Welcome back to another edition of Irish Illustrated Insider, brought to you by Irish Illustrated.com.

Tim O'Malley here with Tim Priestier, Pete Samson, and Jack Freeman Studios, and we are coming off the perhaps only complete game performance, irrespective of foe by Notre Dame this season, 44 to 6 over Army, and I think most important, Tim, that lends for a much better week of preparation for this team going into a big Senior Day matchup against Virginia Tech. There's no doubt about it, and this is all you could ask for, going into the last two games with a shot. Well, I mean, you could ask for more before they felt it. Yeah. But, I mean, you wanted to get to this point where you have something

to play for and whether, I think I said this in this analysis, whether people on the outside

think that's really something to play for is really not the point. The players do. And so they'll be

motivated last home game. Man, USC looks good if you saw USC play Saturday night.

But one step at a time, Virginia Tech didn't play particularly well against Georgia Tech.

But they're good.

They're a good football team.

They're number six in the country in tackles for loss.

They've got a quarterback Gerardard Evans, who runs it really well, throws it pretty well.

They're not a great running football team, but they've got some weapons, Isaiah Ford.

Bucky Hodges is a real weapon for them, and they're pretty good defensively.

You're not going to leave us much on a Thursday podcast. He's done with Army. I'm sorry. I moved ahead a little bit. Yeah, North didn't play. I mean, they played it certainly their most complete game in the year for what it's worth against Army. Yeah, there's no question. I mean, the special teams was not only not bad. It was good. You know, I know they missed an extra point. Army, however, is really bad on special teams. To start the game with a kickoff return touchdown, you couldn't ask for a better sort of bounce back for C.J. Sanders, who's really struggled. I mean, he lost his slot receiver job. even with Tori Hunter out, it wasn't like C.J. Sanders, who's really struggled. I mean, he lost his slot receiver job.

You know, even with Torrey Hunter out, it wasn't like C.J. Sanders just bounced back into the

mix. They were trying to find other ways to get people involved, Durham Smites, with two touchdowns.

Kevin Sefferson had a really good game. There was a drop in there, but, I mean, for a freshman,

I don't think you can ask for much more than the freshman season that he's had. So there was a lot for Notre Dame to like.

You know, does it solve everything? Suddenly the glass hat full? Definitely not. But, you know,

when you look at Stepherson, Julie in Love, Dalian Hayes coming out a little bit more big picture,

opposed to just the Army game.

I think if they can get the freshman class to start playing more experience and more mature, and they can sort of create some leadership within that group where younger guys can look at

Julian Love and say, oh, that's how I get on the field, or younger guys can look at Stepherson and say, oh, that's how you have to study your playbook, then at least you can get something positive out of a very down season. And to me, that's important. Yeah, and I go back to, we kept wondering what the breaking point would be. They never hit it. They never hit the breaking point this season, all these losses. It would have been Navy, right? It would have been Navy. And that was the one thing we were uncertain about, okay. Right. Is this the breaking point? Fortunately, Army... Took 12 seconds for C.J. Sanders to make sure... Well, yeah, that's very true. It set a tone. I know, I'm dealing with this in the tail of the tape. I'm not saying Stepherson is Will Fuller, because Will Fuller's probably a once-in-a-lifetime receiver in Notre Dame. But, man, he's way ahead of where Will Fuller was as a freshman. He's a really good player. I mean, they'll probably end up being different players. I think Steversston will be a guy that does more all over the field. Yes. He won't be a guy that catches the pollen beats. How about the end zone? Can he do more all over the end zone? Could he always run into the end zone with guys chasing him? I don't know. But I do think he'll be, you know, you kind of get a mixture of, every time I'm Ram, T.J. Jones, people think you're shooting. A senior year, T.J. Jones. Yeah, he's a short, intermediate, and deep guy.

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