Notre Dame will once again have to manage a significant part of its schedule with multiple offensive line starters sitting on the sidelines. A week after losing starting center Ashton Craig, Notre Dame has announced that left guard Billy Schrauth will also miss the Boston College game.

Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports has also reported that Schrauth will miss at least 3-4 weeks with a torn MCL, which confirms the intel that Irish Breakdown has also received. Should Schrauth miss all four weeks it would mean the earliest he'll return is for the Senior Day game against Syracuse. But it's more likely that Schrauth will miss the remainder of the regular season.

Losing Schrauth - a team captain - is a punishing blow for the Irish offensive line. He has been the most consistent blocker all season and he was playing dominant football against USC. Schrauth was getting outstanding movement all game long and he'd been a stout pass blocker all season. He had always shown flashes of big time play in the past, but this season we saw a far more consistent version of Schrauth and he was getting better and better as the season wore on in 2025. Notre Dame's interior has been strong in the run game in recent weeks, so losing two starters from that group in back-to-back weeks is painful for the Irish line.

Notre Dame is averaging just 191.7 rushing yards per game and 5.1 yards per carry, but it has been strong the last month. The Irish are averaging 222.6 yards per game and 5.6 yards per carry over the last five games, and its 306-yard performance (7.0 YPC) against USC was without question its best performance of the season and Schrauth was a key reason for that.

The good news for Notre Dame is two-fold. You never want to lose a starting offensive lineman, especially a captain and a player who has been performing as well as Schrauth has this season. But the timing of the injury and the potential replacement should give the Irish a chance to continue playing well up front.

With Schrauth out the Irish are likely to turn to Sullivan Absher, a 6-7, 325-pound blocker who would be starting on a lot of former Notre Dame offensive lines. Absher is talented in his own right and has played 161 snaps the last two seasons. He has some experience and he's a physical blocker that should allow the run game to thrive. The second aspect is timing, as Absher will have the bye week and the week of prep for Boston College to get comfortable playing between new center Joe Otting and left tackle Anthonie Knapp.

It will be crucial for line coach Joe Rudolph to figure out how to get his new-look line rolling as quickly as possible. If Notre Dame can run the table over the next five games it will have a great shot to not only make the College Football Playoff, but also host a game. How well Rudolph can get his line going with two new starters will play a big role in that.

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