Four Notre Dame spring practice lessons that will show up during the 2025 season

New York Times

24-04-2025

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame logged 14 traditional spring practices over 35 days, one of the first formal steps in what could be a difficult encore performance for head coach Marcus Freeman. After playing in the championship game of the first 12-team College Football Playoff, the Irish are once again talented, with Freeman hardly pushing back on the notion of Playoff expectations. They also have some new parts — defensive coordinator, quarterback, captains — that have to get sorted out before anyone talks about postseason possibilities.
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As Notre Dame moved into the true offseason, Freeman met with the media this week to wrap up spring practice, putting a bow on the handful of practices the Irish staged after the Blue-Gold Game that took place almost two weeks earlier.
Not everything Freeman said will hold once the season approaches. But here are four takeaways that will matter for the fall.
Freeman didn't detail why CJ Carr and Kenny Minchey remain as the two quarterbacks competing for the starting job, nor did Notre Dame's head coach explain how Steve Angeli fell short. But if you knew how to listen, Freeman at least gave a hint about why Notre Dame's spring practice quarterback competition ended with Angeli transferring to Syracuse.
'Are you making the right decisions is probably the most important thing,' Freeman said. 'Delivering the ball, the ability to create plays, maybe when things are breaking down and taking care of the football. Those are things that we really, really evaluate, and they've done a tremendous job at doing that.'
Angeli can do most of that, which why he has a 10-to-1 career touchdown-to-interception ratio, to go with a 72.5 percent completion rate. The former Notre Dame quarterback was good at taking what the defense gave him, which was more than enough to be a serviceable backup to Riley Leonard and Sam Hartman. But tucked inside that quote is an area where Minchey and Carr thrive and Angeli sometimes struggled.
Because 'when things are breaking down,' it's Minchey who can escape with his legs and Carr who showed a skill for evading the pass rush while keeping his eyes down the field. The ability to make something out of nothing is high on the list of what Freeman values in a quarterback. Leonard did it last season. There's belief Carr and/or Minchey can do something similar this fall, although Freeman doesn't want the starting duties to be shared.
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Freeman added that former Notre Dame starting quarterback Tyler Buchner could return to the quarterbacks room after being a scout team wide receiver last season.
Freeman will need to invest time in developing leaders between now and the start of camp in late July because for how much talent the Irish lost from last year's roster, replacing the playmaking abilities of Riley Leonard, Jack Kiser and Xavier Watts is probably the easy part. Figuring out how fill the leadership void on the roster left by those three, along with former captains Benjamin Morrison and Rylie Mills, is when things get harder.
'We're looking at you guys as leaders and captains to be problem solvers,' Freeman said. 'The other thing is that you have to make those around you better. I often say if you're a leader and the temperature or the performance of those guys that you're leading is the same when you're there as when you're not, you're probably not that great of a leader.
'I believe we have multiple guys that are doing those things, that are leading, they're solving issues. They're making guys around them better.'
Who are they? Freeman didn't say, which doesn't mean he doesn't have an idea of the candidates. Drayk Bowen, Adon Shuler and Aamil Wagner all look the part. Jeremiyah Love probably does, too. Yet when Freeman outlined what Notre Dame got done during spring ball, he included building trust, whether that was coach-to-player, player-to-coach or player-to-player. Notre Dame needs all of that. And it has to know which players can pull the program forward, just like last year's captains did.
That might be what summer is all about.
Assuming Notre Dame gets through summer workouts without a freak injury, the Irish should open camp down only tight end Cooper Flanagan, who is still recovering from a torn Achilles in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia. Freeman said defensive ends Jordan Botelho and Boubacar Traore are on track for a unrestricted summer after suffering torn ACLs early last season. Same story with center Ashton Craig. Offensive tackle Guerby Lambert, who underwent shoulder surgery during spring practice is expected back for training camp but may be limited during the summer.
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Freeman's balancing act will be steeling the roster for the season but not burning it out should the Irish go on another 16-game run to the national championship. That requires meeting with Notre Dame's sports performance team, including head strength coach Loren Landow.
'You can't cheat the preparation,' Freeman said. 'There is a physical preparation into making sure you're team is ready to go Week 1. You guys heard me say this enough, the future is uncertain so for us to preserve for an uncertain future is crazy — a future that you might not ever get. We have to make sure we are ready to go the minute that first game, and there's a physical preparation that you have to go through to make sure you're ready.'
At a minimum, Notre Dame will move beyond the pitch counts of spring practice, when nearly a dozen starters were rested for the bulk of offseason drills. That means when camp does open, Freeman should be playing with a full deck.
It's still not clear whether Notre Dame will have to cut down to reach the 105-man roster limit proposed in the House v. NCAA settlement, although federal judge Claudia Wilken on Wednesday opened the possibility of denying the proposed settlement if schools don't come up with fairer plan for players at the back of the roster.
That might explain why Freeman offered few details on how Notre Dame would manage the 105-man limit, assuming the Irish have to at all.
'We have a plan for if it's 105, and we have a plan for if it's not,' Freeman said. 'So, I don't sit and think about if it's going to be 105 or not.'
Regardless of Notre Dame's roster limit, whether it cuts to 105 or stays at 120 with a full complement of walk-ons, it appears there will be fewer walk-ons this season than last. As scholarship limits continue to fade away, Freeman said Notre Dame could potentially add 10 new scholarship players.
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'I think we're probably around 95 if it gets to the 105 limit,' Freeman said. 'But if we need to find a way to make sure there's more guys that don't have to pay for school, we have a plan to do that, too. But actual scholarship numbers right now, the plan would be around 95.'
It's not clear how Notre Dame would use those new scholarships; it could give them to individuals in full or it could divide the scholarship, splitting it amongst players. Regardless, it appears that future Irish rosters will feature more scholarship players and fewer walk-ons.