Next men
Marcus Freeman met with the media on Monday as Notre Dame prepares to take on the Stanford Cardinal on Saturday. More and more — especially this season — the Monday presser is more about a rundown of who’s healthy and who isn’t.
The presser makes the worst news official — defensive end Boubacar Traore is out for the season with a torn ACL. Traore is currently Notre Dame’s sack leader and was well on his way to stardom this season, but the turf monster had other ideas.
We add Traore to the “lost for the season” list along with Charles Jagusah, Jordan Botelho, Ashton Craig, Kahanu Kia, Taebron Bennie-Powell, Styles Prescod, Chance Tucker, and Gi’Bran Payne.
For Stanford, Freeman announced that Billy Schrauth, Gabe Rubio, and Cooper Flanagan are all questionable for Saturday’s matchup.
That’s a lot of frontline beef in the trenches that Notre Dame will have to play without.
By the way… CJ Carr got hurt in practice.
OFFENSE
No big changes on offense for the Irish. A major concern coming out of the Louisville game was that of WR Jordan Faison, who Notre Dame now lists as probable for the game against Stanford. Notre Dame HAS to start improving its passing game, and Faison can be a big part of that.
DEFENSE
There were a lot of backups that finished the game for Notre Dame two weeks ago. Christian Gray is listed as probable this week, but freshman Leonard Moore did a fantastic job against Louisville. Now that the Irish have lost its top two weakside defensive ends for the season, a player like Joshua Burnham becomes even more important — and he’s on the probable list this week. The Irish are digging for depth along the defensive line, but the standard is still there. Junior Tuihalamaka has been impressive and we will continue to see more of him.
SPECIAL TEAMS
It really does appear that Jordan Faison will be full go as he is back as Notre Dame’s starting punt returner. Everything else is as it was.