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5 Fall Camp Questions Notre Dame Football Must Answer Before Season Opener

It’s football time in South Bend.

Notre Dame starts fall camp this Saturday, Aug. 7. Offseason hype becomes a thing of the past. What happened in the weight room and in individual training sessions certainly matters, but how that translates to the field this weekend and beyond matters more.

Notre Dame is looking for a third College Football Playoff berth in the last four years. Most prognosticators do not have the Irish as one of the four teams to qualify. However, if Notre Dame answers these five questions against what many deem to be a favorable schedule, the Irish could certainly prove them wrong.

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Notre Dame Fighting Irish football quarterback Jack Coan
Notre Dame graduate transfer quarterback Jack Coan is almost assuredly set to start Sept. 5 at Florida State. (Notre Dame Athletics)

1. How Much Better Is Jack Coan Than The Rest Of The Quarterbacks On The Roster? 

Notre Dame is relying on a new starter for the first time since 2016. Former Irish QB Ian Book had his deficiencies, but he was highly productive and successful overall. He's not a guy who's easy to replace no matter who you're trying to replace him with.

The Coan question can be broken down into many others: How much of a drop-off, if any, will there be from Book to Coan? Will Coan be better? Is he the type of pocket passer that can finally transcend Notre Dame’s offense to the elite level maintained by Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State? What does he bring to the Notre Dame offense that true freshman Tyler Buchner, sophomore Drew Pyne and junior Brendon Clark can’t?

Obviously Coan can’t answer those questions on his own. There are many moving parts among the 10 other players on the field that have to fall into place to help Coan take Notre Dame to a higher level offensively. Coan, Buchner, Pyne and Clark, to a certain extent, can only be as good as the players around them allow them to be.

Coan is positioned to start, though, and thus is set to own the title of most important player on Notre Dame’s offense regardless of what those around him are capable of. BlueandGold.com’s top 25 players countdown crowned him as such last month. Notre Dame needs him to be better than the No. 32 overall quarterback in the country as selected by Pro Football Focus to even sniff CFP consideration.

2. How Cohesive Will The Offensive Line Be? 

Ah, about those moving parts.

Four of last year’s regular starters on the offensive line are gone. Senior Jarrett Patterson is the only one back, and it remains unclear where he will start. Head coach Brian Kelly seemed adamant in the spring Patterson would move from center to guard to make way for junior Zeke Correll, but preseason practices could determine whether that swap actually takes place.

Kelly and offensive line coach Jeff Quinn know who will start across the line. And, except for the Patterson or Correll dilemma at center, they know where those players will start, too. They just don’t know how well the quintet — Patterson, Correll, Marshall graduate transfer Cain Madden, true freshman Blake Fisher and graduate senior Josh Lugg — will work together.

There is not a position group in the game in which chemistry is more important than offensive line. Preseason camp is this unit’s last chance to get that squared away before Sept. 5’s season opener at Florida State.

3. What Is Marcus Freeman’s Coaching Style? 

Notre Dame Fighting Irish football defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman
Notre Dame defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman is trying to have the success he had at Cincinnati in South Bend. (USA Today Images)

We know plenty about Notre Dame’s new defensive coordinator as a recruiter. He’s been effective in that department; the Irish have the No. 3 overall 2022 recruiting class in the country according to Rivals, and Freeman has had a huge hand in that.

How is he as a coach, though? Yes, we also know Freeman had a lot of success as Cincinnati’s defensive coordinator. But much like going from the Group of 5 to the Power 5 as a head coach doesn’t always pan out, it’s not always a smooth transition for coordinators either.

This is Notre Dame. If you recruit the best players in the country, you’re also expected to efficiently coach them. The media will learn a lot about who Freeman is as a coach during the six practices Notre Dame has elected to open up to the press this month.

How well do the players connect with him? Are they receptive to his tips and pointers and the manner in which he conveys them? How much progress have the players made since spring practices now that they’ve had more time to digest Freeman’s schemes?

Like with the question about Coan, there are many more that branch out from the query about Freeman. Some of those will be put to bed over the next month, but don’t write the answers down in Sharpie just yet. While practices will be telling, the regular season will be the true indicator of what Freeman provides with a headset on.

4. How Do The Wide Receivers Look? 

Back to the moving parts.

And back to another question about a question: How many times has this one been raised this offseason? Too many, perhaps. But the frequency with which it has come up is telling. Coan and company need an answer for Notre Dame to be the team it wants to be. Period.

Everyone knows the names by now. Avery Davis, Kevin Austin Jr., Braden Lenzy, Joe Wilkins Jr. and Lawrence Keys III. Those players are all seniors, but none of them have had a true standout season for Notre Dame. Having that change this season is incredibly important to Notre Dame’s success on offense.

With quarterback and offensive line being question marks in and of themselves, it would greatly hinder the Irish offense for wide receiver to remain a liability. That would leave running back and tight end as the only surefire strengths on that side of the ball. Any team with postseason expectations needs more than that to live up to them.

5. Who Other Than Kyle Hamilton Looks The Part In The Secondary? 

Notre Dame Fighting Irish football sophomore cornerback Clarence Lewis
Notre Dame is expecting a lot out of sophomore cornerback Clarence Lewis in 2021. (Notre Dame Athletics)

Kyle Hamilton is going to be Notre Dame’s best player on defense in more games than not. Whether the statistics say so or not, he might be the best Irish player in every game. But who else in the back four is going to step up and play to a better-than-average standard?

The projected starters are as follows: senior Houston Griffith at stud safety, sophomore Clarence Lewis at field cornerback and junior Cam Hart at boundary cornerback. None of those three are as heralded as Hamilton, obviously, but none of them have received much preseason hype, either.

Notre Dame’s front seven is going to be stout. There is enough experience there and a track record that suggests so, but much of the focus in today’s game is on the secondary. Hamilton can’t be the only player back there Notre Dame trusts to make plays week in and week out. The Irish need a couple players to be reliable at that position as badly as it needs a couple wide receivers to regularly produce.

Will that be Lewis and Hart as lockdown corners? Does senior TaRiq Bracy enter this conversation at some point? What about senior DJ Brown if Griffith doesn’t take a step forward? It doesn’t matter who it is, but for Notre Dame’s sake it has to be somebody.

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