Welcome back to Irish Illustrated Insider. It is a Friday, special Friday post-practice edition in lieu of instant analysis. We filed our practice reports for Notre Dame's first practice of Spring Ball 2026, and now we are gathering for a long one-segment podcast. We're the three of us, Tim Priester, Drew Mantuck and myself of Irish

Illustrated, were in attendance for today's practice. And guys, we have solid 30 minutes to talk about this. But let's pretend like we have 30 seconds. And my quick takeaways were Tay Johnson's range, Annius Williams, more active than I thought. And I always love a good fight in practice. and we got to see three of them today. How about you, Tim Priester? I'm going to start with Mylan Graham. I mean, I think that's a different level of athlete at wide receiver. And Mike Denbrock talked about him afterwards about, you know, how quick twitchy is and explosive and competitive. 30 seconds, hurry. I think... You still have 30 minutes later, so just these 30 seconds, yes. Dallas Golden, Nickle with McKinney not here, not playing corner. Gray was still playing corner. I think Dallas Golden's really going to challenge for that spot and the velocity of Noah Grubbs throwing a football. Really, really surprise O'Malley and me. Yeah, I'm going to go, I mean, just their defensive ends. I mean, I think if you just look at, like, talent and twitch, like, most talents that I can think of just based on like a first day, like all levels from from the veterans to the freshman. They weren't kidding. They only ran nickel defense today. It helps when you have such a limited lineback rotation, but that's all they went. And then, I mean, Tay Johnson. Nordheim's had a lot of good safeties, and they've had a lot of safeties who can read things well, but he has that with, like, more explosiveness than I can think of from a Nortem safety in a long time. His interception today, it was on our sideline to put this in perspective at the IAC, so you have to lean over the edge to see the actual pick. But fortunately, they now have a replay screen, by the way, Jack Freeman, that we get to watch the good plays. I don't think they replay the fights. But they have a replay screen there, so we get to watch the plays in practice. It's incredible. That range inside the

hash to the sideline on a deep ball thrown by C.J. Carr, picked off by Teapy, leaping Tay Johnson. I don't know if I could do it justice if you're not watching this, but the way his hands all the way above his head, he caught that ball on the way down. That was a wide receiver, which he used to be going up and making a play.

It was incredible, Tim.

That was a beautiful play.

Well, it's, I mean, it's reminiscent of what we've that was a wide receiver which he used to be going up and making a play it was incredible tim that

was a beautiful play well it's i mean it's reminiscent of what we saw kyle hamlet to do you know when

practice opened in culver his freshman year i don't know of quite the volume of that but you know it

it was funny because we talked to denbrock and he said he knew that pick was coming because they've been running. Were you there, Tim? No, I didn't. They've been running football school. We've referenced football school. People asked about it. You can't have a football during football school. So they're going through things. And CJ Carr is going through the, okay, mechanics, read, throw. He's going through the motions.

And Denbrock said he knew as soon as they did anything live today, he was going to go deep.

And so he challenged, he challenged Tay Johnson, and he was up for the task.

Dave Johnson is Kyle Hamilton like in terms of, you know, sideline to sideline ability for safety is just off the task. Taye Johnson is Kyle Hamilton like in terms of you know sideline to sideline

ability for safety is just off the chart. Well it was interesting too because he was like backpedaling

and then broke on the ball and somehow got beyond Jordan Phazon almost to make that play. And still I

think came down in balance based on the few chances we had to kind of see it so it was one of

the more impressive probably the most impressive play i saw today and and just stood out on

his development and how important he is to have out there i want to add one thing about tay

johnson that i think is as important as this NFL freakish ability he also gets the picks

where you're like oh that's overthrown and there's Tay Johnson. So he's going to be a volume interceptor like Xavier Watts was. Like the ball also finds Tay Johnson. He doesn't just find the ball. That's like the most important trait in a veteran safety is when you just say, I can't believe how the ball always finds that guy. I mean, it's not a coincidence that all the best players have ever seen, the ball finds them. It's not like, oh, it finds those terrible

safeties all the time. No, it's always somebody that's really good at his job, and that's what Tay Johnson's becoming. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Xavier Watts, because, I mean, the guy had 13 picks in two seasons. So, you know, he, now you don't, you don't look, you look at a Hamilton

that length. Right. You look at Tay Johnson being kind of long, you know, he, now you don't look, you look at a Hamilton that length. Right. You look at Tay Johnson being kind of long and lean, you think. And Watts isn't necessarily built like that, but they all have the same trait. And it's pretty incredible. Let's go back to quarterback since you brought up. We've talked about CJ Carr, and you brought up Noah Grubbs. We were sitting by Mike Frank of our Sports Daily as Tim and I. And we said the same thing.

We're like, maybe his first throw, Tim? Was it his first throw? It was. We're just like, wow, the ball goes from his hand to the target. So fast.

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