Notre Dame Football: Hot and Cold Takes for Ball State

How’d we do last week?

As mentioned last week, I will feature the Most Interesting, Most Wildly Inaccurate, and Most Accurate Takes from the previous week.

Interesting

Hot Take by JonTargaryan69 (nice). Actually kind of surprised we didn’t see more of Harbaugh warming up. The Coach vs. Player Oklahoma drill would have been nice

Wildly Inaccurate

Michigan Troll “Stewart 2014” Hot Takes. Boy does it feel good to put this one up. Tough day for this Blue Fan when ND scores 21 in the first half.

Accurate

We didn’t get the shutout but it was kind of close. Remember that NDs defense has given up only 10 points since 2014.

-Now on to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Ball State Cardinals

Cold Take

We will see a freshman get into the End Zone

If things go according to plan, the Freshman should absolutely get in the game. This is even more likely with the the new Redshirt rule, which allows players to participate in any 4 games without losing a year of eligibility. I think Kelly will want the young bucks to get in and show what they can do, sadly at the demise of WOPU Nation. Some names to watch out for include Kevin Austin (most likely) Joe Wilkins Jr., Lawrence Keys, and Jahmir Smith. A burning question to chew on....Will this be the debut of Phil Jurkovec?

Hot Take

Chris Finke will have a punt return Touchdown.

This has less to do with Finke and more to do with our defense and the level of talent we have on our special teams units compared to Ball State. I think our defense holds very steady in the first half which provides a higher likelihood of the following:

1. More Punt Return Opportunities
2. Higher chance they will punt from their end zone
3. We see his Walk Like a Pigeon dance (dope).

Receiving a punt when another team sends it from their end zone is like Christmas. The ball gets out quickly on account of punter duress and is usually a lower line drive, giving immediate space to the returner. Also, they are normally in max protect so you won’t have gunners streaking down the field. If you remember this was the exact scenario (same type of team as well) against UMass in 2014.

INJECT SPECIAL TEAMS TDs INTO MY VEINS! As a fun side note my first real action came against UMass my freshman year in college on Special teams....so I think by the distributive property I am as a fast as CJ Sanders.

Your Takes: Please leave your takes below (hot, cold medium-any temp). I will feature the Top Takes next week. GO IRISH!