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

and Pete Sampson, joined by Tim O'Malley, two-man booth today as we sort of spin this

forward.

I mean, the bowl game is 11 days away at this point, which seems like

these bowl preps feel like they go on forever, and all of a sudden the game is here. I mean,

we're flying out next weekend, basically. So we actually have some news to cover now following

that Geron Jones, Jerome Smyth, those injuries are coming through for Notre Dame. That's a big,

that may be a big difference. Yeah, they're certainly more back than we thought last time we met. We were saying Jaron was probably 1520 plays. I mean, he seems ready to go. Brian Kelly intimated to be way more than that. And Durham Smyth is fully healthy. You know, it's interesting talking to Smyth today, just kind of going through for a guy to get hurt, have knee and his shoulder surgery at the same time, get hurt in the same game, talking about how he was just playing. He had, you know, got his shoulder in a harness, he was playing through it, then he felt the knee, he knew something that was wrong. It happened to play before Will Fuller's touchdown. Durham Smyth is laying on the ground, and he has the football moment. I gotta get off this field. That's why I don't hurt my team with a 10-second runoff. He gets off the field. Doesn't see the game when he touched him, but he's happy about it. It was just very funny how he kind of explained that story, but Smyth is good to go. It'll be interesting to see how the offense can evolve with him out there. That's a high level of football intellect.

Yeah. I didn't get a chance to catch up with Geronté, but I just saw him.

Physically, he still looks huge.

And if they can just get that 15 high-level plays and maybe another 10 OK plays,

that could make a pretty big difference with Notre Dame's defensive front and the rotation they were able to maintain.

And I wouldn't expect him to talk about any weakness, but he basically said they put me in

right away, hit me right away for the first December bowl practice, and I felt nothing but

getting incrementally better, which is the best news you can hope for.

I kind of wondered if they were babied him along a little bit, just afraid to give him any

contact, which he obviously needs at some point.

And he said, no, he's taking contact with the rest of the team.

There were no walkthroughs for him in December, at least.

It's going to be fascinating to see what he looks like live, because once you pair

that Liz Frank foot injury from last year, he has not had a whole lot

of competitive work for a long, long time, and then just ramp up for two and a half weeks

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