybe should have during the past couple months.

An impressive spring game could color a lot of the off-season for Young. As things stand today, he’s one of if not the top speed option at receiver which carries a lot of responsibility within the offense.

LB Asmar Bilal

It seemed things were trending fairly well for Bilal who has played a decent amount in 2 years and was looking to be the 3rd most-used linebacker for 2018 and potentially a very important piece to the 2019 defense after Tranquill and Coney leave. He’s been the first-team Rover all spring, helped out on the inside behind Tranquill, and was receiving a good amount of praise from open practices.

During a recent meeting with the media new defensive coordinator Clark Lea praised Bilal but he also left the door open to the Rover competition heating up in the fall. One wonders if they want to see more from a couple other players or if they’re really waiting for incoming freshman Shayne Simon to arrive in the summer for a full report. Either way, Bilal’s definitely one of the fringe defenders who could use the confidence of a big spring game.

Freshmen to Watch

S Houston Griffith

The Irish welcomed 7 early enrolled freshmen this spring and out of the group only Griffith put himself in position to make the two-deep heading into the summer. In fact, in some circles it’s believed Griffith has already risen to the No. 3 safety on the roster after starting the first 1/3 of spring playing at corner.

Now we’ll get our first good look at how Griffith is adjusting to the new position and a small glimpse at how effective he can be as a rookie in 2018.

LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah

There were whispers that JOK was very close to playing last year before the staff decided on a redshirt. He was primed as a major redshirt freshman difference maker coming into the spring and while that hasn’t materialized as of yet he’s done well enough to stick as the backup at Rover and (as noted above) have Clark Lea thinking about continued positional competition in August.

One area to watch for is how well Owusu-Koramoah holds up physically as that’s a strength for Bilal and will be something that can push the younger player toward more playing time.

RB/WR Jafar Armstrong

Armstrong was one of the more mysterious players from the 2017 class and disappeared into the roster around the middle of August last year while sitting out with a redshirt. We thought he could be someone to switch positions to help out the depth at running back and that’s exactly what happened. Although, he’s still working at receiver too.

We shouldn’t expect Armstrong to have much of an impact in 2018 but his presence could change the roles of a couple players around him. Namely, if Armstrong proves himself sufficient enough the Irish could probably redshirt both of the incoming freshmen tailbacks. They probably won’t be able to do that but they can try if Armstrong can take at least 30 carries behind the top two running backs.

MVP Candidates

QB Brandon Wimbush

History has been re-written a little bit in that Wimbush looked poor during last year’s spring game. In reality, there weren’t many warning signs throughout much of 2017 spring. He did throw 2 picks in the Blue-Gold game which turned out not to be a weakness of his during the fall while he put up 303 passing yards on 32 attempts. The biggest problem were 7 sacks surrendered, and as mentioned above, a lack of rhythm and timing to the passing game.

I’m going to assume, like last year, that the offense is going to focus on improving the passing game which means Wimbush should have ample opportunities to win MVP.

QB/RB/WR Avery Davis

The odds on Davis winning this award have soared over the last week. He’ll probably not get that many quarterback reps, or at least, not until the 4th quarter when they fit in about 13 snaps before being pushed off NBC airwaves. So in a way I don’t really love his odds unless we see a couple of front-line guys (Claypool, Dexter, Boykin) take a seat for most of the second half and Davis receives 6 or 7 touches on offense.

WR Chris Finke

Is there a more consistent practice player on the team? I like a pair of touchdowns for the Slippery Fox.