The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have started their fall camp practice to prepare for the 2020 football season. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, normal media coverage has pretty much been scrapped by Notre Dame. Only bits and pieces have been fed to us, so let’s take a quick look at what they put in my inbox last night.
BOOK IT
This first clip is maybe the most interesting one. What’s shown is freshman wide receiver Jordan Johnson running an out route for Ian Book with transfer cornerback Nick McCloud with the coverage.
Book’s throw is late and behind Johnson — but that shouldn’t be too surprising right now. It’s early in camp and Book most likely doesn’t have the timing down for a newcomer like Johnson. That’s what fall camp is for — especially that. Also, it could be that Johnson just got a little space from McCloud and with the sideline closing there really wasn’t any room to put it in there.
Nick McCloud’s coverage, however, is very encouraging. He’s trailing Johnson, but “on him” while the sideline works as another defender. He shows nice coverage technique using the proper arm to swat while the other is to the back of Johnson.
THE BK TALK
Here’s another clip of Jordan Johnson, and this time it’s of him getting some instruction from Brian Kelly. Now, we have no idea what this is about, but clearly we can see that Kelly and Tommy Rees are trying to bring along the young 5-Star recruit. Johnson’s strength is route-running and doing the little things that make a big difference — which is exactly what puts freshmen on the field.
TEU
Brock Wright’s size and excellent hands are his greatest assets on the field, but you can see in this clip that he does run a bit stiff. Wright is a classic tight end while his counterpart, Tommy Tremble, is more of an H-Back. It’s a combination that should suit the Notre Dame offense just fine in 2020.
BIG BRACY?
TaRiq Bracy is a very talented cornerback — and we’ve known this since his freshman year when he saw considerable playing time. Perhaps the biggest knock on Bracy has been his diminutive size. In Clark Lea’s defense he’s mostly relegated to playing the field corner — which is perfectly fine, but you still want your corners to be stronger as they go up against bigger receivers and running backs in the open field.
This drill is designed to make a player better at getting off of a pest block to attack a ball carrier. In the video, I noticed that TaRiq looks bigger in the upper body which is a good sign for the Irish as we expect him to be in a rotation with Shaun Crawford at the field corner (or even the starter at the field).
That’s all for now, but we can expect more short clips in the coming days and weeks as we creep towards the season.