Notre Dame Benefits From Time Share At Right Tackle
With left tackle Mike McGlinchey and left guard Quenton Nelson slated to be top NFL picks next spring, most 2018 preseason overviews will have Notre Dame with “three returning starters along the offensive line.”
In reality, it will be more like four — provided that seniors Sam Mustipher (center) and Alex Bars (right guard) return as fifth-year seniors, which is the current projection. Mustipher already went public earlier this week that he plans to return in 2018.
Meanwhile, the purpose of the time share at right tackle this season between sophomore Tommy Kraemer and freshman Robert Hainsey — neither of whom has been made available to the media this year — was to maximize the skills of both without putting too much on their plates.
Rotating basically every other series through the first eight games, Kraemer had 334 snaps to Hainsey’s 301. On occasion in blowouts, Kraemer also has downshifted to guard, which could be his future spot, depending on who the fifth-best offensive lineman on the team is next year, be it current sophomore tackle Liam Eichenberg, backup junior center Trevor Ruhland or current freshmen Josh Lugg, Aaron Banks or Dillan Gibbons.
The idea of platooning Kraemer and Hainsey this season might have seemed risky — it didn’t quite work out with the quarterbacks in the 2016 opener — but instead it has provided the best of both worlds.
“There was an eye towards 2018, and then there was an eye towards right now about sharing the load with two first-time starters,” Irish head coach Brian Kelly explained. “Then their skill sets are a little bit different. Hainsey is a really good technician as it relates to his pass sets and his ability to handle the pass game. Kraemer is more physical, right now, with his size.
“They seem to be a good blend to work together and gave us the complete [package] we were looking for at that position, as well as taking a little of the pressure off them in their first year.”
Kraemer arrived as Notre Dame’s highest ranked recruit in 2016 (No. 41 overall on Rivals), while the four-star prospect Hainsey was the lone season-long captain for superpower IMG Academy last year. Most offensive linemen are automatically redshirted, including Nelson, McGlinchey and fairly recent first-round picks Zack Martin and Ronnie Stanley, but Hainsey's work as an early entrant last spring was instantly conspicuous to the Notre Dame staff.
Unlike the three seniors and one fifth-year senior along the current starting line, the youth of Kraemer and Hainsey also made the buy-in for their roles easier.
“We detailed it out to them early on that it was going to go that way, and so they didn’t really know anything different than that’s how it was going to go for them to move forward in the program, that they were going to have to share the position,” Kelly said.
The door was open for one or the other to seize the position if either ascended dramatically, but the encouraging development for Kelly and offensive line coach Harry Hiestand is that neither has fallen off while gradually improving each week.
“They went in there with the conversation of ‘You’re going to share this and you’re both gong to improve each and every day,’” Kelly said. “It wasn’t let’s see who beats out who. … They didn’t know any better in the sense that this is the way it’s going to be all year.”
In this situation, the two-for-one deal has worked out well in the present, and might even more so in the future.
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