Fewer than 24 hours before Notre Dame opened preseason practices, strength and conditioning coordinator Matt Balis left the program on Tuesday. Some may think that is ideal timing for such a staff change, but the Irish roster has a month still before it faces Navy in Dublin, and at least the first half of that will be spent further improving overall fitness before focusing more and more on scheme and defending the triple-option.
Rather, Balis’s departure would qualify as abrupt, to say the least. It was to Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, too.
“Matt called me on Sunday and informed me that he was wanting to resign, and I was caught off guard,” Freeman said Wednesday after the first practice of the preseason. “We met on Monday and talked about it, and ultimately his reason was that he couldn’t serve the players in the capacity that he felt he should in his position.”
Balis led the Irish through the program resurgence since the 2016 debacle, setting the program culture as much as Brian Kelly or Marcus Freeman did in the following six years. Both Freeman on Wednesday and in the Tuesday press release announcing Balis’s resignation described it as a “personal matter” without going into further detail. But given Freeman’s words on Wednesday and his effusive and straightforward praise in the press release, no conspiracies need to abound.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for who he is as a coach and a man,” Freeman said in that press release. “While there is never a perfect time to lose a valuable teammate, we are thankful that coach Balis was able to see us through our summer program and have our players physically prepared to head into the upcoming season.”
Freeman put associate director of football strength and conditioning Fred Hale in charge of the program on an interim basis. Hale is entering his third season at Notre Dame, joining Balis’s staff after seven years at Eastern Michigan, including the last four years as the co-director of sports performance.
In that respect, Hale was the only member of the Irish strength staff that had overseen an entire program before. Designing the program has already been taken care of, given the timing of Balis’s resignation.
“As I told those guys, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” Freeman said Wednesday. “We’ll need to continue to carry on a plan that’s been really created from myself, coach Balis and our whole strength-and-performance staff. …
“I told everybody, ‘Your job is to make sure our strength-and-conditioning program has no dip, that we’ll continue to excel and make sure our guys are ready to play those 12 guaranteed opportunities that we have.’”
Hale will have a chance at the full-time job, per Freeman, and his time at Eastern Michigan may stand out on a résumé. His seven years coincided with head coach Chris Creighton’s first seven years, taking over a woeful program that proceeded to go 3-21 in those first two seasons. Then the Eagles went 25-26 across the next four years (excluding Hale’s final season, 2020, for obvious pandemic reasons). That sub-.500 record may strike some as disappointing, but that stretch included winning at least six games in three of four years. In the 39-year history of Eastern Michigan before Creighton’s arrival, it had won at least six games just seven times.
Hale presumably played a part in Creighton finding success at a program that had never before known it.
FRESHMAN RECEIVER KK SMITH OUT
The only surprise absence from Notre Dame’s first preseason practice was freshman receiver KK Smith. Freeman said he had shoulder surgery this summer and used the phrase “a couple months” in discussing Smith’s recovery. Until further notice, assume Smith will be sidelined for the season.
A late-sought receiver recruit missing his freshman season is a bigger deal than one might think. The Irish now have only eight healthy scholarship receivers, including former walk-on Matt Salerno and former running back Chris Tyree as well as three freshmen.
Coaches would prefer to have 10 available receivers to simply run a practice efficiently.
This is far better than last preseason, when injuries to veterans Avery Davis and Joe Wilkins knocked Notre Dame down to six healthy scholarship receivers and then down to five when Deion Colzie injured his knee before the Irish headed to Ohio State.
ON YOUNG SPEED
One salve to that early skill-position worry could be getting freshman running back Jeremiyah Love into space. He has already made that much of an impression.
“Jeremiyah Love can fly,” Freeman said. “I mean, he can fly. It’s impressive to watch him run. … It’s been really impressive to watch Jeremiyah Love just this summer, being able to move.
“Now that type of velocity we talked about versus velocity on the field are two different things. We’ve been talking about this in our meetings. Clarity equals velocity. So we’ve got to get those freshmen to be crystal clear on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, why they’re doing it, so that they can play with the same velocity that you see in summer conditioning.”
To pull from this space’s summer profile of Love and his possibilities for this fall: With his speed, pass-catching ability and therefore big-play possibility, getting 12-15 touches to Love could expand Notre Dame’s offense. That may seem a low figure, but if just two or three of them yield first downs, then every Love thought will worry opposing defensive coordinators.
Furthermore, Love’s speed could be applicable on kickoff returns, something that could also be said of freshman cornerback Micah Bell and punts, whom Freeman also praised for his already-apparent speed.
ON QB DEPTH
Freeman admitted Notre Dame did consider looking for another veteran quarterback in the transfer portal after Tyler Buchner transferred to Alabama in April. Without Buchner, the Irish have exactly zero collegiate passing attempts of experience behind Sam Hartman, himself a graduate transfer from Wake Forest.
“We had long discussions about that — myself, [offensive coordinator Gerad] Parker, [quarterbacks coach Gino] Guidugli,” Freeman said. “We came to the decision that we would rather invest those reps in (sophomore) Steve Angeli and (early-enrolled freshman) Kenny Minchey.
“We believe that they’ll develop to be exactly what we want as backups as we go into the season. To go and try to find somebody out of the transfer portal — we felt like we’re going to invest in those guys who have been here.”
