Notre Dame Football: Setting the spring narrative after the first practice

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish wrapped up their first day of spring football practice, and won’t be back at it until St. Patrick’s Day. That gives us an incredible amount of time to rake over the coals of this lone practice and press conference — which I swear to (some) god that I’m not going to do.

This is the part where we have all become accustomed to mentioning Junior Jabbie and all of that jazz. I’m not going to go there — not anymore. As the years go on, it feels more cruel than funny. Why should he have to live in infamy for balling out like a fucking superstar one spring? We’re going to have to come up with a different term. Sorry y’all (not back to why we’re here).

After one day of practice with no pads and very limited contact, here are three narratives that we should expect for the rest of spring.

Kevin Austin is going to break out like a bandit

As leader of team #KASZN, reading every report gushing over Austin’s dominant abilities is like getting that shot of adrenaline after a good night out on the town. He’s the most athletic and natural wide receiver on the roster, and now that Notre Dame is living in a post-Chase Claypool world, it should give us a great deal of confidence rolling into 2020.

We’re going to keep getting weird about the linebacker rotation

It’s like we didn’t learn our lesson from last year. Drew White and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah will be the starters in 2020. White at MIKE and Wu will probably be at ROVER again, but we can’t rule out the BUCK either. We already know how this is going to go, and most of us are already resigned to the fact that Clark Lea knows best and we shouldn’t waste a moment worrying over it — but here we are. Whether it’s figuring out the right combination with guys like Paul Moala and Jordan Genmark Heath (or whatever) or fresh faces like Marist Liufau, Jack Kiser, and J.D.Bertrand, it’s going to be a conversation throughout the spring.

Sorry.

All running back conversation is going to be awkward

We already got off to a terrible start by believing in the rumor that one of the backs had a bad injury, and none of them do. Half of us were also leaning towards Jafar Armstrong probably moving to more of a slot role, and that doesn’t seem to be the case either with him running as RB1. There’s also the business about Chris Tyree that we can’t talk about right now (or shouldn’t) because he doesn’t arrive until June.

At least Avery Davis got moved to the slot because this is one crowded room that will have no good answers until fall camp.

There’s more

But I’m going to leave those three there until the others ones eat at me enough to whip up another one of these. Spring football is here, so buckle up (as we wait a few more weeks).