College Football is trending in the right direction, as many conferences have announced plans to have student-athletes back on campus sometime in early June. The news has all of us salivating over the return of sports and dreaming about the upcoming season. Two different outlets, Althon Sports and Pro Football Focus have released their preseason Top 25 projections.
Let’s look at Althon Sports first, who rank the Irish 9th overall in the country heading into the season. Their look at the Irish goes in-depth as they voice some concerns prior to the contests being played, but nothing that we don’t know already. The core of Notre Dame’s returning offensive stars are led by quarterback Ian Book and all five starting offensive linemen. It’s the skill position where the Irish need to have players step up after losing a massive amount of production. “Incoming freshman Chris Tyree (RB), Jordan Johnson (WR) and Michael Mayer (TE) will have an opportunity to make an impact right away,” is how Steve Lassan of Althon Sports see’s it. Defensively, Lassan doesn’t think the group should miss a beat “but coordinator Clark Lea is going to have a busy fall trying to restock at defensive end and in the secondary.” The secondary concern’s shouldn’t be as large with the transfer of NC State’s Nick McCloud along with Ohio State transfer Isaiah Pryor and rising star sophomore Kyle Hamilton.
Pro Football Focus sees the Irish as one spot ahead at 8th in the country. Their preview doesn’t go as deep as Althon, but it’s still encouraging to see Notre Dame ranked that high. Book was singled out by PFF, as he had the “40th-highest PFF passing grade in the country in 2019,” a number that will need to be better if the Irish expect to contend for a spot in the College Football Playoffs.
Plenty of way-too-early Top 25 lists have been released, the majority have the Irish ranked anywhere from 8th to 12th at this juncture. When the season really gets started and the AP and Coaches polls are released, expect to find the Irish somewhere in that same range the preseason projections have them at.