Keys To The Season: Notre Dame Fighting Irish
By Stiofán Mac Fhilib
With the Fighting Irish kicking off their 2022 season with a huge game against the Buckeyes this evening, Stiofán Mac Fhilib breaks down the keys to the season for the #5 ranked Notre Dame:
It’s pretty much twelve months to the day since I penned my first ever article for The Touchdown, a piece looking ahead to Notre Dame’s 2021 season. And to quote the great Yogi Berra, a year later ‘it’s like déjà vu all over again”.
Questions around the new starter at Quarterback and the Wide Receiver room. Acknowledgement that the Defensive Line is the strength of the Defense and perhaps the team overall, but uncertainty around the level of play expected from the rest of the secondary outside of an All-American Safety.
But if many of the roster-related themes of the pre-season look ahead have remained similar, there’s plenty of differences in the overall context of the program as it approaches its opening game of the 2022 season.
Head Coach, Marcus Freeman, promoted from Defensive Coordinator, has had just under ten months to prepare in his first post as a HC. Offensive Coordinator, Tommy Rees, is the only remaining Assistant Coach on the Offensive side of the ball, while Defensive Coordinator, Al Golden, will be the third person to fill that role in the last three seasons.
The continuity fostered under Brian Kelly during the more successful second half of his tenure in South Bend has naturally come to an abrupt close. But once thing that his departure did not end was the respect for the talent he left behind when he boarded the private jet to Baton Rouge. The AP pre-season poll has the Irish ranked #5, ironically higher than any pre-season ranking during the Kelly era itself. That said the large point spread in favour of #2 Ohio State in the opener shows just how big the perception gap is between the top three teams in College Football and everyone else right now.
Another Year, Another New Quarterback
Following Wisconsin transfer Jack Coan’s departure to the NFL, Notre Dame’s own ‘TB12’, sophomore Tyler Buchner, will finally be handed the keys to the Irish Offense. Between injury and Covid he has only started for a full season once in the last four years, back in his California High School. How far he can carry ND with his arm and his legs will go a very long way in determining how good a season the Irish will have.
Used primarily in spots in his rookie season to take advantage of his running ability, this season he has to show what he can do throwing the football. And while there are question marks around the WR room, he does have the luxury – especially on third down – of having perhaps the best Tight End in all of CFB, Michael Mayer, as a target.
The expectation is that OC Rees will rely more heavily on the run game, and despite the loss of Kyren Williams to the LA Rams, the three-man RB committee of Chris Tyree, Logan Diggs and Audric Estime should be able to provide excellent production, assuming an uptick in the performance of the Offensive Line.
Harry Hiestand has returned to coach the OL and this might quietly prove to be one of the most important appointments Freeman makes in his first few years in the job. Where last year the OL had four NFL-bound starters to replace – and overall did not succeed, this time around Hiestand has a lot of returning talent to work with, even if the two tackles are a redshirt freshman, Blake Fisher and sophomore, Joe Alt. Both have first round draft potential and with pre-season All-American, Jarrett Patterson, returning, the expectation is for a significant improvement in a line that struggled to run the ball against better opponents in 2021.
Sits Vac: Wide Receiver
A year ago, ND had a smaller WR room that it would have liked, with players who had more potential than production. Fast forward a year and…yeah, déjà vu time. Except that due to Kevin Austin going to the NFL and Avery Davis suffering his second ACL tear in two years in Fall Camp, the room is even smaller, a testament to the poor recruiting and worse development by the previous WR coach.
For all that, however, there is undoubted talent. Sophomore, Lorenzo Styles, has WR1 ability. Braden Lenzy, in his fifth year with the program, needs to add consistency to his undoubted game-breaking speed. Sophomores, Deion Colzie and Jayden Thomas, both need to contribute significantly and there are high hopes for freshman, Tobias Merriweather, who is likely to feature in at least four games. Questions around Buchner aside, just how much new Coach, Chansi Stuckey, can get out of his group of players will probably be the most important factor in deciding just how far the 2022 Irish team can go.
The Case For The Defense
The Defensive Line is perhaps the deepest unit on the team with at least eight players expected to rotate in during games. Defensive End, Isaiah Foskey, came back for a final year and is the deserved focal point, but Rylie Mills on the other end of the DL needs to have a breakout season to propel the Irish towards the playoffs. Jayson Ademilola is a nationally underrated DT, and again now would be a good time to help achieve more national recognition through his play.
At linebacker any three from Jack Kiser, JD Bertrand, Bo Bauer and Marist Liufau will likely take the majority of snaps, with Liufau the player Irish fans are most interested to see. His 2021 season ended in Fall Camp just as he was earning rave reviews. He’s expected to be a force in passing situations. Of the rest of the LB corps freshman, Niuafe Tuihalamaka, may be best placed to contribute significant playing time.
Kyle Hamilton, the All-World Safety, is currently a Baltimore Ravens first round draft pick, leaving a not insubstantial gap in the Notre Dame defensive backfield. Hamilton though missed the final six games of the 2021 season through injury, which gave valuable experience to some of ND’s less well-known Safeties. And he has effectively been replaced by freshman All-American Safety, Brandon Joseph, a transfer from Northwestern.
The expectation is that Joseph, along with ND’s best Cornerback, Cam Hart, will provide half of a reliable secondary. Again, the ability of the likes of Clarence Lewis, DJ Brown and Nickel, Tariq Bracy, to raise their game will be a major key in how successful the Irish can be in 2022.
Projection
One final note of interest is that in keeping with the general theme of post-Kelly turnover, Notre Dame’s Field Goals, Punts and Kickoffs will each be handled by three new students to the program; a freshman along with two transfers (a kicker from Arkansas State, and a punter from the Red Wolves’ sister school in Massachusetts, Harvard).
ND’s pre-season rating suggests just missing out on the playoffs, and the schedule begins with a trip to the Horseshoe to face Ohio State and finishes in the LA Coliseum against USC. In between the Clemson Tigers travel to Notre Dame Stadium in November, by which stage most of the Irish faithful should have sobered up from the Shamrock Series game against BYU in Las Vegas.
9-3/10-2 is the general consensus among most fans on how the season will play out but even a non-blowout defeat in the Horseshoe should leave any playoff hopes just about intact, though winning the final 11 games would be a must, along with losses along the way for other key contenders.
But to finish where we began, and to quote Mr Berra a second time: “It ain’t over til it’s over”.
STIOFÁN MAC FHILIB
COLLEGE FOOTBALL ANALYST
A VERY LONG-DISTANCE SUBWAY ALUMNUS OF NOTRE DAME, COUNTY ANTRIM-BASED STIOFÁN HAS BEEN A FAN OF THE FIGHTING IRISH SINCE 2000. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @SMACFHILIB.