Notre Dame Reacts Survey: Let’s Talk About Our Hopes and Fears Before Tennessee State

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NCAA. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Notre Dame fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

We’ve got four burning questions for you in our Week 2 survey, starting with the baseline. Last week, 48 percent of our survey respondents told us they were “very confident” in the direction of the Notre Dame program, with an additional 47 percent saying they were “somewhat confident.” Did a 42-3 drubbing of hapless Navy change any hearts and minds? We’ll find out!

This week’s second question is pretty much to gauge your impressions of Sam Hartman? To me, he is an absolutely polished college quarterback who I expect to do nothing significant in the NFL. I think he can do great things for Notre Dame this year, but I don’t think he’ll be an NFL starter in three years’ time, whereas I’m much more bullish on the Sunday futures of Joe Alt and Blake Fisher. What do you think? Perhaps you believe the four-headed hydra of Audric Estimé, Jeremiyah Love, Gi’Bran Payne and Jadarian Price will ultimately ground out enemies into fine dust.

For our third question, we might as well nitpick a bit about Saturday’s performance and share how this might carry ahead to more vital games. I thought the game plan was decidedly vanilla, but likely purposefully so. Is that a big deal? How about all the missed blocking assignments by the running backs? Let’s clean that up quick! Is the kicking game going to have us wishing for Jonathan Doerer back?

Finally, no one expects this Saturday’s game to be memorable for the final score, but it is significant. Notre Dame is playing its first FCS program — and a HBCU at that — and with it may come a secondary narrative. Is it that playing FCS teams in the beginning of the season is a waste of a weekend? Perhaps Dr. Ken Dye is inspired by Tennessee State’s band and tries a more soulful touch in the latter parts of 2023? Or maybe it’s as simple as: Paul Burmeister is a solid radio commentator, but we’ll sort of miss the dulcet tones of a certain Syracuse grad on NBC (uh, Noah Eagle. Who did you think I was talking about?).

As always, these surveys are sponsored by DraftKings Sportsbook, the official sportsbook partner of SB Nation. Put all your money on Audric Estimé