Jarron Jones was the first blow.It was barely a month ago—August 15, to be exact—when Notre Dame's starting nose tackle tore his MCL during practice. Four days later, Shaun Crawford, a freshman standout in line to start at nickelback, tore his ACL. Unfortunate as it was, this was hardly a death knell for Notre Dame's season, not with the depth on hand. The Irish regrouped, and marched into the season with the playoffs on their mind.
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Then running back Tarean Folston tore his ACL and starting quarterback Malik Zaire fractured an ankle and starting tight end Durham Smythe tore his MCL and suddenly, just two games into the season, the most loaded Notre Dame team in years appeared utterly and summarily fucked.
Saturday went a long way toward proving or allaying that fear, depending on your point of view. On the one hand, safety Drue Tranquill made it a hat trick of ACL tears, and became the sixth Irish starter lost for the season. Like the other in-season injuries, it fit a far more disturbing pattern than those preseason knocks: they came at exactly the positions Notre Dame could least afford to lose healthy, productive players. Zaire, after all, matriculated into the starting job when Everett Golson absconded to Tallahassee, and Folston figured to be in for a big year when platoon-mate Greg Bryant withdrew from school for academic reasons. Smythe was the only proven commodity at his position, while Tranquill had graduated from his super sub role in part because grad transfer Avery Sebastian was already out with a foot injury until at least October. The new DeShone Kizer-C.J. Prosise backfield has hummed along thus far, but one more blow drags things into nuclear wasteland-territory.Yet, in spite of everything, Notre Dame throttled a heavily favored Georgia Tech team, virtually matching the "run first, second, third, and fourth" Yellow Jackets in rushing yardage, 216 to 215. Considering that Georgia Tech averaged 342 yards on the ground per game last year, this was a defensive victory as much as it was a statement game for Prosise, who popped for 198 yards and three touchdowns on 22 carries. Elsewhere, Kizer completed 21 of 30 passes, Will Fuller sprang for 131 receiving yards, and the Irish stymied the Jackets into converting just three of 15 third-down attempts. For one afternoon, everything was as Notre Dame imagined it would be, even if they never could have conceived of the particulars.
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Conventional wisdom still has the Irish splintering apart at some point, which means that we may have stumbled on the rarest, most grating college football species: a genuinely underrated Notre Dame team. The Irish are no more the feisty, starving underdog they'll soon be portrayed as than the fattened-up fraud many regarded them to be at the start of the year. The roster remains stocked with blue-chip talents; there are just fewer of them to spread around.There will be plenty of talk about that third-string quarterback/third-string running back pairing, for instance, but Prosise was already starting as a hybrid tailback-slot man and you'd be forgiven for squinting at Kizer's immaculate physical tools—6'4'', 230, with a grenade launcher for a right arm—and making out an outline of Cardale Jones. Fuller, meanwhile, is a cat burglar on the perimeter, a deep threat averaging 22 yards a reception by virtue of agility and acceleration. Left tackle Ronnie Stanley can and maybe should be the first offensive lineman drafted, while Smythe's successor, freshman Alize Jones, is among the best athletes to come out of high school at tight end in years.Defensively, Jaylon Smith is the linebacker that the press had made Manti Te'o out to be, and Joe Schmidt racks up an unassuming diet of tackles alongside him. Sheldon Day is disruptive enough on the line and, although the secondary lacks numbers, KeiVarae Russell and Cole Luke are a strong pair of corners as Elijah Shumate entrenches himself as one of Notre Dame's most productive veterans. Make no mistake: even down six starters, this Irish team may be more talented than the 2012 squad that reached the national championship game.
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C.J. Prosise is not your average third-string running back. Photo by Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports
The schedule is like every other Notre Dame schedule, which is to say that much of it is a challenge in appearance only. UMass, Temple, and Wake Forest are pockmarks more than speed bumps. Road games at Boston College and Pitt aren't gimmes, but Notre Dame nevertheless enjoys a massive talent advantage in each. The season finale at Stanford won't be pleasant, but it's far too soon to brand Kevin Hogan a revelation rather than the beneficiary of a truly incompetent defensive game plan from USC.The acid test begins next Saturday at Clemson and will continue in South Bend for home tilts against Navy and USC. There's certainly a scenario in which the Irish drop all three. The Tigers' Deshaun Watson is the most electric player Notre Dame will face this season, and he has plenty of support in Wayne Gallman and Artavis Scott. Despite dropping their last four games to the Irish, Navy is the horsefly that will always buzz loudly enough to be a serious nuisance. With the Trojans, erratic though they may be, you have off-the-charts offensive skill and the specter of recent history: USC smashed another short-handed Notre Dame team when they faced off last season.Yet these are far from losing propositions. Clemson barely squeaked by an 0-3 Louisville squad last week, as Watson threw a pair of interceptions and didn't crack 200 yards passing. Navy is Georgia Tech in pastels, and will attack with a muted version of the triple option attack the Irish just shut down. No one ever knows what USC will bring to the table on a given week, aside from the disaster that is their current front seven (save for Su'a Cravens).It was probably too much to ask Notre Dame to run the table at full strength, let alone with its increasingly threadbare roster, but a 10-win season (or better) is still in play, provided the remaining Irish starters remain upright and bipedal. That, of course, is the furthest thing from a guarantee, but at some point the Irish are due for a dose of their trademark luck. In the meantime, don't be surprised when Notre Dame stays good.
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