The Notre Dame defense swarms to the ball in a pursuit drill ahead of ND's home opener against Texas A&M on Saturday night.
Mike Miller/Blue & Gold
For the first time in the weekly Notre Dame football player availability report in 2025, the status of questionable is being used.
Which for those pessimistic observers regarding an Irish defense ranked 108th in yards yielded per game and 117th nationally in points allowed, questionable may be extrapolated that term to describe coordinator Chris Ash’s entire unit.
No. 24 Notre Dame (0-2) hosts Purdue (2-1) this Saturday. Kick time on NBC/Peacock is 3:30 p.m. EDT.
In terms of pure injury status for the Purdue game, though, there are three significant ones — starting cornerback Leonard Moore (left ankle), starting nickel Devonta Smith (right ankle) and starting place-kicker Noah Burnette (hip).
And in Moore’s case, if he were unavailable, this is where the depth chart doesn’t always follow straight lines. It’s more likely freshman Mark Zackery would be promoted and play field corner with starting field corner Christian Gray flipping over to Moore’s boundary spot than a promotion of freshman Dallas Golden would be.
Karson Hobbs figures to be the top replacement at nickel, while Erik Schmidt and Marcello Diomede will compete this week, per head coach Marcus Freeman, to take Burnett’s place if he’s unable to go.
We are deviating from the “official depth chart” in a few other spots this week, notably with the defensive line starters beyond listed starter Boubacar Traore. Gabe Rubio, Jared Dawson and Jordan Botelho all started and played significant snaps in the rotation last Saturday night against Texas A&M, so we’ve listed them as starters.
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We’re also listing Luke Talich as the starter at Adon Shuler’sboundary safety spot, with Shuler out for the first half of this Saturday’s game as a consequence of a targeting infraction in the fourth quarter against Texas A&M. Expect redshirt freshman Tae Johnson to see lots of action at both safety spots and perhaps even start ahead of Talich.
AtBlue & Gold, we’re committed to a depth chart projection as well, updated 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 Monday’s official availability report from Notre Dame. Players with a -z are out for a half due to a targeting infraction. OR denotes players tied for a spot on the depth chart.
There were no new additions to the out-for-the-season list and no significant additions when it comes to players with more short-term recovery timelines. For the first time this season, backup offensive lineman Devan Houstan is available.
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.
