Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider. It's Monday, January 10th. I'm Tim Priester with Tim O'Malley and Pete Samson.

We have a lot to cover here for segment. Brandon Joseph, a safety. Oh, wait a minute, the top news of the day.

Marcus Freeman's 36 years old today, by the way. So happy birthday to coach Freeman.

But Brandon Joseph, Nordheim's newest safety from Northwestern. I really like him, liked his film.

He's long, you know, he's six foot one, but man, he plays longer, long arms, makes plays.

Nine interceptions in 21 college games. Let's start with that because, of course,

we have Jared Patterson, Isaiah Foski, and some others announcing that they will be back for the

2022 season. We'll get into that in a second, but let's talk about Brandon Joseph and what you guys see

in that safety from Northwestern. Safety with ball skills. I mean, they don't, they don't have anybody on the roster

that has ball skills at that position. Like, Ramon Harrison might, but we haven't really seen it.

The ball seems to get to DJ Brown sometimes, but I'm not sure I would say like, okay, DJ Brown

is locked up on a slot receiver one-on-one. I feel good about Notre Dame's chances.

So that's, I mean, that's what killed them in the Fiesta Bowl. They didn't have enough

DBs who can cover. And Brandon Joseph is a safety who can cover. And those, those are hard to find.

So that's a, it's a big, big pickup. I think he would have, I mean, if you had like

Brandon Joseph in your program at the beginning of last season and he played in the festival,

not saying they would have made a difference, but probably would have made the difference.

A player or two anyway. Yeah, because that's all you needed. Yeah, that is. I mean, that's certainly

all they needed was a player too. I mean, there's a, there was a third and 10. It was a 29-yard jump ball. And everybody in the

world knew it was coming. It was completed. Yeah, I mean, nine picks in 21 games, Tim.

That's a hell of a number. It feels like it's very picking when I say this, because Kyle Hamilton

Hamilton is a freshman, had four picks. But Notre Dame's safety is in 2020 and 2021 at eight picks,

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