Given the Navy football program’s history of making the forward pass an afterthought in its offensive approach, how 12th-ranked Notre Dame is reloading and reframing its depth at cornerback might seem a bit off topic.
And maybe not.
As the 24th-ranked Midshipmen (6-0) get set to clash with ND (6-1) in football for the 97th time, this Saturday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (noon EDT; ABC), consider that only one team nationally has a better team pass-efficiency rating than Navy, up from 112th nationally last season.
And consider that Mids junior quarterback Blake Horvath has produced enough volume in the passing game to go with that quality to do something a Navy QB hasn’t done in 30 years — string together six games with 100 yards or more passing.
Which brings the conversation back to the Irish cornerbacks, of which there are currently three healthy ones on scholarship — sophomore starter Christian Gray, freshman two-time starter Leonard Moore and freshman reserve Karson Hobbs, whose six snaps in mop-up time against Georgia Tech last Saturday bring his college career total to 31.
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Preseason All-American Benjamin Morrison was lost for the season after the Oct. 12 Stanford win with a hip injury. Fellow junior Jaden Mickey opted out of the rest of the season after game 4 to preserve a year of eligibility to take with him when he transfers, and senior reserve Chance Tucker suffered a season-ending ACL tear in August.
Colgate walk-on grad transfer Max Hurleman is listed as a cornerback, but he’s working at the nickel role, which Irish head coach Marcus Freeman considers a safety, including starter Jordan Clark.
But whether Hobbs and Hurelman find their way into meaningful snaps on Saturday against one of the nine remaining unbeatens in FBS football, their emergence as key depth AND reliable rotational pieces is critical to the Irish remaining one of the best pass defenses nationally.
Notre Dame is the reigning FBS statistical champ in pass-efficiency defense, and the Irish came into the week ranked sixth this season.
“Yeah, both of those guys are improving,” Freeman said during his weekly Thursday Zoom call with the local media. “There's a chance you can see both of them in a defensive role this week. That's still to be determined based off the flow of the game.
“I can't tell you what the outcome is going to be in terms of what's going to happen on Saturday, but I can tell you that both of those guys are ascending vertically, man, in a really good way. They're both improving tremendously.”
Freshman focus
Throwing freshmen into the mix might not be ideal, especially on defense, given Navy’s unforgiving offensive challenges. But ND head coach Marcus Freeman hasn’t been afraid to use his first-year players in the first seven games of the season.
So far that count stands at 16 — nine on offense, six on defense and one exclusively on special teams. And that does include walk-on wide receiver Matt Jeffery on offense. All six defensive players have appeared on special teams as well, with freshman defensive end Bryce Young ranked as the No. 3 special teams player in the nation by Pro Football Focus, in any role among players who have played 40 special teams snaps or more.
Here’s who’s played the most: On offense, it’s left tackle Anthonie Knapp (411 snaps) followed by running back Aneyas Williams (69), offensive tackle Guerby Lambert (53), wide receiver Micah Gilbert (32), running back Kedren Young (18), Jeffery (7), tight end Jack Larsen (7), quarterback CJ Carr (4) and offensive guard Peter Jones (3).
On defense, it’s cornerback Leonard Moore leading the way (220), followed by linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa (187), Bryce Young (162), cornerback Karson Hobbs (31), vyper end Loghan Thomas (31) and safety Kennedy Urlacher (26).
Linebacker Teddy Rezac has only played on special teams.
“First of all, it talks about the evaluation process that our entire program has had, the depth of our team,” Freeman said of the true freshman participation numbers. “We're recruiting really good high school football players to come here, and some of them are able to help us right away, and some of them aren't.
“But it speaks to the efforts of our recruiting staff, our personnel department and our coaches as they evaluate. And then you talk about the development to prepare those guys. Everybody's on a little different journey, but it speaks to our coaches’ ability to get them ready to play — as you've always heard me say — with velocity.
“What prevents young people from playing early is that they don't play with the velocity that sometimes you see on their high school film. So, it's the ability to make sure those guys are clear on what they’ve got to get done, so they can play with the velocity that it takes to help this team. And if they have the ability to help this team, we're going to play them, and we're not afraid to do that.”
Scholarship math
Part of the calculus last season in determining whether to use men’s lacrosse crossover Jordan Faison in a football game was that NCAA rules stipulated that the freshman wide receiver’s participation in even one game snap would necessitate a conversion from football walk-on to football scholarship player.
Faison made his deferred game debut in game 7 of last season, against Louisville, He went on to catch 19 passes for 322 yards and four TDs, and was named the MVP of Notre Dame’s 40-8 Sun Bowl waxing of Oregon State.
So, the same scenario would apply to this year’s lacrosse imports — freshman wide receiver Matt Jeffery and former starting quarterback current wide receiver Tyler Buchner, now a football walk-on?
And that would be a “no” on both counts.
Jeffery, a freshman wide receiver and the No. 1 lacrosse recruit nationally, made his debut Sept. 14 vs. Purdue, a 66-7 blowout, and also played in ND’s 49-7 rout of Stanford on Oct. 12. Buchner made his re-entry into the Irish lineup Saturday against Georgia Tech as the holder, and ultimately first down picker-upper, on a fake field goal.
“It was different,” Freeman explained. “Jordan was what you call ‘a recruited walk-on.’ We brought him here on an official visit. It had something to do with when he signed his NLI [National Letter of Intent] for lacrosse, whereas Buchner is in a different situation. Obviously, he's not a freshman.
“And then Matt Jeffery is in a different situation, where if he played, he wasn't going to be accounted for as a scholarship. So, it just had to do with: Was he recruited or was he not? And when they signed their in NLI for lacrosse.”
Note to self?
Occasionally viewers may have caught a camera shot of Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman going old school and taking notes during games. Which coaxes the question: why?
“Yeah, my son actually asked me the same thing this week,” Freeman said. “There's a couple of different things that I have a routine of doing, in terms of certain things that happen during a drive and then certain reminders that I want to make sure that I remember as we go into the end of a half or the end of a game.
“And so, those are different things that I do. There's also different notes and reminders I have for myself on there that I have to go back and look at and make sure that — it's almost like my game plan. And if you saw it, you probably wouldn't understand It. There's a lot of writing on there, but there's different things after each series, maybe a penalty after each situation that happens that I jot down on certain sides of the page.
“Again, it’s for a couple different reasons, to remind me of certain things, but also to keep track of certain things.”
Squibs
• The ABC broadcasting crew Saturday comprises Sean McDonough (play-by-play), Greg McElroy (analyst) and Molly McGrath (sideline).
• Last season Navy ranked 127th nationally out of 130 FBS teams in red-zone offense. In six games this season, the Mids are tied for first out of 133 FBS teams: 23-of-23 with 22 of those scores resulting in touchdowns.
• Navy’s 269 points in the first six games of this season are 57 more than it scored in all 12 games last year (212).
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