Notre Dame Football: Winners and Losers from Fighting Irish's 2016 Spring
For the Fighting Irish, this spring has seemingly been all about the quarterback battle—and for good reason. Notre Dame has two experienced starters returning this year, and like Ohio State's quandary a season ago, we're departing spring practice without a very clear picture.
Brian Kelly structured the 2016 Blue and Gold Game to provide a game-like atmosphere, designed to give one quarterback an opportunity to separate himself from his "opponent" for the starting role. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), that didn't happen. In fact, both quarterbacks played fairly well.
So, realistically, we're no closer to an answer today than we were when spring practices began a few weeks ago.
But the quarterbacks weren't the only storyline to emerge from South Bend this spring. Let's go over all the winners and losers from Notre Dame's 2016 spring.
Winner: Defense
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Coming into the spring, the defense was a major question mark for Notre Dame. The Irish graduated (or experienced the the early departure of) more starters after 2015 than any other FBS team, except Ohio State. Credit for the defense lies squarely at Brian VanGorder's feet.
Sure, it helps that guys like Drue Tranquill have come back from injury and appear to be 100 percent (Tranquill was full speed and full contact in the spring game). But there's still a lot of youth on the defensive side of the football.
But that youthful energy coalesced into a single unit and limited offensive output in the spring game to a rather shocking low of 27 combined points.
It's going to be a few months before we get to see this team take on some real competition in the form of the Texas Longhorns, but today's results have to please VanGorder.
Loser: Grant Blankenship
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Grant Blankenship has had himself a terrible spring. So bad, in fact, he has been suspended from the team.
SB Nation is reporting Blankenship, a defensive end, has been suspended for violation of team rules. The circumstances of the violation have not been disclosed, and it's unclear whether Blankenship will have the opportunity to return to the team or not.
Blankenship played in 11 games as a freshman in 2014, totaling 12 tackles. Last season, he played in just three games and had only a single tackle.
Winner: Dexter Williams and Offensive Line
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We've only seen glimpses of Dexter Williams until this point, but he's emerging as yet another in a long list of talented running backs in South Bend.
Williams impressed early and often in the spring game, with his first-half touchdown blending speed and power with a quick burst to the outside and two broken tackles en route to the end zone.
He (and the starting quarters, who combined for 40 rushing yards) was aided by a quickly developing offensive line. Despite having some pretty good-sized holes to fill this season, the Irish look like a well-balanced team up front, and you wouldn't guess there was a distinct lack of talent on the line simply by looking at the way it played Saturday.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
Loser: Field-Goal Unit
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No, we're not quite back to the unusual days of a few seasons ago when a Notre Dame field-goal attempt—of any distance—was cause for trepidation. Still, the kicking team missed two field goals in the spring game (both Justin Yoon and John Chereson had a miss) on a beautiful, quiet and relatively "perfect-for-kicking" day at Notre Dame Stadium.
Yes, it's only a spring game, but the pressure only increases from here on out.
Don't think field goals are a live-or-die prospect? Add three points to last season's game against Stanford. Or Clemson. Or 2015 games against Florida State, Northwestern or Louisville.
Or similarly take three points away from Notre Dame against Boston College or Temple and suddenly the dynamic of those games changes late in the fourth quarter.
Winner: Torii Hunter Jr.
5 of 8Just watch the video. It's easy to see why he's one of our winners.
That, combined with the fact he's now the most experienced receiver Notre Dame has and should lead the entire receiving corps, makes Torii Hunter Jr. a no-brainer to our list of spring winners.
Winner: DeShone Kizer
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We won't sit here and pretend 10-of-17 for 113 yards is some spectacular mark in a spring game. But DeShone Kizer did something much more important than completing nearly 59 percent of his passes. He didn't give the coaching staff a reason to doubt his ability to continue to lead this football team.
That makes Kizer a winner Saturday, in our book.
Kizer showed everyone what he could do last season, and there's no reason to believe he couldn't hold serve in 2016. The Notre Dame coaching staff knows what they're going to get from him. In fact, we expect to see some growth with the added year of maturity and experience under his belt.
With Zaire back in the mix, it was unlikely either quarterback would win the battle outright over the course of spring football. But it was possible to lose it, and if anyone was going to lose it, we expected it to be the younger Kizer.
He didn't. And if you don't lose, you win, even if your numbers against the competition make it look like you tied.
Loser: Malik Zaire
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If Zaire and Kizer had similar numbers, why would Zaire wind up the loser?
Simple: We was supposed to be the winner by this point. Zaire came into 2015 as the unquestioned starter, and he led the Irish to an easy Week 1 win over Texas.
After going down to injury against Virginia, it was Kizer who replaced Zaire and engineered the final minute comeback victory for Notre Dame, thus beginning the Legend of DeShone's 2015.
But who's to say Zaire couldn't have led the comeback?
A year ago, this was Zaire's team. He lost it through no fault of his own. Now, instead of being the unrivaled leader, he's neck-and-neck with his replacement to return as the starter once more. He had a moment to come out onto the field and take control of the battle, forcing Kizer to play catch-up this fall.
Zaire didn't do that, and now it's anyone's race.
Winner: Brian Kelly
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When you consider everything Brian Kelly had on his "to do" list when the 2015 season came to a close, things certainly didn't look great. There were plenty of holes to fill, and plenty of ways each hole could be filled.
First and foremost, a starting quarterback needed to be found. Notre Dame has two experienced starters returning, and as we've seen, that decision is still up the air. But it's better to have two quarterbacks with talent than no quarterbacks with talent.
Kelly also needed to replace a go-to running back with the departure of C.J. Prosise, who left early for the NFL draft. The receiving corps was similarly depleted by both graduation and early departures, and ensuring some consistency in the passing game—even with the guarantee of a veteran under center—wasn't a foregone conclusion.
Both the offensive and defensive lines are undergoing personnel changes, and no team can be successful for very long without stout lines on both sides of the football.
All in all, there's a long list of items to be checked off.
And Kelly did a remarkable job of checking off almost all of those items this spring. Granted, we still don't have any clue as to who the starting quarterback will be and likely neither does Kelly. But at least we know things are looking up for the Irish when it comes to chasing down another season with double digits in the win column.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
