Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider.

I'm Tim Prester with Tim O'Malley and Pete Sampson from the Athletic.

It is finally USC week for Notre Dame, Monday, October 18th.

Their name coming off of a by week, as is USC.

And Notre Dame is in mid-semester break, which can be good or bad, I guess, depending upon

whether you can capture the attention and imagination of your players without classes.

But hey, it's USC week. O'Malley, as you said, the people at USC must think the weather is

always good here because it's sunny today, and we're expecting a beautiful day on Saturday for USC's visit to Notre Dame Stadium.

The best weekend every year. It's always perfect for an USC arrives. And I think today relevance

from Brian Kelly going down the injuries to borrow Pete's favorite line to buy week came in a good

time for the injured

Irish. But Michael Mayer, Brian Kelly said looks to be 100%. Chris Tyree will be back. And I thought

it was interesting. Tyler Buckner was not 100% last week, but that he admitted it. And he should

be this week, obviously with an ankle injury for Tyler Buckner. He has to be at least 95% to justify his position in there, helping out Jack Cohn.

And no surprises on the depth chart.

They did not include Andrew Christophic, but Christophic will start at left guard for Brian Kelly.

And Joe Alt at left tackle, which I think everybody feels like that's something that you can build upon with a performance against Virginia Tech.

I think we have a question about Notre Dame's ability to run against USC as compared to Virginia Tech.

And I think there are some favorable matchups if Nordame can can build upon that.

Jack Cohn is the starter this week. Brian Kelly came out and said that,

and the plan is to go into the USC game with a similar approach, and that is that Jack Cone's a

starter and Tyler Buttener is ready to roll if the offense struggles, which it generally has

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