Observations from Notre Dame football fall camp No. 17: Offense
It’s not quite game week, yet, but Notre Dame is starting its preparations for Navy. For the first time in fall camp, back-of-the-roster players wore “scout team” jerseys, with the number of a Midshipmen starter.
The Notre Dame offense, though, went through its first Navy preparation practice without its starting center. Here are the details, plus some more observations on the Irish offense.
• Graduate center Zeke Correll did not practice. Reporters saw him in “the pit,” or the area in the corner of the Irish Athletic Center where injured players go through stretches and workouts, without a helmet, jersey or pads on. Instead, Correll wore a small boot on his left foot. He did pretty much every exercise in the book, even riding a stationary bike.
• Injury updates come exclusively from Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman. Freeman is not scheduled to speak to the media until Monday, when he’ll hold his first weekly press conference of the regular season. Blue & Gold will note what Correll does during Wednesday’s practice, but we likely won’t get any official word until Monday.
• In Correll’s place, sophomore Ashton Craig snapped to graduate quarterback Sam Hartman with the first team during Notre Dame’s daily no-huddle session to begin practice. Walk-on graduate student Quinn Murphy played center with the second team.
• The guards stayed the same as we’d seen them last week. Juniors Pat Coogan and Rocco Spindler remained the left and right guards, respectively, with the ones. Sophomore Billy Schrauth and freshman Charles Jagusah did the same with the second team. Graduate student Andrew Kristofic went through individual drills and even went in with the first-team field goal unit, playing “tight end” to junior right tackle Blake Fisher’s right. When discussing the guards Saturday, Freeman said Notre Dame feels confident with three guards right now and mentioned Spindler, Coogan and Schrauth. He did not mention Kristofic.
• Freshman tight end Cooper Flanagan ran with the second team at tight end during the no-huddle session. He struggled to block graduate student defensive end Nana Osafo-Mensah on the backside of an outside zone play. He also got a target from sophomore quarterback Steve Angeli, which went behind him after freshman linebacker Drayk Bowen just got a piece of it.
• More from the no-huddle portion: The first-team offense started with a counter run play, and Coogan and tight end Mitchell Evans executed their kick-out blocks well. Coogan looked good overall through the five plays he was out there, handling graduate nose tackle Howard Cross III relatively well.
• Spindler, on the other hand, struggled with senior defensive tackle Riley Mills. Mills threw Spindler to the side on a run up the middle, stuffing sophomore running back Gi’Bran Payne for either no gain or a short loss. On the next play, Mills blew by Spindler off the line of scrimmage and forced Hartman to reset his positioning and quickly find a check down before Cross got to him.
• Defensive note here, but this might say more about Mills than it does about Spindler. Mills looks like a monster right now.
• Hartman, to his credit, did find that check down. He threw it to Payne for a gain of about five. Cross was obviously not planning on hitting Hartman, but I believe he wouldn’t have done so in time in a real game. It was a job by Hartman, not panicking when Mills forced him off his spot right away and hitting Payne.
• Another day, another impressive catch for freshman receiver Jaden Greathouse. The second team began its four plays with a bootleg for Angeli, who set his feet but threw low and slightly behind his receiver over the middle. Greathouse reached down and back behind him to make the catch, securing it from incoming senior cornerback Clarence Lewis.
• Junior defensive tackles Gabriel Rubio and Jason Onye easily shed block attempts by Jagusah and Schrauth, respectively, stopping graduate running back Devyn Ford for a loss.
• In individual drills, Notre Dame offensive line coach Joe Rudolph got angry at someone during individual drills. Blue & Gold couldn’t tell who it was, but it was after a rep that included that included Schrauth, Craig, Spindler and senior offensive tackle Tosh Baker. Rudolph emphatically said, “Get in the [expletive] gap and be [expletive] explosive!”
• On the next rep, whomever Rudolph was unhappy with did much better. Rudolph responded with, “Good [expletive] job.”
Blue & Gold will have more information on individual drills and routes on air after Notre Dame’s post-practice media availability.
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