Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider.

It is Thursday, November 20th.

I'm Tim O'Malley, joined by John Bryce of Football Scoop, Tim Priestier of Irish Illustrated, and Pete Sams of the Athletic.

Middle Dame host Syracuse on Senior Day Saturday, the Orange of Lost 7 straight, so we'll get to them a little bit later.

I guess the news that will not become news was that for the first time since game number five, Jaden Grethouse, is no longer on the injury report. No one's questionable. Just the same guys that were listed out earlier in the week. But Tim Prester, he is also not expected to play as officially announced by Marcus Freeman Monday and reiterated today.

No, I mean, and now as we talked about earlier in the week, Dordemus openly talking about preserving year of eligibility. I can remember back in the days you couldn't say the word redshirt. But yeah, it's taken a while to get to that. But I guess kind of understandable along the way because there were some other factors involved as to why he was or wasn't playing or what he would do. So we understand that. We don't expect to see him. And that's a good thing. When you consider who's walking out the door at the end of the year and the receivers that Nordheim is going to need, if he can, you know, if they, if he stays at Notre Dame, they need Jaden Gratehouse. Jane Gratehouse has a lot of upside. He's only tapped into it like a couple of times right at the beginning of his freshman year really strongly and then of course in the playoffs last year. Noah Burnett is the player of guess a note out. I think you've been following Irish Illustrated the athletic football scoop or college football at Notre Dame in general. You know who the other guys that are out there, not going to be back until the playoff. We don't know if Charles Joggins Hill will be back for the playoff. But not a whole lot of intrigue on today's 15, 14 minutes with Marcus Freeman. I did ask him about the red zone, not excuse me, not red zone. They don't have red zone touchdown issues. They have goal to go touchdown issues. I don't think there's much clarity there. But as Pete Sampson noted, he did admit there was a bad call in the last. That's what really mean the last game. I mean the whole season that there's been issues. Yeah. He's want to say, execution, execution, execution. and then today we got a, why didn't we just hand the ball to Jeremiah, I love on fourth and roll? Like, why did, why did we do that? That's my bad. Shouldn't have done that. You can live and die with Jeremiah. I love getting the ball. So that was nice to hear. I asked about Kenny Minchie. Kind of because I was interested in, you know, spending time with a backup quarterback on top of the starter. Obviously, you're like, hey, you're one play away. But also just like, you know, he said we don't know what's going to happen after this year. So that, you know, we can be adults about that. But it was good to at least get that on the record of like, hey, Who knows what's happening here after the season? Because certainly C.J. Carr is playing at a level that, you know, the opportunity for Kenny Minchie at Notre Dame is going to be incredibly limited. Maybe Eric Hansen actually asked about a question that a lot of us, I think a lot of fans and media members wonder when it's fourth and one. I know you've brought

up a couple times because there's many analytics that back up your assertion from Football

Scoop as well. Why can't you go under center as a quarterback? Doesn't matter which quarterback

goes under center, especially in fourth and one and third and one situations. Yeah, and

Marcus explained that, you know, 90 percent, his words, 90% or more of what Notre Dame practices is out of the gun.

And so there isn't the comfort level there.

He did indicate, look, we do practice it some.

We have to decide what the tug of war is worth.

How much do we practice it?

And then ignore the great majority of our playbook

that is shotgun-based. And he said, look, we did it backed up against Pitt. We didn't have

too much success with that quarterback sneak. But he did say we might add more to it or we might go to

it more. So, you know, it's when to Marcus's credit, and he's drilled it into our heads this year,

he knows what the definition of insanity is because he's told us that a great number of times.

So Notre Dame is not being insane in trying to solve its short yardage and gold to go to go situations,

but right now it doesn't sound like part of the formula it believes his best is going to be very much C.J. Carr under center. Pete Sampson, you asked about one formula we thought might, we might see. We saw it against Miami, the Irish Illustrated fan base, and I'm sure others have jumped on it. Price and love in the backfield at the same time at the goal line or elsewhere in short yard in situations. It hasn't happened much since. You thought Mike Denbrock was being coy when he wouldn't talk to you?

Maybe he wasn't being coy, but they did show it early in the season. I think Mike Denbrock was being coy and then after the game was like, actually, that didn't work at all. yeah the two-back set with love and price as much as I would love to see maybe at the goal I in particular

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