Practice Observations, 8/28/07

Welcome back, Mr. Heat. We all missed you so much. After a week of rain and crazy storms sent Notre Dame inside, the Irish were back out at Cartier Field for the first public viewing of the 2007 regular season. And it was brutally hot, despite many of the coaches -- including Charlie Weis -- wearing long sleeves.

• When the players were heading into their stretching lines, nose tackle Pat Kuntz pretended to have a gun and fired the fake gun across the way. Sam Young, standing directly opposite him, took a step back and acted like he had been shot.
• Sophomore wide receiver Richard Jackson was at practice -- with a soft cast on his left hand. Said one reporter: "It doesn't look like he's out for the year."
• The quarterbacks were working on dropping back and making 10-yard throws.
• Notre Dame superfan Keith Penrod was in attendance.
• Junior nose tackle Derrell Hand was also back out there in jersey and shorts. The rest of the team had shoulder pads (shells) and shorts.
• Confirming the earlier e-mail we received from Mark Burton, punter Xavier Burton was not at practice, meaning the Aussie is out.
• The defensive backs worked on shedding a blocker and making a tackle. Defensive backs coach Bill Lewis stressed "Don't guess. Don't guess," when working with them as far as the way the ball carrier was going to run.
• Quarterbacks coach Ron Powlus, as per usual, tossed with Jimmy Clausen. From watching the four (Clausen, Powlus, Evan Sharpley and Demetrius Jones), we still say Powlus throws the best ball of all of them.

Don't forget about our predictions contest -- send your guess for the Notre Dame-Georgia Tech game to mrothstein@jg.net. First to send the correct final score wins some sort of prize pack from whatever we can dig up around the office. Also, don't forget to send your questions for the weekly mailbag -- running Sundays. For that, either e-mail us or drop comments below.

-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette