Spring cleaning at a lot of positions
With an eventful 2024 season in the past, time marches ever onward, and spring practice is almost here. So, here’s a position-by-position breakdown of the 2025 makeup for the Irish — including non-early enrollees — starting with the offense/special teams.
Position: Quarterback
Scholarship players: 4
Projected starter: CJ Carr
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It’s all but a foregone conclusion that at least one of the players still in this room will be transferring after spring practice, and the most likely two candidates are Steve Angeli and Kenny Minchey.
Angeli has been the backup for two seasons and has done virtually nothing but impress — by backup quarterback standards. Most recently, and most notably, he led Notre Dame on a crucial field goal drive just before halftime against Penn State in the Orange Bowl. The downside with Angeli isn’t so much a lack of mobility. Instead, it’s his tendency to take bad sacks, as he goes deer-in-headlights mode under pressure or overprocesses as he spends more time in the pocket.
Minchey, on the other hand, has been stuck behind Angeli for two seasons, although he did score a rushing touchdown against Purdue this past September and played well in the 2024 spring game. The downside for Minchey is a lack of experience and his general status as a wild card, but he has the upside of a former blue-chip prospect with some mobility and shot-taking potential.
But, if we’re being honest, both of these guys find themselves in can’t-win scenarios. Minchey has already been written off by most of the fanbase as the third-wheel to Angeli and Carr, and that’s an accurate reflection of his standing based on practice reports. And as for Angeli, maybe he’s handed the starting job to start the upcoming year, especially considering the first two games are at Miami (Fl.) and host Texas A&M. But Carr taking over in 2026, and probably earlier, feels like a foregone conclusion.
Rounding out the room are freshman Blake Hebert — a late flip from Clemson after five-star quarterback Deuce Knight dropped his commitment to Notre Dame — and (tentatively) Tyler Buchner, who, assuming the Irish lose at least one of Angeli or Minchey, is expected to move from wide receiver back to quarterback to complete his roundabout collegiate journey. Whether Buchner goes on scholarship after spending the past season as a walk-on is uncertain.
Position: Running Back
Scholarship players: 6
Projected starter: Jeremiyah Love
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The thing that will likely keep Love from being a true Heisman Trophy contender in 2025 is the quality room behind him. That’s not a criticism of position coach Deland McCullough’s philosophy, which was to find roles for everyone and split carries to keep players healthy. Given newly minted running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider split carries between another pair of elite RBs at Penn State last season, the approach will probably stay the same for the Irish this season. (And, when comparing Love’s production throughout most of the regular season against what he did in the College Football Playoff following a late-season knee injury, avoiding wear and tear makes sense).
But even while splitting carries with quarterback Riley Leonard and No. 2 running back Jadarian Price, Love still managed to record 1125 yards on 163 carries (6.9 yards per carry) and 17 rushing touchdowns as a true sophomore. For Price’s part, he recorded 746 yards on 120 carries (6.2 yards per carry) to go with seven rushing touchdowns as a redshirt sophomore. That’s a dynamic running back tandem, but perhaps not dynamic enough to hold off true sophomore Aneyas Williams.
Williams broke out in the College Football Playoff as an X-factor against Penn State, rushing twice for 17 yards and catching five passes for 66 yards in Notre Dame’s comeback victory in the Orange Bowl. In light of Williams’ emergence and Love’s unquestioned status as the go-to guy, there’s a non-zero chance Price hits the transfer portal to be the unquestioned No. 1 back elsewhere, especially now that his position coach of the last three seasons is off to the NFL.
Behind those three are redshirt junior Gi’Bran Payne, redshirt freshman Kedron Young and true freshman Nolan James. Payne missed all of the 2024 season with a torn ACL after being the go-to short-yardage running back in 2023. Young voluntarily redshirted to preserve a year of eligibility this past year, recording 21 carries for 116 yards and one touchdown in seven games played. As for James, he carried the ball 243 times for 1921 yards (7.9 yards per) and 19 touchdowns in 12 games en route to a New Jersey Non-Public B state title as a high school senior.
Six scholarship players is a lot for the running back position, so if Price doesn’t transfer, the money is on Payne to be most likely to bolt this offseason, especially since the guy who recruited him to Indiana and then flipped him Notre Dame (McCullough) is gone.
Position: Wide Receiver
Scholarship players: 11
Projected starters: Jaden Greathouse, Malachi Fields and Will Pauling
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Notre Dame fans have waited far too long to get a mere glimpse at a bona fide No. 1 wideout. The last one was Chase Claypool in 2019 (no disrespect to 2021 Kevin Austin), but after five long seasons, the Irish seem to finally have another one in Jaden Greathouse. Across the Orange Bowl and National Championship games against Penn State and Ohio State, respectively, Greathouse caught 13 total passes for 233 yards and three touchdowns. He played like a man possessed when Notre Dame’s season was on the line, and now he has to do the same consistently.
As for the rest of the room, it’s the usual hodgepodge of interest-piquing high school recruits who haven’t yet done anything of consequence, returning veterans with middling-to-average production and “big fish” transfer portal additions moving from small ponds to a big one. Malachi Fields and Will Pauling fall in the transfer category, arriving by way of Virginia and Wisconsin, respectively, although Fields won’t join the Irish until the summer and Pauling will miss spring ball after a foot procedure.
Fields caught 129 passes for 1849 yards and 11 touchdowns across four seasons in Charlottesville, including 55 receptions for 808 yards and five touchdowns last season despite his quarterback having a 13-11 TD-INT ratio. As for Pauling, he also has 129 career catches, spread across four seasons between Wisconsin and Cincinnati. Last year with the Badgers he totaled 42 catches for 407 yards and three touchdowns, a dip from his junior year totals (74 catches for 837 yards and six scores). However, it’s worth mentioning that his dip coincided with Wisconsin losing starting quarterback Tyler Van Dyke for the season just three games into the 2024 campaign.
As Notre Dame moves to less of a run-first offense (although it still shouldn’t be a pass-first offense given the strength at running back), the receiver room has to take a big step from where it’s been the last half-decade. That means besides the transfer portal additions actually living up to the hype, the Irish need at least two guys to step up from the group of redshirt sophomore KK Smith and redshirt freshmen Micah Gilbert, Cam Williams and Logan Saldate. That also assumes two-sport athlete Jordan Faison (who is focused on Lacrosse during spring) fixes his drop issues from the past year and continues to be a dangerously shifty rotational player in the slot.
The last three guys in the room are Elijah Burress, Jerome Bettis Jr. and Antavious Richardson, a trio of recruits who each feels just as likely to redshirt this season as he does to crack the top-six of the rotation. That’s the reality for a position room that Notre Dame can’t seem to figure out in terms of talent identification and development.
Position: Tight End
Scholarship players: 6
Projected starter: Eli Raridon
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Not that the current Notre Dame coaching staff could have done anything about it, but their loss is the 2021 coaching staff’s decision to burn Mitchell Evans’ redshirt as a true freshman. Evans, who looked like an All-American in 2023 prior to a season-ending ACL tear that kept him from ever reach fourth gear in 2024, currently looks like a day-three NFL Draft pick (or even undrafted free agent) given his injury history. So, if he had any eligibility left, there’s a decent chance that a lucrative NIL package could get him to return for a fifth season. Alas, Evans is obligated to move on to the pros, meaning the torch is passed to the next promising player in Notre Dame’s tradition-rich tight end room: Eli Raridon.
Raridon is a legacy player (his father Scott Jr. played offensive line for the Irish from 2002–05) who’s had an up-and-down three years in South Bend to date. He rushed back from an ACL tear suffered during his senior basketball season of high school to play as a true freshman for the Irish. Then he tore his other ACL five games into the 2022 season.
After taking his second ACL recovery a bit slower, Raridon managed to return for the final seven games of Notre Dame’s 2023 campaign, catching five balls for 51 yards and one touchdown. This past year he showed a few more flashes of ability by becoming a good blocking tight end, playing in all 16 games and posting 11 catches for 90 yards and two scores. Now, Raridon has burned three years of eligibility, meaning this will almost certainly be his last season in an Irish uniform.
Junior Cooper Flanagan would be tight end No. 2 to Raridon after playing in 13 games each of his two years with the Irish. Across those seasons he’s recorded five total receptions for 74 yards and three touchdowns as primarily a third-stringer. However, Flanagan went down in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia with an achilles injury that will probably keep him out the entirety of the 2025 campaign.
So, behind Raridon now are Arkansas transfer Ty Washington, redshirt freshman Jack Larsen and incoming freshman James Flanigan. Washington is primarily known as a blocker but caught 14 passes for 212 yards and four touchdowns across three years in Fayetteville, including 11 catches for 170 yards and two scores his redshirt freshman season.
As for the underclassmen, Larsen only played seven offensive snaps across the Stanford and Virginia games as a fourth-stringer last season; as a recruit he was on the border of the three-star/four-star threshold. And Flanigan is a four-star recruit and the No. 1 player in the state of Wisconsin (per 247Sports Composite) who has a good chance to play right away in light of Flanagan’s injury.
And that leaves Kevin Bauman. Bauman was a member of Notre Dame’s 2020 recruiting class, the same as former Irish phenom Michael Mayer, but injuries have derailed his career. 2024 was the first year Bauman managed to stay some semblance of healthy, as he appeared in 14 games primarily on special teams and caught one pass for an eight-yard touchdown against Purdue. With injuries limiting him to just five games in 2021, three in 2022, and none in 2023, Bauman technically has at least two more years of eligibility, but how much he has left in the tank is a legitimate question.
Position: Offensive Line
Scholarship players: 15
Projected starters: (from left to right) Guerby Lambert, Charles Jagusah, Ashton Craig, Billy Schrauth and Aamil Wagner
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If you hadn’t heard it a million times already, Notre Dame returned just six total starts among the five offensive lineman who started last season’s opener at Texas A&M. Suffice to say they’ll open 2025 with more than that, though it won’t necessarily be a marked increase given the injuries that took Charles Jagusah, Ashton Craig and Billy Schrauth out of the 2024 lineup for varying stretches.
The guy who holds the most sway in terms of sorting out the 2025 starting unit is Guerby Lambert. The redshirt freshman was Notre Dame’s second-highest rated recruit in the 2024 class, measured in at 6-foot-7 and 323 pounds as a true freshman, and projects at tackle. With Aamil Wagner playing all 16 games at right tackle last season he will almost certainly hold down the same spot in 2025, meaning Lambert’s opportunity is on the blindside.
However, if Lambert isn’t yet ready to take a starting role, then the de facto left tackle is Jagusah — the redshirt sophomore who started the 2023 Sun Bowl against Oregon State, missed the first 14 games of the 2024 season after suffering a pectoral injury in August camp and then played guard against Penn State and left tackle against Ohio State in the College Football Playoff. Jagusah’s best position is probably at a guard spot, but if he’s also the best tackle on Notre Dame’s roster then the coaching staff’s hands are tied — although incoming true freshman and borderline five-star Will Black could theoretically make waves at tackle next season.
As for the rest of the interior, Schrauth will occupy one of the guard spots after he played on both the right and left sides around an ankle sprain suffered against Purdue last season. With Rocco Spindler, Pat Coogan and Sam Pendleton hitting the portal, the frontrunner for the other guard spot may be Sullivan Absher, but that depends on the health of Ashton Craig and Anthonie Knapp.
Craig was the starting center before sustaining an ACL injury against Purdue that kept him out the balance of 2024. Knapp, on the other hand, started 2024 fall camp as a third-string center before moving outside after Jagusah’s injury; Knapp then started the first 15 games of his true freshman season at left tackle before going down with a high ankle sprain against Penn State. Depending on the recovery timeline for Craig, Knapp could open 2025 as a starting guard or take over at center and then shift one spot over once Craig is ready to go.
The rest of the Irish O-line room is full of mostly blue-chip recruits, but the concern is finding some semblance of reliable depth. Last year’s 16-game season saw a lot of attrition and Notre Dame was fortunate to have Spindler and Coogan ready to start most of the 2024 campaign. But now those guys are gone. Knowing that another injury or two to starting linemen is a predictable occurrence in 2025, the Irish have to find capable stopgaps among their sixth, seventh, and eighth men in the pecking order.
Position: Kicker
Scholarship players: 1
Projected starter: Noah Burnette
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Marcus Freeman has had a new starting kicker join from the transfer portal in every one of his seasons as a head coach: first Blake Grupe from Arkansas State, then Spencer Shrader from USF, then Mitch Jeter from South Carolina and now Burnette from North Carolina. Burnette spent three seasons in Chapel Hill, posting a stat line of 19 made field goals in 20 attempts as a sophomore, bookended by 15-of-21 performances as a freshman and junior. That brought his career marks to 49 of 62 (79%) field goals to go with 138 of 140 extra points made.
Burnette won’t be as ballyhooed as Jeter was coming into last season, but he’s the safe bet to start in 2025 ahead of senior Zac Yoakam (20-20 on extra points and 2-5 on field goals in his career) and junior Marcello Diomede (2-2 on extra points, 0-1 on field goals), both walk-ons.