Clouds again dotted the sky as Notre Dame continued to practice outside for Purdue. It's amazing how in the span of five days it can go from almost-summer to feeling like fall, but that's what is going on here in South Bend:
- Defensive end Justin Brown seems to be progressing. He stretched with Emeka Nwankwo and participated in the defensive line drills with much less pain than Tuesday. Good signs from the senior.
- Freshman tight end Mike Ragone appears to have bulked up considerably from his frame a few weeks ago. Considering he wasn't in town over the summer, this is probably what he expected to look like at the beginning of the season as opposed to a month in.
- The offensive line worked on 3-on-2 blocking. The left side of the line -- tackle Sam Young, guard Mike Turkovich and center John Sullivan -- double teamed one defender while the other player took the other guy. Turkovich, meanwhile, worked on helping with the first block and then picking up the linebacker in the second tier. It's good to see the Irish working on blocking scheme. It is needed.
- Michael Haywood had James Aldridge start going through the gauntlet over again because Aldridge was focused on Haywood instead of either the ball or the hole. Haywood assured Aldridge that he'd "get the ball there."
- Haywood also got on Robert Hughes for not exploding through the gauntlet.
- We'll say this about Haywood -- he certainly is a vocal coach and a good teaching coach. There is a reason so many of his running backs end up in the NFL.
- In an odd twist, the snappers, kickers and punters were throwing to each other. Haven't seen them do that before.
- One more gauntlet note -- when walk-on running back Nikolas Rodriguez ran through the gauntlet, he escaped in pain. He eventually bent over and went down to one knee. His immediate verbiage as he finished up his run: "Oh, $&^*." ... So don't tell anyone that the thing doesn't hurt.
Don't forget about the predictions contest. Send your final score guesses -- E-mail will be the only accepted way to guess -- to [email protected]. To submit a question to Friday's mailbag, drop comments below or e-mail us at [email protected].
-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette
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