SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The ninth-ranked Notre Dame football team again has kicking intrigue this week, but potentially the good kind, for a change.
The bigger news that affects the depth chart was announced Sunday, with standout sophomore linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa lost for Saturday night’s road game at Stanford and the entirety of the postseason with a knee injury.
As far as the kicking situation, there might actually be a competition this week. North Carolina grad transfer Noah Burnette has been upgraded to questionable after missing the last three games and five total this season with a recurring hip/groin injury.
The Irish (9-2) conclude the regular season Saturday night at Stanford (4-7) with a 10:30 p.m. ET kickoff on ESPN.
When healthy, he is 5-of-6 on field goals this season and 20-of-22 on extra points. Freshman Erik Schmidt, Burnette’s replacement, is 0-for-3 on field goals and 34-for-35 on PATs. Schmidt is also ND’s kickoff man and one of the better ones in the country at that in terms of producing touchbacks.
“Noah, as soon as he gets healthy — which could be this week — let’s let him kick, let Erik kick,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said during his weekly Monday press conference. “And we’ll make a decision by the end of the week on who’s doing what or who’s doing all on Saturday.
“But Noah’s got to get healthy first before we can even come to that decision.”
Freeman said the coaching staff should know by Tuesday at the latest whether Burnette could be upgraded from questionable. The full injury report can be found HERE.
Last year’s No. 1 kicker, Mitch Jeter, went through a similar ordeal with a hip/groin injury that caused him to miss games and miss kicks when he didn’t miss games. He got healthy just in time for the four College Football Playoff games, going 7-of-9 on field goals, including a game-winning 41-yarder to beat Penn State in the CFP semifinals.
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Jeter was 6-for-12 during the season while working through the injury.
“It’s a different injury,” Freeman said. “They’re both groin, hip, lower leg, muscle tear, strains. But it wasn’t the same as Mitch’s. That’s something we just kind of talked about. Postseason, we’ve got to figure out what’s going on. Because the volume, even talking to him, the volume of what we have to do here isn’t as much as maybe what they’ve done previously.
“But we look at all soft-tissue injuries, and say there’s got to be a cause and effect. What’s the issue? How do we fix it?”
At Blue & Gold, we’re committed to a depth chart projection on Mondays, and anytime there’s a change. The difference is we’ll go beyond the two-deeps for the Irish.
A few things to note. Players with an -x after their names have been ruled out for the season. Players with -y have been ruled out for at least the upcoming game. Players with -q were listed as questionable in Thursday’s official availability report from Notre Dame. OR denotes players tied for a spot on the depth chart.
With Notre Dame shifting to eligibility year as its primary identifier this season for the first time ever, we will follow that lead, but clarify between a redshirt freshman, for instance, and a true freshman.
Heights and weights were refreshed at the start of preseason camp on July 31.
