In a score line no one will remember or frankly paid attention to the gold team beat the blue team 27-17 on Saturday afternoon in the 88th annual Notre Dame spring game. As usual, a running second half quickly finished the scrimmage and packed the majority of the action into the first two quarters.

Let’s review our little bit of official Notre Dame football action…

Wimbush Holds His Own

I thought Brandon Wimbush was okay. In the big picture he looked and felt like a veteran quarterback in terms of how he ran the offense. The offense moved pretty quickly at times and it was nice to see him working things pretty seamlessly.

You can tell the talent is in full abundance for Wimbush. He had a very healthy 9.4 yards-per-attempt (303 yards on 32 attempts) while not really ever getting into the rhythm and I wouldn’t say the defense played so terribly that they made it easy on Wimbush, either.

Here are 3 throws that show why Wimbush is going to do some damage in the fall:

The first throw really flashes Wimbush’s natural arm strength. He’s entirely flat-footed after a half pump fake and just flings the ball 25 yards like it’s nothing. The accuracy with such ease is probably just as impressive.

The offense ran a ton of bootlegs for both quarterbacks and in the second GIF you can see Wimbush’s big arm on display. You almost take for granted that the ball travels 45 yards and across a quarter of the field. It’s not the most accurate ball but it’s a nice, safe throw and easy decision process.

The third throw (from under center!) was the highlight of the day for Wimbush. Although, if the quarterback is live then linebacker Jonathan Jones probably breaks this play up it’s still a ridiculous throw from the Irish quarterback.

On the critical side, Wimbush was far too patient in the pocket and pretty sloppy with his reads. Then again, this has typically been a hallmark of all starting quarterbacks in the spring game. They know they’re not live and won’t get killed so they take the extra time looking for the big play.

Still, allowing 7 sacks–or one every 4.5 snaps–is really, really bad. Wimbush should be able to use his athleticism to escape some of the two-hand touch sacks but still. Sacks were a really big problem last year for Chip Long and Memphis (35 surrendered, t-106th nationally) and I’m curious to see how big of a problem this will be for the Irish in an offense that, at least so we’re told, will be relying heavily on the running backs. Getting off schedule won’t help that plan and will only necessitate throwing the ball more often.

For what its worth there were 29 rushing attempts from running backs and 59 passes attempted in the spring game.

Wimbush also threw a really bad pick in the end zone, while a second pick (see below) was just a great play from the defense. He was also super close from throwing another bad pick to Grier Martini, as well.

Book Excels

In terms of size, Ian Book looks like a smaller running back under center that’s about to take a wildcat snap or something. Other than that, he looked pretty damn good. It was tough to tell in such a short game but Book’s athleticism probably won’t be a huge part of his game and that’s okay. However, his skill-set as a passer is far better than I believed.

Book’s ability to push the ball down field was really impressive and he finished with a bit of an outrageous 12.6 YPA on 22 attempts. There were a handful of throws in the spring game where he looked far more advanced for someone his age. The reviews coming out afterward have been all spot on–technically Book looked better than Wimbush and although it’d be silly to read much into that at least he’s showing himself to be a worthy No. 2 quarterback.

Offense Quick Hits

Josh Adams had a very Josh Adams-esque touchdown run for 25 yards but really didn’t do much besides that–just 14 yards on his 7 other carries. Tony Jones (45 yards on 8 carries) looked pretty good. No doubt, Dexter Williams (98 yards on 10 carries) stole the show. I was a bit disappointed to see McIntosh only receive 3 carries.

Pretty solid day for most of the pass catchers. A full 11 players caught at least one pass of 10+ yards and 7 players caught at least one pass of 25+ yards. The emergence of Miles Boykin this spring really manifested itself during the Blue-Gold Game as he led everyone with 102 receiving yards.

The pass protection kind of seemed awful overall–11 sacks against both quarterbacks is bad no matter how you slice it. We’ll see if it means anything for the fall. I’m betting most aren’t too worried.

Frustrating Safeties

The first Wimbush interception was my favorite play of the entire spring game because of the safeties! Converted corner Nick Coleman makes a heck of a play here. He backpedals to just inside the 20-yard line, diagnoses the route, and explodes into the receiver with perfect timing.

Fellow safety Jalen Elliott is also right there to pick off the tipped ball! Two safeties doing good things on a single play! We’re turning a corner, everybody!

God, this was so nice to see. Stuff like this makes you think the defense really has the chance to turn around in a big way in year one of Mike Elko.

Unfortunately, Josh Adams’ touchdown run highlights why there’s still a long way to go on the back end. You can see it in the official highlights at the bottom of this post. Elliott comes up at the line of scrimmage and gets absolutely shaken out of his cleats. Coleman gets a chance further down field to stop the bleeding with a free shot on Adams and whiffs on the tackle. Touchdown.

DTR (Drue Tranquill Rover)

In the interception above you can see why I’m not crazy about Tranquill as a Rover covering receivers. Technically, that’s a tight end. Just one cut and Tranquill gets left in the dust in a small space. I think the coaches can say they’ll rotate in Bilal or Crawford when he’s healthy in passing situations but the truth is the game is never that cut and dry. We’re going to see Tranquill put in these situations in pass coverage and lose more than he wins.

The positive side is that while Tranquill struggles in these quick bursts of changing direction he’s equally effective coming down hill with authority. I’d imagine this ability is more than enough to off-set some of his disadvantages as a bit of a clunky hybrid safety.

That’s a heck of an impressive job by Tranquill of getting behind the line of scrimmage and closing down on the running back for the TFL. He also added another tackle for loss later in the game.

By the way, can Jay Hayes get a high five!?!??

Defense Quick Hits

It was tough for me to get a handle on the backups, although I felt like Isaiah Robertson was among the best. That’s a good thing for Robertson but probably a bad sign for the defense overall.

We should credit the defense for its 18 tackles for loss in the game. Still a bit weird given the Irish offensive line should be the best positional group, but still. To put that number into perspective it would be a Kelly era high but a wide margin. In fact, Notre Dame has only had 10+ tackles for loss in a game 3 times since Kelly arrived.

If Daelin Hayes is even half as effective as he was in the spring game he’s probably on one of the All-American lists following the season. I’m pretty sure most of his work (team high 7 solo tackles, 3 sacks, 4 TFL) came in the first half.

Random Notes

Give thanks that there weren’t any major injuries. Freshman tackle Aaron Banks went down with a scary looking roll up job and thankfully it doesn’t appear to be long-term.

Doug Flutie is the most generic color guy in the business. We’ve fixed the play-by-play woes in the NBC booth but can’t get a quality two-man team together. Flutie essentially talks about 3 things on every broadcast: 1) Talking points directly from pre-game meetings with coaches 2) super general comments on the action 3) mostly uninteresting stories from his playing days. If you’re reading this you probably follow the Notre Dame program to a great enough degree that Flutie has never said anything you didn’t already know. Maybe he’s great for someone who literally doesn’t read anything about the Irish for 5 months at a time?

I know Downinthebend is itching to break down some of the new intricacies of the Irish offense displayed in the spring game under new OC Chip Long. While that will be fun to read I’m not sure we’re going to see something that for the average fan looks all that different from past Kelly offenses. A few years ago, TCU went from a spread offense to a full-throttle air raid. It might not have been a complete 180 for the Frogs but it was markedly different. The Irish will probably be making something akin to a 15 or 20 degree turn, and that includes going under center 1% of the time instead of 0.01% of the time.

CLICK HERE FOR CONDENSED 20-MINUTE BLUE-GOLD GAME

How little are special teams covered during the spring? Apparently Justin Yoon “missed” (he dressed in gear for practice but may not have kicked much) all of spring nursing his knee tendinitis and I just found out after the Blue-Gold Game. It wasn’t a bad day in the office for senior walk-on kicker Sam Kohler who looks like he’ll be about as good of a 3rd option as you can get assuming incoming freshman Jonathan Doerer ascends to the backup spot immediately.

Is it fair to say the defensive line looked a little better than expected on Saturday? One guy I was anxious to see was Micah Dew-Treadway and I didn’t see much–he didn’t even end up on the score sheet. This defense really just needs to find 6 quality bodies at minimum on the line and coming out of spring I’m not sure we learned a whole lot. Not a great sign.

It looks official that Alize Jones has adopted his step-father’s name and will be Alize Mack now.

The only tight end to not have a catch in the spring game was freshman Brock Wright. Not a big deal of course, but it does point out that he probably won’t really need to play this fall. However, he could be needed big time next year and is likely to get his feet wet in 2017. Just don’t expect a huge impact.

I get a chuckle out of the people thinking they can tell if the players are bigger or smaller while they wear all this equipment on television. You can’t tell either way!

If Boykin can truly be relied upon as, let’s say a dependable 4th receiver with 40-catch ability, that unit is in great shape after spring. However, you can tell just how electric Stepherson can be and just how much more playmaking he adds to the team off a few catches in the spring game. He’s someone Wimbush definitely will need this fall.