Tag: Rodney Hammond Jr.

Pittsburgh statistical leaders through seven games

You might recognize a couple of these names.

Notre Dame fans will see a couple of familiar faces when their team battles Pittsburgh. That’s because the Panthers’ top quarterback and running back both once donned the blue and gold. In fact, a lot of the Panthers’ best players are transfers, either because they didn’t get the opportunities they sought at other programs or they wanted to use up college eligibility elsewhere. Either way, many of these Panthers didn’t start as Panthers.

Is that part of the reason the Panthers’ offense isn’t as strong as their defense? Perhaps, but either way, most of this season has not gone well for the Steel City program. The fact that they handled Louisville and the Irish didn’t is not a good look for [autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] and his staff. Alas, nothing can be done to change that now.

Assuming the Panthers can make this a game, here are the players most likely to do that:

Top ACC players Notre Dame will be playing in 2023

Keep your eye on these players when the Irish face them.

In exchange for retaining its football independence, Notre Dame plays a certain number of ACC opponents every season. The only other sport in which Notre Dame is not an ACC member is hockey, which plays in the Big Ten. While old-school Irish fans might long for the days of the program being able to schedule almost anyone at anytime, some often forget that this arrangement means some thrilling football. The home wins over recent powerhouse Clemson in 2020 and 2022 are two examples.

College football isn’t back yet, but you still can look at the rosters and see which quality players play for whom. Twitter’s Big Game Boomer has done just that and come up with a list of the top 50 ACC players for the upcoming season. When you look at the list, you’ll see the Irish have many of them set to face them. Let’s see who the Irish are playing when you take away the players whose teams aren’t on their schedule: