Ryan Roberts talks about some updates and insights from Notre Dame spring practice, as the Irish hit the field earlier this week for the first time in the 2025 campaign.
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00:00For years, Notre Dame fans have been arguing and wanting to see more impact size inside
00:07defensively for Notre Dame and in the defensive tackle position.
00:10Well, folks, don't look now.
00:12The time is here.
00:14Notre Dame finally has some size inside.
00:20Ryan Roberts from A to Z Sports, breaking down everything Notre Dame football.
00:23Folks, spring practice is upon us and had a fun little opportunity to look through the
00:27Notre Dame spring roster, see the new heights and weights, and something dawned on me.
00:32Over the last few years, we have had the constant conversation around size at defensive tackle
00:37for the Fighting Irish.
00:38And we know that they've been undersized a lot throughout the years, obviously most recently
00:43with guys like Howard Cross III and Riley Mills, although he's 295-ish, is still a relatively
00:50undersized defensive tackle from a pure weight perspective.
00:53But I looked at this roster and for the first time in a while, it feels like this is going
00:59to be a massive interior defensive line, especially for what Notre Dame has typically been trotting
01:04out there in recent memory.
01:06I went and looked at the seven players that I would say are the most likely contributors
01:11inside for Notre Dame in 2025, and six out of the seven are 300 pounds or more.
01:18And not into the too distant past, we would be talking about hopefully having one or two
01:24guys that are 300-plus pounds.
01:26You are going to have in 2025, potentially, Gabriel Rubio at 319 pounds.
01:32You're going to have Jason Ongye at 308 pounds.
01:35You're going to have Jared Dawson at 300 pounds, Armo Mookum at 305, Sean Cevillano at a massive
01:41341 pounds.
01:44The only outlier of that potential top group is Donovan Hynash, who is at 280 pounds.
01:50But even with Donovan Hynash in that top seven, potentially for Notre Dame, they still average
01:54306 pounds per interior defensive lineman.
01:59How quickly things have changed on the interior, and you can even go a little bit deeper if
02:03you wanted to.
02:05Brendan Vernon, now up to 293 pounds, Elijah Hughes, 290 pounds, and then also true freshman
02:11Davion Dixon at 323 pounds.
02:14You have seven interior defensive linemen on this roster that are over 300 pounds.
02:19Think about that for a second, and how very recently we were having a discussion over
02:23why is there no 300-pounders on this roster?
02:26Well now, the bulk, the majority of this roster is 300-plus pounders, and I'm very interested
02:32to see, applicable with new defensive coordinator Chris Ash, is this team now going to be more
02:37focused on, instead of being one-gap penetration style that we've seen in the past with Howard
02:43Cross and Riley Mills, are they going to be more to want to two-gap a little bit more,
02:49hold the point of attack, and let guys off the edge like Boubacar Traore, Bryce Young,
02:53and then the linebackers behind them run free?
02:56We want to have now the interior defensive line take up more blockers and let the athletes
03:01on the first and second level be more of space-oriented players, guys that can make plays.
03:06I'm interested to see how much this shifts Notre Dame's just defensive scheme and philosophy,
03:12if at all, but regardless, I do think that this raises the floor of the team.
03:16I have no idea how impactful they will be on the high end, but what I know is having
03:20that much size and impact potential size in a room at one time, leaves a lot of raising
03:26the floor and a lot of upside for this group.
03:29So folks, spring practice, rest of the way, we'll take you the rest of the way through
03:33the 2025 season, make sure to like and subscribe to the channel, and as always, Go Irish!