SOUTH BEND, Ind. — During the run of stadium anthems blared Tuesday night at a Notre Dame football off-site practice, the well-worn Crazy Train made it to the playlist.
Off-putting? Yes. Still.
Relevant? Maybe.
That’s because the Irish defense — and the unproven and shrugged-off front-seven in particular — was the eye candy of the roughly two-hour session at South Bend’s School Field. Even when it was the second-teamers squaring off against QB Sam Hartman and the offensive 1s.
If every scrimmage rep was caveat-free — from freshman defensive end Boubacar Traore’s bursts to grad senior linebacker Marist Liufau looking like the disruptor he was supposed to be last season — this is the kind of emerging storyline that would raise the hypothetical ceiling on a team the AFCA coaches poll has deemed the 13th best in the FBS.
And maybe it still will.
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And maybe there was just too much context missing at training camp practice No. 12, this one at a 97-year-old venue, which added an artificial surface called Field Turf Revolution 360 and state-of-the-art lighting in its last renovation, in 2018.
There was no access to Notre Dame second-year head coach Marcus Freeman in the second and final completely open-to-the-media practice session, until likely next March. Nor were other members of the coaching staff or players available after the field trip to a high school sports facility that multiple South Bend schools use.
Freeman is now next scheduled to meet with the media, and perhaps fill in some of Tuesday night’s perceptual gaps, on Saturday after a completely closed practice. The Irish were scheduled for a rare day off on Wednesday.
What felt real Tuesday night was the defense’s swagger and energy and depth. What felt like a mirage was Wake Forest transfer Hartman, the FBS’ active leader in passing yards and TD tosses, trying to force a deep ball to receiver Matt Salerno in double-coverage.
Which safety Ramon Henderson easily picked off.
Why the entire practice, and all its gleaming and dark elements, can’t be written off, is that we’re deep enough into training camp that the snippets and scenarios we see are no longer about what makes for good Twitter — or the platform formally known as Twitter.
It is, or should be, now about how and why these elements and puzzle pieces play into the season that starts to unfold Aug. 26 on the natural grass field of Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, against Navy and its curveball of an offense.
The list of why it can’t be completely taken at face value is significantly longer. The most relevant elements of which include key personnel, like starting running back Audric Estimé, being held out of the competitive periods, likely to get a look at that position’s depth.
Also, the notion that new offensive coordinator Gerad Parker undoubtedly believes showing off his creativity and his evolutions of the Tommy Rees/Brian Kelly offense to a bunch of blabbermouths would put him at a competitive disadvantage.
Which plays into the Irish defense’s hands in this scenario.
Not that the defensive itself showed much more vanilla than nickel looks and some occasional pressures from impressive blitzers like sophomore linebacker Jaylen Sneed.
So what do we know for sure after sharing bystander status Tuesday night with soon-to-be athletic director Pete Bevacqua and soon-to-be-not AD Jack Swarbrick?
That transfer kicker Spencer Shrader, from South Florida, has been a revelation. The ball explodes off his foot to the point where 52- and 53-yard field goals, which he makes with regularity, look like they’d be good from 60.
He also looks like the strongest candidate to kick off, and his directional control and touchback ratio are outstanding.
Similarly sophomore punter Bryce McFerson, a former North Carolina state champion wrestler and state track and field finalist, looks elite on what he’s actually on scholarship to do.
What would be safe to infer is:
• That junior left tackle Joe Alt is the nation’s best offensive lineman on a unit that isn’t at all a finished product, as first-year O-line coach Joe Rudolph continues to mix and match offensive guards, and develop depth at all five O-line positions.
• That Hartman has the maturity and the mental toughness to push through the necessary steps of building chemistry with his receivers and learning every nuance of a new offense, even if it sometimes isn’t pretty from the outside looking in.
• That sophomore tight end Holden Staes should not be slept on, even if he doesn’t emerge as the No. 1 option in the season opener.
• That the freshman wide receivers, particularly Jaden Greathouse and Rico Flores Jr., won’t get lost in a numbers game. And that sophomore Tobias Merriweather, who probably should have played more earlier as a freshman, needs to learn to translate his athletic freakiness into consistency.
• That Marcus Freeman has added an edginess to his coaching that’s rubbing off in a good way.
• That cornerback Ben Morrison will be the Ben Morrison we expect him to be.
• That maybe the safety position won’t turn into a headache after all.
• That defensive line coach Al Washington had something to prove heading into both spring football and fall camp, and he hasn’t taken a step yet backward in that regard.
• That playing Navy and its triple-option first, and not later in the season, will be a blessing.
• That the eight remaining training camp practices and the handful of ones game week before the team departs for Ireland aren’t about fine tuning, or they shouldn’t be. This is a team that should be still building, still growing, still evolving.
The trap of Tuesday night, for those who must interpret it, is overreaching and overreacting. Even in that light, the best news to emerge from the off-campus excursion is that nothing appears unfixable ...
And that this is a team that’s not in denial about the work that still needs to be done to address what still looks broken.
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