Bagpipe Monday: Who Will Lead The Notre Dame Football Team In 2018?

Welcome to another Bagpipe Monday on One Foot Down. The start of fall camp is just days away now, with the annual Brian Kelly press conference set to kick it all off on Thursday. If you’ve been aching for college football, or if you’ve been pretty mellow about the offseason — now’s the time to start getting excited.

@phillykelly

The problem is... there is going to be a whole lot of nothing to report over the next few weeks. As of writing this, we haven’t even received the camp schedule from Notre Dame. There will be the usual ups and downs in regards to the player’s weights, and the normal coachspeak, but overall there isn’t much we will learn (as far as big picture items for the season).

For example: the Dexter Williams situation won’t have much of an answer even though many of us are already convinced that he will be serving an in-house 4 game suspension. In fact, other than that “unknown” we pretty much know what we have going into camp with the small exceptions of:

• The running back depth chart (which is directly related to Williams).
• Which 2 safeties will win the starting job.
• The offensive line depth chart.

All three of those questions will take most of camp to figure out. So, like I said, we probably won’t learn much over the next couple of weeks (especially with the small amount of media viewing that we have come to expect).

BUT THAT’S OKAY BECAUSE WE WILL SPECULATE MADLY ANYWAYS!

Take the quarterback situation that the Irish have as an example. Brandon Wimbush is the starter, and there is little to no chance that Ian Book passes him as QB1. However... there are reports about how good Phil Jurkovec has looked this summer — could he pass Book as QB2 in camp?

There are dozens of scenarios we could toss around, but the one that we can really start to get a feel for during camp is who steps up as a leader of this team. We have the four captains for 2018 in Tyler Newsome, Drue Tranquill, Alex Bars, and Sam Mustipher; but who else steps up and helps guide this team?

There was a void in leadership in 2013 and 2016. Those years, of course, followed Notre Dame’s most successful years in 2012 and 2015. Those two years are why (so to speak) Notre Dame still hasn’t had back to back double digit win seasons since the 1992 and 1993 seasons.

Which player or players will step up in the leadership to help the Irish land 10, 11, 12, or more wins this season?

I suppose that’s what has me most intrigued heading into fall camp.

Enjoy the pipes!