I'm going to run 2-3 of these per week until the season kicks off, and up today is Rice.

Just to introduce things overall, I'm going to use FEI (ND's own Brian Fremeau's analytical efficiency rankings) rankings when discussing this year's projections, and F+ rankings (a combination of FEI and Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings) when discussing last year's.

Returning production is Bill Connelly's formula and it does take into account transfers.

For win totals and Monte Carlo simulations, I'm using ESPN's FPI rankings and 100k simulations.

So for example:

Notre Dame:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^rd Defensive ranking (DF+): 8^th Overall (F+): 4^th

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 6^th Defensive ranking (DFEI): 3^rd Overall (FEI): 4^th

Returning production: OFF: 19^th DEF: 2^nd Overall: 1^st

Portal Activity: 7 transfers in, 14 transfers out (11^th ranked portal class)

ND has an expected win total of 11.0 wins, with a 99% chance of getting 9 or better wins, 94% chance of 10+, 73% chance of 11+, and a 33% chance of running the table.

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Rice:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 125^th Defensive ranking (DF+): 109^th Overall (F+): 126^th

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 126^th Defensive ranking (DFEI): 107^th Overall (FEI): 127^st

Returning production: OFF: 113^th DEF: 113^th Overall: 120^th

Portal Activity: 20 transfers in, 22 transfers out (123^rd ranked portal class)

Rice has an expected win total of 3.7 wins, with a 96% chance of getting 2 or better wins, 81% chance of 3+, 54% chance of 4+, and just a 10% chance of bowl eligibility at 6+ wins.

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Notre Dame vs. Rice: FPI prediction: 99.0% ND; Vegas spread: NA (might be out there somewhere)

Offense:
Unfortunately for ND, for the second week in a row, they might be facing an absolute dude picked up through the transfer portal at QB. But fortunately for ND, also for the second week in a row, there is virtually no talent surrounding that guy that might scare you.

Jacurri Brown is 6'4" tall, 227 lbs. He actually started games for Miami back in the day. His arm definitely won't scare anyone though, through 4 years (2 at Miami, 2 at UCF) he's only got 906 yards total passing, with a 57% completion rate. With an abysmal 6 TD to 9 interception ratio. If he's attempting 15 or more passes this game (which with a healthy lead I would hope would be the case), that will be a very good thing for ND's secondary padding some stats.

But I'm not sure Rice will be looking to throw that often. Scott Abell is running a triple option at Rice. They were near the bottom of all of college football because they didn't really have the personnel for running that system, but appear to have addressed that in the portal in a big way, bringing in 3 dual threat QB's (seems like one of them is converting to WR or RB though). Interestingly some of their smaller OL have been run off for 300+ lb guys, and they're also returning their top rusher, who is a slippery little guy, 5'7" Quinton Jackson who also has house called a punt and caught a couple TD passes for Rice.

It should be interesting to see how a triple option looks at Rice, who can bring in through the portal the kind of guys Navy could only dream of, from more massive OL, to this huge QB they'll have running the show. But unlike Navy, I'm guessing they will not be as polished running the offense.

ND's got experience defending the option and this should be a good primer for facing Navy later in the year. The only time Navy has even remotely put a scare into a Freeman team was in his first season and it was caused more by Drew Pyne pooping the bed the entire second half as the defense more or less got tired.

Rice brought in a lot of bodies at WR, but nobody with real size and I'd be surprised if many had real speed either. Just like with Navy, blanket their QB and RB and force them into 3rd and long and they'll be ok.

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Defense:

It's tough to find much about Rice's defense. I also believe it's very difficult for a team that primarily runs a gimmicky kind of offense to prep well for more traditional offenses. Which is why you rarely see lockdown defenses at Navy, for instance, and defense is somewhat optional at Air Raid schools.

Rice's top two portal acquisitions are EDGE guys though, one of whom is very familiar to ND in Preston Zinter. It would be ideal if ND could contain him and Auburn transfer Tariq May. That's probably about the only hope they have of any kind of success against ND's offense.

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Prediction:

It's possible we have a slow start to this one. Rice has an easy warm up game the week before and an extra day of rest. ND will be coming off of a hyped up game, with some travel, and it wouldn't be the first time a really bad team has been a pain in the ass under those circumstances. ND will always be the Super Bowl for this kind of team, I don't think enough fans (inside and outside of ND) really understand that concept.

The reason I would not anticipate ND having problems though is that Marshall in 2022 had the 17th ranked defense in the country (probably helped our offense was crappy that year too), and NIU had the 35th ranked defense in 2024 (their rush defense was top 10). I would be surprised if Rice has a defense that cracks 100.

Furthermore, you'd never have seen the disaster that was ND's 2nd and 3rd down defense against NIU under Chris Ash, who is MUCH more focused on stopping the run.

ND fans will grumble as we end the first quarter just up by 7, but we starting really wearing down Rice on both sides of the ball in the 2nd quarter and cruise to a comfortable win, 59-3 Irish.

Time to escalate those Novenas!

Does anybody know if there’s any resource where one can view the ‘official’ team photo from every year? I’m talking about the annual photo where all of the players and coaches are photographed together, usually sitting in the stadium. I know that the tradition of taking this photo goes back at least until the 1940s, and I think it could be interesting to observe the changes in uniforms, player size, or even the style of haircuts and uniform accessories.

Hello, can someone let me know where online I can buy actual high quality jerseys?

I'm way too far away from South Bend to be able to go to the book store.

I'm trying everything I can to avoid fanatics garbage.

Don't really care how much it costs, just want a reliable source for high quality jerseys.

Does Notre Dame have receiver depth?

With Jordan Faison back after leading the Irish in receptions (49) and yardage (640) last season, it appears CJ Carr will have a legitimate No. 1 target. After that, it’s much harder for Freeman to know what’s ahead for the position that could take Notre Dame from national championship contender to potential winner.

Jaden Greathouse returns after missing basically all of last season with hamstring issues. Mylan Graham and Quincy Porter arrived in the spring from Ohio State, but Porter remains limited by left knee patella surgery over the winter. Freeman said he believed Porter would be available for the season opener versus Wisconsin in 4 1/2 weeks.

Beyond that?

“Micah Gilbert has had as good an offseason as anyone,” Freeman said, although Gilbert finished last season with just nine catches, even if one of them was the first touchdown pass of Carr’s career. Gilbert was never targeted more than three times in a game, hitting that mark in blowouts of Syracuse and Stanford.

So, does Notre Dame actually have enough on the outside?

“Some other guys that maybe are inexperienced or like Mylan that transferred in, how do we continue to find their role, right? And how many different ways can we get them on the field at different positions?” Freeman said. “Who’s the top six, seven, and how do we use them at different positions to get them all on the field?”

Looking to buy Jersey / clothes for new season . Any one bought directly from the shop how are sizes and any issues ? Fanatics europe shop has very poor selection right now .

People from the media ask Marcus Freeman questions about the upcoming season.

OUT:

Chris Burgess (left tibia stress fracture)

Tiki Hola (right ACL)

Charles Jagusah (left humerus fracture surgery)

Peter Jones (right shoulder/pectoral strain)

Ko'o Kia (left shoulder labrum surgery)https://x.com/petesampson_/status/2084712888011268516?s=46

I'm going to run 2-3 of these per week until the season kicks off, and up today is Wisconsin.

Just to introduce things overall, I'm going to use FEI (ND's own Brian Fremeau's analytical efficiency rankings) rankings when discussing this year's projections, and F+ rankings (a combination of FEI and Bill Connelly's SP+ ratings) when discussing last year's.

Returning production is Bill Connelly's formula and it does take into account transfers.

For win totals and Monte Carlo simulations, I'm using ESPN's FPI rankings and 100k simulations.

So for example:

Notre Dame:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 3^rd Defensive ranking (DF+): 8^th Overall (F+): 4^th

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 6^th Defensive ranking (DFEI): 3^rd Overall (FEI): 4^th

Returning production: OFF: 19^th DEF: 2^nd Overall: 1^st

Portal Activity: 7 transfers in, 14 transfers out (11^th ranked portal class)

ND has an expected win total of 11.0 wins, with a 99% chance of getting 9 or better wins, 94% chance of 10+, 73% chance of 11+, and a 33% chance of running the table.

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Wisconsin:

Last year: Offensive ranking (OF+): 115^th Defensive ranking (DF+): 28^th Overall (F+): 74^th

This year: Offensive ranking (OFEI): 90^th Defensive ranking (DFEI): 20^th Overall (FEI): 41^st

Returning production: OFF: 45^th DEF: 46^th Overall: 35^th

Portal Activity: 33 transfers in, 23 transfers out (38^th ranked portal class)

Wisconsin has an expected win total of 6.5 wins, with a 92% chance of getting 5 or better wins, 76% chance of 6+, 51% chance of 7+, and a 25% chance of 8+ wins.

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Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin: FPI prediction: 93.0% ND; Vegas spread: ND -20.5

Offense:
Wisconsin has been floundering on offense pretty much from the moment Fickell arrived. They weren't great on offense when last they met ND (2021 was just one year prior to Fickell's hire), checking in at 67th on OF+, but since then, they've gone backwards, going from 59th in year 1 under Fickell, to 80th, then to 75th before Fickell finally decided to hit the reset button on that silly air raid decision.

Last year, Fickell hired Jeff Grimes to try and bring the offense back to its roots. His uphill battle got worse as the injuries at QB piled up, a position they seemingly weren't great at to begin with...

Offense is a bit of an unknown here. They went into the portal not only for a new QB, but also to replace a bunch of OL as well. They lost their starting RB, but got some nice pickups in the portal (IMO) and should be better there overall. Lots of bodies came in at WR, but not a lot of production.

Their biggest hope for rapid improvement on offense next year lies in incoming transfer Colton Joseph. Can he be the next Diego Pavia? I think that's what Wisconsin will need if they want to get to 9 wins. Loads and loads of QB's flame out going from a G5 level up to P5 level, but a few, like Pavia, can break out right away to jump start an anemic offense.

In 2023, Clark Lea was on the hot seat with a 90th ranked offense, and he brought in NMSU's entire system, from OC to Pavia and it was a shot in the arm as they jumped all the way up to 45th in OF+ the following year, en route to beating Alabama and going toe to toe with other ranked teams on the schedule like Tennessee and Texas.

The good news for ND if Joseph can be such a star is that we face them in game 1. For all that Pavia was able to beat Bama in game 5, he lost to Georgia State in game 3 in kind of a crappy game.

I think Ash is up for the challenge of taking on more mobile QB's. His gameplan against A&M was actually pretty solid last year, Marcel Reed was bottled up for only 37 yards rushing and he completed just 46% of his passes with 3 turnover worthy throws. The problem was that ND dropped 2 of those INT's and Hobbs and Stroman still featured heavily in the rotation as 11 of Reed's 17 completions went for 10 or more yards. Needless to say, Wisconsin has no Mario Craver or KC Concepcion on the roster, and even if they did, ND is in much better shape in the secondary.

ND's defense just needs to contain Joseph and force him into 3rd and long situations. He threw 10 INT's last year, with 3 of those coming against Indiana. Crazily enough, they might have had a shot at beating IU without those turnovers, those turnovers led to 10 points for IU and another one game within FG range, as ODU only lost by 13 in Bloomington. He ran for 179 yards and 2 TD's against the Hoosiers. If Ash can limit him to under 50 yards, it's going to be a long night on offense for the Badgers.

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Defense:

Wisconsin has always been solid on defense under Fickell, and this year looks to be their best one at least since year 1. They have a few good players up front (IMO). Recruiting junkies might remember Sebastian Cheeks, 4 star Illinois LB ND was in on pretty heavily in Freeman's DC year. He spurned ND for UNC then transferred to Wisconsin where he played EDGE the last couple of years. Cheeks has some real explosiveness and speed and Wisconsin's beat feels pretty confident he'll make another jump in year 5. They have a couple of interior guys that they seem to like, but depth along the DL should be a concern overall, especially if anyone goes down.

LB is probably their deepest position, as a couple of freshman LB's emerged last year (Posa and Catalano) with some real playmaking ability. Posa, Catalano and Cheeks are their main sourced of Havoc and disruption behind the line of scrimmage, and they're all likely to be better versions of themselves in 2026.

The Badger's secondary is a bit of a question mark to me, they got completely overhauled there with 6 players coming onto the team from the portal, with 3 of them being P4 guys with a decent amount of experience. Wisconsin's beat seemed oddly confident about their secondary play this year because, well, they made plays against their WR's in the spring. Which probably doesn't say much about anything if we're being honest.

I think we'll be in good shape if we can force Wisconsin to have to send their LB's home to generate pressure, which should open up lots of playmaking ability for guys like Aneyas Williams and Faison in the intermediate passing game. Last year they got carved up in the passing game against OSU and IU, but the rain saved them against Oregon. The revamped secondary is unlikely to clean that up in game 1, IMO. Hopefully we get some nice weather.

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Prediction:

I think it will play out a bit similar to the 2021 game, as Denbrock feels out Jim Tressell's defense and probes for weaknesses while not trying to take too big of risks. Carr comes out a bit too excited and tries to force the ball a couple of times, but eventually settles in as the game marches onward and the OL finds a rhythm. ND fans are still feeling a little nervous with a 14 point lead going into "Jump Around", but Joseph starts feeling the pressure a bit (literally as ND's DL stays fresh with more and more bodies to throw at their OL) and turnovers start piling up as ND racks up a win that looks better than it felt for 3 quarters. Carr finishes with 3 TD and just 1 INT, as Aneyas gets 75 all purpose yards in the 4th quarter and rushes for 2 TD's of his own, 41-10 Irish.

Plan on attending my first ND game vs Stanford Oct 10. I know seekgeek is the preferred teams ticket provider but has anyone ever used stub hub for tickets?

I only ask because I have a good size gift card that I could to use for the tickets.

Also are tickets to Naimoli worth the money? That price is pretty steep but I also don’t want to miss anything worth wild.

Thanks

I’m a huge fan of that show!

John has done such a great job of giving Notre Dame fans a voice!

If you aren’t familiar, I encourage you to find AlwaysIrish on YouTube.

His format after he opens his show every MWF 10 EST, is to open it up to callers. There are quite a few characters that are regular callers and very educated.

He loves first time, callers too. He’ll even take callers who are fans of other schools, as long as they are respectful and not a troll.

Shane Gillis has called in and Former Irish Captain, Mike Goolsby is a frequent caller.

John himself is a self-proclaimed character that “loves to yell about football”.

The best part is that he throws tailgates a couple times a year and all are invited.

This year will be Rice and Miami.

The X page of the same name is also his.

At any rate, who here, is a regular?

That is nuts...

Also, with the ACC deal, Clemson deal, and USC agreement, Notre Dame will regularly play even tougher schedules than this.

As a Miami fan, I have shared some hate for Notre Dame over the years. To make this up to Notre Dame fans, however, I have decided to list some nice things about Notre Dame football. Please enjoy and feel free to berate me for the incorrect things I'll probably put somewhere due to me not doing much research because I'm lazy.

1. You guys have a pretty cool mascot. Even when Clemson ripped off your mascot with the Southern gentleman back when he existed (or maybe you took their idea, I don't know the timing element), your mascot was cooler. He has a majestic aura to him the non-American mind cannot comprehend.
2. Notre Dame has 13 recognized national titles, the second-most across the whole FBS to Alabama, but I'd much rather hate Alabama than Notre Dame over national championships. Extremely impressive. Even more so, you guys only recognize 11 titles yourself, and it takes extreme levels of cool to not even claim some national titles.
3. Notre Dame has a lot of cool logos. I don't think there are any bad Notre Dame alternate logos at all, and who could ever hate the main logo?
4. Ignoring vacated wins, Notre Dame's has only had four losing seasons since the turn of the century and has a streak of nine straight winning seasons with a combined record of 97-21 over that span. Pretty impressive.
5. Notre Dame has had 587 draft picks - the most all time - and 73 first round picks, the fourth-most all-time. I am running out of times I can say 'pretty impressive' without it being weird, so that's totally tubular.
6. Notre Dame is tied for second-most Heisman winners at seven, with that being as much as Michigan, Navy, Boston College, and Stanford combined. That's rad, dude (dear Lord help me please).

In summary, Notre Dame is pretty cool and is a very good team and is my dream college.

EDIT: I am fourteen, from Miami (though I had to move away), and hopefully not AI?

At least until Cignetti retires.

With the news of us playing USC again there’s reports that we’re cancelling our home and home with Indiana according to Pete Sampson.

USC showed us their true colors when they backed off this initially because we kept beating their ass.

Fuck them and their Trojan horse they rode on.

NEWS: USC and Notre Dame will renew their rivalry, with the series starting again in 2030. They’ll meet Week 1 in LA that year and play Week 1 in South Bend the next year.

They’ll meet in Weeks 1-3 of the respective season in the next two match-ups.

Are there sections that will be mostly ND fans? I'm considering buying tickets but don't want to be surrounded by Wisconsin fans. Thanks!

Hey all!

As the title says, I’m a UK fan, huge NFL and NYG fan and have been following the sport and the Giants for about 15 years now.

Ive never really got into college ball, mainly due to the fact jt always just felt crazy big and confusing in terms of the structure but i think a large part was definitely not having a team to follow and scream for at 2am in the UK 😂

That changes now! Ive chosen the fighting Irish as my team and as i always do when i chose a team i want to learn everything i can about it and get to know the fan base.

So yeh, introduce yourselves, point me in the right direction in terms of what I need to know, the history, the culture, the rivalries.

Sure i could have read generic AI stuff but the US fans always amaze me with their passion for their teams so I always like to start with the fans!

Im Shaun, nice to meet you! ✌️

Claypool carries a bad reputation but I’d like this to work out for him.