I.B. Nation, welcome back to another edition of the Irish Breakdown podcast. It's Thursday of Notre Dame's second bye week, which means we are going to kind of have a bit of a relaxing weekend, Trevor. That's Trevor Trober. John Brian Driscoll. No stress about what's Notre Dame going to do. There are some things going on this weekend that could impact Notre Dame. And we'll talk about that in part three of today's show. But, you know, Trevor, we've talked to, you and I've talked a lot,

not just on the show, but, but just, you know, just privately in some of our conversations is that we,

this Notre Dame football team is obviously playing really good football.

And it's got to continue, right?

They've got to keep playing good football and can they play good football?

But the interesting thing about this team that I don't know has been true a lot of years is usually by the time you get to game nine, you kind of are who you are, especially

when week game nine comes and it'll be the,

what, the 11th week of the college football season, right? Because Nourne M will have two buys.

You kind of are who you are. But this Notre Dame team is a bit of a unique situation, Trevor,

because of just their overall youth as a team, because of how much

lineup chain turnover there has been with guys getting injured and going out on both

sides of the ball. And you look at this Nardame football team. And unlike most years where, like

I said, by the time you get to game nine, week 11, you are who you are for for the most part, this team actually has a chance, in my opinion, is still kind of keep getting

better. And I don't know how much better. I don't know if it's incremental growth. I don't know if

there's another big jump coming. I don't know the answer to that, Trevor, but I do believe this

team has an opportunity to get better in ways that normally you don't see this time of year.

Like growth this time of year can happen like, hey, we're still not a great third down

offense. We can shore that up during the buy a week. Or hey, you know, we still got to make

some adjustments in the running game. And we'll talk about some of that stuff. But before we

dive into that, Trevor, we'll get into the fact that just overall as a team, why this team has a chance

to get better. We'll dive into the offense and areas that we want to see improvement from that

side of the ball. We'll do the same thing for defense. And then we're also going to have a fun

...