Notre Dame Football: What’s the status of cornerback TaRiq Bracy?

There has been a lot of offseasons announcements from Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players about their decisions to stay or go for the 2022 season. Whether that’s a 5th year coming back, declaring for the NFL Draft, or entering the transfer portal — it’s been a lot. One of the names that we have yet to see any type of announcement from is senior cornerback, TaRiq Bracy.

In December I took the position that Bracy will return for his 5th and final year at Notre Dame playing CB, but there are others out there that had more hesitation. Perhaps Bracy might want to play his final year somewhere else, but the NFL Draft wasn’t much of an option at this point.

Bracy is notoriously quiet on social media, so there’s not a lot to garner from that note. What I do know is that he is currently taking classes at Notre Dame, although I haven’t seen any confirmation of him working out with the team right now (although that could change quickly).

My take on TaRiq is that I expect him to go through spring football and perhaps he decides to make a change at that point. Fascinating and jaw-dropping stuff — I know — but the lack of public acknowledgment has created a bigger question here. I think the normal and safe play is what we will see.

It’s Cam Hart on one side right now with Clarance Lewis and/or TaRiq Bracy on the other. After the Fiesta Bowl, there’s a sentiment from fans that it should be good riddance to both players — but that’s a terrible overreaction to what was a terrible game. While both Bracy and Lewis (Lewis especially) made plenty of mistakes against OSU, they were both put in terrible positions in a defense that looked dysfunctional as a whole. The immediate overreaction of fans to demand freshmen or sophomores that haven't played much at all to replace the starters is on my top 5 list of things I hate about this business.

We definitely need the spring season to play out, and probably most of fall camp as well, before we get a better sense of how this secondary is going to look when they start the season off in Columbus to take on the Ohio State Buckeyes. Experienced football players are going to be key in such a huge game to start the season — I hope Bracy is one of them.