Welcome to Irish Illustrated Insider, brought to you by Irish Illustrated.com.

I'm Tim Priester with Tim O'Malley and Pete Sampson.

It's Monday, August 13th.

We've seen a couple practices, had a ton of interviews, an opportunity to talk to Brian Kelly a couple times.

And obviously, we're going to talk about the Norden quarterback situation.

But before we get into that, let's talk about some of the other positions that seem to be

rounding in a shape and maybe some that aren't necessarily.

But I think Nick Coleman coming out of Thursday and Saturday as well, you know, we consider, at least I know, Tim, you do too,

consider this a good thing that a guy that started 13 games last year has emerged. Not

everybody feels that way because he wasn't a playmaker last year, but I think we saw signs

at least last Thursday that he was a guy that's starting to react to things better, jump

some routes, and do some good things back on the last line of defense. I also think it's telling that when someone asked about Alohi Gilman after Saturday's practice, because Gilman was coming out for interviews, Brian Kelly said, yes, he has been very good, but I want to talk more about Nick Coleman. He said Nick Coleman's been the best guy back there. We believe the question was logical. We've never seen Gilman not run with the first string since the screen. So that's why it was asked. But Coleman has forced his way in. I mean, now there is no one that could project anything but those two starting at safety on day one. Yeah. And I wonder how much, let's say, Houston Griffith is 100% healthy. Does Nick Coleman have as good of a camp as he has had just because he doesn't maybe have the opportunity? I don't know, but I mean, it goes back to something priest or asked Kelly after the first practice down on the Culver. It's like, do you think you have a three-for-two competition for safety? And those three were Gilman, Jalen Elliott, and Houston Griffith. well now they have a three for two competition for safety? And those three were Gilman,

Jalen Elliott, and Houston Griffith. Well, now they have a four for two. So whether you're sort of

in the camp of totally believing everything that Brian Kelly said about Nick Coleman or what we've

seen, which has been good stuff, I think probably the biggest benefit for Notre Dame is they feel like they have four safeties that can play,

whereas I think when last year started, they felt like they had zero.

It'll be interesting to see what they do with Coleman in terms of nickel and dime, how that impacts Elliot,

because maybe when Coleman is playing nickel.

I just don't think he will often, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's still a lot of unanswered questions, but I think it's certainly, I think we all agree it's a good sign of Nick Coleman stuff forward. That's what you want. I mean, you want a guy that has experience where the light goes on and whether that light went on because they were kind of counting them out and just like moving on to the next

the next phase or or not it doesn't really matter what matters is that he's shown you know opposite

to gilman and we've seen what griffith can do and you know elliott's going to have to fight for

his playing time now i thought one of the comments that Brian Kelly made, and first of all, let me

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