SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The biggest chuckle elicited from Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock during his 15-minute post-practice exchange with the media on Thursday had to do with his patience and the growth curve of the Irish offense this offseason.
Alleged patience, apparently.
“You've heard me on the practice field. There’s nothing patient about …” he said, interrupting his train of thought with a laugh. “I wish I had some more patience, to be honest with you, but I think it's an understanding that it is a process and that this isn't going to be a polished piece of glass at Texas A&M.”
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Notre Dame opens its 2024 season on Aug. 31 on the road against a Texas A&M team that might have the best defensive line the Irish will see during its 12 regular-season games.
Denbrock, who faced the Aggies each of the past two seasons, was hired away from LSU in December — as the highest-paid offensive coordinator college football, no less — to bring more consistent firepower to the Irish offense in his third tour of duty as an Irish assistant coach.
He inherits a unit that will include up to just one potential starter on offense who logged more than eight starts for Notre Dame last season, that being one of the two players battling each other to be the No. 1 left guard, seniors Rocco Spindler (10 starts) and Pat Coogan (13).
Thus, Denbrock is tasked with bringing a collection of transfers, freshmen, returning injured players and spring ascenders, who had been waiting their turn, together and developing them.
“This is going to be something that evolves as the season moves along,” he said of the Notre Dame offense in 2024, after presiding over the nation’s most productive (in points and yards) last season at LSU. “We're going to, I believe, continue to get better and better at what we do, but mindful that we’ve got to go into the lion's den here early in the season.
“And that kind of helps their eagerness or their urgency to get it accomplished and get it moving. And it does the same thing for me.”
The good news in that equation is Denbrock’s assessment that the two positions with the most room for improvement coming out of spring are the two that have shown it the most in the months since — in June OTAs with the coaches, behind the scenes in player-led summer practices and weight room workouts, and in the first couple of days of training camp.
“You look at the receivers, you look at the offensive line,” Denbrock said. “I think, on our offense right now, those are the two groups I would look at and say I've seen the most progress in those two rooms. And credit goes to [wide receivers coach] Mike Brown and obviously [O-line coach] Joe Rudolph. I think they're both tremendous teachers of the game. We don't have a lot of experience upfront, but those guys [offensive line] are so bonded. Those guys communicate really well, even though they don't have a lot of snaps under their belt.
“And the hope is that the confidence continues to grow with them so that even when they get into a hostile environment, even though they don't have a lot of experience, they lean on one another. And that's been evident so far. That's just something we’ve got to continue to build.”
Defining the wide receiver rotation
The target number for the wide receivers who figure to get high-leverage snaps in a deep rotation in games this season is six … or seven.
With 11 bodies competing for those spots, and many of the more-obvious options coming from the boundary and slot receiver spots rather than the field position vacated last December by transfers Rico Flores Jr. (UCLA) and Tobias Merriweather (Cal).
Dabbling with slot receiver and Sun Bowl MVP Jordan Faison at the outside field position in the first couple of practices so far is one solution to balance that equation a bit. Cross-training the receiver corps for versatility, Denbrock said, is another.
“I think what you guys will see is we will have personnel packages within our game plan that move those guys all over the place,” he said.
So, the boundary receiver on one play might be the field receiver in another personnel package. And the slot slides into the boundary, and the field moves into the slot. The advantage is to keep the defense guessing and also create mismatches based on defensive personnel/scheme.
There may be some teams and some situations where a bigger body in the slot — think Jayden Thomas or even a tight end — is more of a matchup problem for a particular defense than the speedy 5-10, 182-pound Faison.
“What we've done a good job of — and really the way this is built, especially in the passing game — is trying to teach these guys the concept of what we're doing. So that they understand, no matter whether I am normally a slot receiver to the field or the No. 2 to the field, if they line me up at 1, if I understand the concept, I can execute that job. So, it allows us to be multiple in how we play those guys and move them around.”
Ultimately, what would make the package even more potent is if there were a dominant field receiver who could take the top off a defense, as Will Fuller did under Denbrock at Notre Dame in 2015 and Kevin Stepherson at times in 2016.
Does that kind of player, with that kind of speed, exist on the Irish roster this season?
“I'm hopeful that Kris Mitchell can continue to kind of grow into that role,” Denbrock said of the 6-foot, 183-pound Florida International grad transfer, who had 64 catches for 1,118 yards and six TDs — all career highs in 2023. “I think [sophomore] KK Smith is a very talented young man who just has to continue to practice it and put it on tape every day. But I think there's a couple guys that we have that can play that role.
“I think it's going to be a little bit by committee. It won't be where we try to play it as much as we could to make sure if we were going to throw it, it was going in Will’s direction. Or a TJ Jones or whatever. I don't know that we're there yet.
“I think it'll be a little bit more by committee. But, hopefully, that's not the case. Hopefully, somebody just becomes a dominant force and does it consistently and earns themselves that opportunity.”
Assessing Riley Leonard’s progress
Two ankle surgeries — one in January and one in late March — had presumptive starting quarterback Riley Leonard playing catch-up this summer after missing intensive field work this spring while recovering and taking mental reps.
And now?
“You can see there's clear progress as far as his understanding and knowledge of what we're doing,” Denbrock said of the fully recovered Duke transfer. “And we purposefully have set the summer up and really fall camp here to try to help catch him up from some of the things that he missed in the spring, if that makes sense.
“So, we've tried to kind of help him with that process. But he did a great job himself over the summer of developing that himself and filling in some of the blank spots.”
And his competitiveness helps to continue to drive the process.
“I think you can see it in how he reacts to coaching or how he reacts to what he knows was a misread or something that he could have done better,” Denbrock said. “And his reaction is always one of self-reflection.
“And that speaks to being a competitive person, because you want to be successful. And if there's someone around you or something you could do better to make that a reality, that burns pretty bright. And it's pretty easy to see that coming from him.”
Denbrock said the offense, as a whole, has a better command of his playbook than where they left off in spring.
“I think the spring and the summer for us was about shoving as much at these guys as we possibly could of what was different than what they'd done before,” he said, “so that at least they got exposure to it.
“So that when we need to draw upon it, as we move forward, they at least have an introduction to it. They had 101, and maybe we’ve got to get to 300 [level]. But the idea of cramming as much to them early over the spring and the summer — and now in the fall — our install is more set up to be a little bit more specific to some of the things we're going to feature, especially early on in the season, so that we could zero in a little bit more on the details.”
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