The sixth-ever meeting between Notre Dame and Texas A&M, set for Saturday night in Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, has all the trappings of a blind date and a whole bunch of reasons why it shouldn’t feel like one.
Kickoff between two bluebloods on ABC is 7:30 p.m. EDT. That’s less than eight hours after the ESPN College GameDay crew clears out, their presence a designation hinting that the matchup between the seventh-ranked Irish and No. 20 Aggies is at the epicenter of the college football universe that particular weekend.
The season opener for both teams will mark the first time the two teams have met since 24-year-old Notre Dame punter and Australian import James Rendell was presumably still in diapers, back in 2001. And new faces on both sides accentuates the lack of familiarity.
But there are plenty of connections as well.
New Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko was the first of four defensive coordinators at Notre Dame to turn a defensive laughing stock into a destination school for the nation’s elite defensive recruits.
Elko spent just one season at ND (2017), following the failed Brian VanGorder experiment before bolting for a bigger paycheck as Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator.
Two years prior to landing with the Irish under head coach Brian Kelly, he coached in Notre Dame Stadium as Wake Forest’s defensive coordinator. The Irish prevailed 28-7, but the way ND labored for points and yards impressed Kelly enough to remember him and target him after a 4-8 cratering at ND in 2016.
Notre Dame’s offensive play-caller, Mike Denbrock, in 2015 is back at ND calling plays after a successful seven seasons away, the last two with Kelly at LSU. The Tigers featured the nation’s No. 1 offense nationally in both scoring and yards per game as well as the Heisman Trophy winner in Jayden Daniels.
Elko’s most recent coaching stop was Duke, where he faced the Irish and ND coach Marcus Freeman last September with the player who is now Notre Dame’s starting quarterback, Riley Leonard, leading the Blue Devils’ offense.
Coordinating the Texas A&M offense is former K-State assistant Collin Klein, who interviewed for the Irish offensive coordinator’s position in February of 2023 with Freeman eventually ending up with in-house hire Gerad Parker.
Beyond those storylines, there are plenty of individual players with highlighting in this matchup. Our practice at Inside ND Sports is to funnel those down to four, two for each team.
Here they are:
Notre Dame left offensive tackle Anthonie Knapp
Four years ago Anthonie Knapp was a 6-foot-2, 185-pound freshman tight end at Roswell (Ga.) High School, who had absolutely no desire to evolve into an offensive lineman.
Seven months ago, the Rivals unheralded, three-star prospect enrolled early as a 265-pound offensive lineman — an afterthought to the outside world and a potential prodigy in the eyes of Irish offensive line coach Joe Rudolph.
On Saturday night, he’ll become just the 11th Notre Dame player since freshman eligibility was permanently restored in college football 52 years ago to start at least one game on the offensive line.
History would suggest there will be many more.
Of the previous 10, one still has college eligibility — current ND sophomore Charles Jagusah, whose season-ending torn pectoral muscle injury on day 4 of training camp set opened the door for Knapp’s rise.
Of the other nine, eight became multi-year O-Line starters for the Irish. The one who didn’t, Brad Williams, was actually borrowed from the defense to help out an injury-depleted offensive line in 1996, then went back to the D-line where he was a multi-year starter.
Six of the nine were drafted in the NFL, the exceptions being Williams, Steve Elmer — who graduated early and walked away from football, and Trevor Robinson — who played parts of four NFL seasons as an undrafted free agent.
Williams briefly played pro football himself, with the Amsterdam Admirals in NFL Europe … as an offensive lineman.
Knapp’s potential and his inexperience are heightened by the inexperience around him. Notre Dame’s starting five linemen have a collective six college starts combined. And they’ll be facing one of the most experienced and elite defensive lines in all of college football.
Texas A&M defensive end Nic Scourton
Notre Dame was destined to play against the 6-foot-4, 285-pound junior at some point this season. Had the Bryan, Texas, product — who played his high school ball five miles from Kyle Field — stayed put at Purdue for a third season, he would have faced the Irish in a week 3/Sept. 14 matchup.
Instead Nic Scourton will make his homecoming debut against the Irish, with 50 tackles on his sophomore resume, including 15 for loss with 10 sacks. Born Nictiedric Caraway, Scourton shortened his first name long ago and fairly recently changed his surname.
Despite being ranked as the No. 107 player nationally overall in the 2022 class and the No. 8 weakside defensive end, he was bypassed in the recruiting process by both ND and the Aggies — and every other Power 4/5 school except Purdue.
The defensive end the Irish took in that class was Aiden Gobaira, ranked two spots higher in the weakside defensive end ratings and 23 spots in the overall pecking order. Gobaira medically retired this offseason.
In transferring back home, the projected 2025 first-round draft pick in several of the early mocks joins a Texas A&M defense that ranked seventh in sacks nationally in 2023 and was 13th in run defense under the former coaching regime.
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard
The Duke transfer was announced as a captain before Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman nonchalantly acknowledged him as the season-opening starter, though to the surprise of no one paying attention.
The 12 Irish quarterbacks who preceded him in at least a one-game starting role went a collective 11-1 in those starting debuts, the exception Tyler Buchner and Notre Dame falling at Ohio State in the 2022 season opener.
Buchner has since rejoined the Irish after a season with Alabama, this time as a walk-on wide receiver and a moonlighting lacrosse player.
Riley Leonard came to ND as a proven runner, with a career rushing average of 5.3 yards per carry in 27 games at Duke. One of the reasons he chose the Irish was to improve as a passer under QBs coach Gino Guidugli and offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock.
He’ll need to b e at the top of his game in both phases for Notre Dame to improve its record to 4-2 in the series.
“I’ll start with the players, everybody’s so professional here,” Leonard said of why he already feels like the best version of himself as a college QB. “Everybody that comes to Notre Dame has a goal and a legitimate chance to go to the NFL. Everybody here is constantly, ‘Hey, can we watch film? Hey, what do you think about this?’
“We’ll be sitting in the locker room, drawing up plays on the white board. So it starts with them, like when you see somebody late at night, watching film, that’s just gonna drive you to go later than him and watch more film than him.
“And that’s just kind of like the atmosphere and the culture here. And then, obviously, coach Gino and coach Denbrock, I’ve learned — I can’t even tell you how much from. They’ve been great as far as my development.”
Texas A&M quarterback Conner Weigman
In the 2022 recruiting cycle, Texas A&M signed a class of 30 that collectively topped Rivals national team recruiting rankings.
As they begin their junior year in College Station, 15 of the 30 are no longer with the Aggies, nor is the coaching staff that recruited them. But one who did stay, quarterback Conner Weigman, is a huge key to A&M’s fortunes against Notre Dame.
The No. 36 player overall in that class and the No. 1 dual-threat QB prospect per Rivals, hasn’t shown much of that dual-threat skill set yet in his nine games — eight of them starts — in his first two seasons with the Aggies.
Perhaps new offensive coordinator Collin Klein will be more willing to use that and bring out the best in Weigman, but he’s faced nothing like a Notre Dame defense with most of its pieces back from being No. 1 nationally in total defense and No. 1 in pass-efficiency defense.
Of the nine opponents the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Weigman has faced when healthy, only one — Miami (Fla.) in 2023 — ranked higher than 40th in total defense (the Hurricanes were 24th) and five of them ranked 74th or worse.
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