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Friday Five: What To Make Of The RPOs Seen In Notre Dame Spring Practice

Look carefully through the combined 18 minutes of spring practice video, and you see the play in a few spots.

I’m talking, of course, about RPOs (run-pass options).

Notre Dame’s 2020 offense didn’t contain many of them in Tommy Rees’ first year as coordinator. Assuming that was a harbinger of the offense going forward, though, would have been short-sighted.

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Notre Dame Fighting Irish football offensive coordinator Tommy Rees
Coordinator Tommy Rees’ 2020 offense was a run-heavy, outside zone-based attack. (Notre Dame Athletics)

Notre Dame did what fit its personnel last year. Now that personnel is different. Head coach Brian Kelly has reminded us of his spring goal for the offense in both his media sessions: make progress toward finding an identity. What is this group best at? How can it score points? What plays will fit it best?

“It’s really about trying to establish how will this offense serve itself best with the players we have and those who will be playing a great deal,” Kelly said.

From the video, RPOs are part of that experimentation. They’d be a logical inclusion. Potential starting quarterback Jack Coan played in a Wisconsin offense that runs them with some frequency. Notre Dame has a run threat to respect with Kyren Williams. Its receivers are unproven, but the talent in the room suggests they can provide more big plays than they did a year ago.

The bigger-picture takeaway is the verbal and video evidence aren’t signs of an offensive staff looking to make zero tweaks. It is, after all, run by a 28-year-old coordinator with one year of play-calling experience who isn’t set in his ways. The last game Rees and staff coached in — a 17-point loss to Alabama in the College Football Playoff — should provide a useful blueprint and lesson, too.

College football in 2021 is about scoring and explosiveness. That 31-14 defeat and the College Football Playoff as a whole in recent years underline the importance of 1) having a high-scoring offense and 2) the frequency with which good defenses succumb to them. Gone are sludge races with fewer than three combined touchdowns.

Kelly was asked in his most recent media session about the process of changing identities and strategies.

The end of his answer: “It’s about scoring.”

It’s never too late to keep adapting, or adapt in the first place. The early signs seem to tell us Notre Dame is intent on doing that and engaging in some critical thinking. Simply committing to it was an important part of this spring.

2. The WR/TE Split

Part of the adjusting and identity-searching includes making decisions on tight end and receiver deployment. Is Notre Dame’s 2021 offense at its best using multi-tight end sets on half its plays like it was a year ago? The answer depends on the receivers’ output matching their supposed talent and the state of the tight ends not named Michael Mayer.

Let’s start with the former. Go down the list of Irish receivers, and you might conclude Notre Dame should increase the time in 11 personnel (one back, one tight end, three receivers) from 46 percent of all snaps in 2020 and decrease the 148 snaps it gave to the No. 3 tight end (Brock Wright) in 2020.

At receiver, the Irish have eternal breakout candidate Kevin Austin Jr., former five-star Jordan Johnson, jet-quick Braden Lenzy, reliable slot man and run-after-catch threat Avery Davis and ascending senior Joe Wilkins Jr. They signed three Rivals250 players in 2021, including top-50 recruit Lorenzo Styles Jr. The group has considerable upside. Simple math says 11 personnel gets them on the field the most.

At the same time, the entire receiver room has 88 career catches, and 39 belong to Davis. Raw skill has not equaled production so far for many of those names. Not exactly an endorsement for a bump in receiver usage and less tight end involvement.

Now go back on the other side. Mayer is one sure thing. It won’t be a surprise if he leads Notre Dame in catches this season. There’s no Tommy Tremble behind him, though, as a relatively proven backup.

The No. 2 tight end candidates start with senior-to-be George Takacs, who was effective in his limited chances last season. Kevin Bauman impressed Kelly as a freshman last summer and early enrollee Cane Berrong has drawn positive reviews. They’re skilled players. They’re also no more a sure thing than the receivers. That’s not a particularly strong case to keep 12 and 13 personnel usage the same.

Here’s the de facto impasse.

Notre Dame has to give someone an opportunity and take the training wheels off. Which way will it go? We’ll see. Which way should it go? With the No. 2 tight end and receivers in similar spots of transition, the higher ceiling and upside play ought to be giving more of the receivers a chance.

It’s worth noting the No. 2 tight end last year usually replaced the slot receiver, Davis, who’s now Notre Dame’s surest thing among its wideouts. Is curtailing his snaps helping?

If this is about explosiveness and scoring, is the second tight end going to be one of the four most explosive players? If the receiver room performs like it should be able to (and is healthy), I’d be skeptical. This kind of self-discovery is the point of spring practice.

3. Freshman Corners

In Mike Mickens’ last two seasons as a cornerbacks coach, a freshman has started at corner or played a season-long role there. In 2019 at Cincinnati, it was Ahmad Gardner, who became a first-team all-conference pick. In 2020 at Notre Dame, it was Clarence Lewis, who was listed as a co-starter for the season opener and became a starter for good in November.

Each is a combination of job availability, the player himself and coaching.

Notre Dame has a cornerback job available. Is there a freshman corner who can mesh with Mickens and grab it? Junior Cam Hart was departed boundary corner Nick McCloud’s backup last year, but he didn’t play much outside of garbage time. There’s baseline intrigue in the 6-3 converted receiver, but he’s not locked into the job.

At risk of reading too much into practice video, Philip Riley may be a name to watch as a freshman. Thursday’s snippets showed him with the first team defense on one play. That’s not to suggest he’s the starter, but it seems he’s at least getting a look. So is sophomore Ramon Henderson. The door at boundary corner is open wide enough to at least ask the freshman question.

Maybe there’s an opportunity at slot corner, a role Shaun Crawford often held when Notre Dame was in nickel and dime packages. Could freshman JoJo Johnson push for it when he arrives in the summer? He has the speed needed for it. Mickens and defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman have some familiarity with him — he committed to Cincinnati when both were on staff there.

4. Kendall Abdur-Rahman

I’m not surprised wide receiver/running back Kendall Abdur-Rahman entered the transfer portal last week. Whichever position he played, he was facing a numbers crunch. With immediate eligibility for transfers expected to pass this month, he can play this season at his new school.

I’m most intrigued to see where he ends up. Of the 12 other Notre Dame players to seek new homes since August (excluding eventual returnee Houston Griffith), seven have landed at Power Five programs. That’s a good ratio when considering only one of those 12 was in the 2020 rotation (defensive end Ovie Oghoufo).

It’s a sign of a healthy program with real competition and depth across the board to see backups with a short résumé end up on other Power Five teams. Abdur-Rahman had seven Big Ten offers. Is the inability to move up the depth chart a red flag for them or other Power Five schools, or will they look at him as a player squeezed out of a top-10 team and lean on their prior evaluation of him?

5. Men’s Basketball And The Portal

Notre Dame has reached out to a few of the 1,260-plus names in the transfer portal as of Thursday, with nothing of note to come from it so far. The lack of activity has evoked some grumbling, but it shouldn’t be unexpected.

The Irish have 12 scholarship players for next year and seven seniors. The roster is what it is, by and large, though I understand if that’s not particularly exciting.

Given that, it’s hard to pitch a lot of the accomplished transfers in the portal seeking starting jobs on coming to Notre Dame. Where are 20 to 25 minutes per game at guard coming from? Same in the frontcourt — where Notre Dame already landed a commitment from 2019-20 Ivy League Co-Player of the Year Paul Atkinson Jr. The Irish have an impact transfer in Atkinson. He just happened to commit in January, before all eyes were on the portal.

I’m not ruling out a transfer for that final spot, but it has to be one who can mend roster deficiencies and be OK with walking into a crowded situation. When nearly everyone returned to school for another year, reaching the 2022 NCAA Tournament became more about extracting another level from the current group than retooling the entire roster.

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