Irish Breakdown tackles draft stock, offensive line outlooks, and running back potential. Notre Dame's 2026 season is under the microscope.
We're kicking off another week of the 2026 offseason; Notre Dame is now 188 days away from kicking off their regular season at Lambeau Field against the Wisconsin Badgers, and spring practice is right around the corner. The NFL Combine wrapped up this past weekend down in Indianapolis and there were six Notre Dame players who participated in some capacity in various testing and drills inside of Lucas Oil Stadium.
To kick off today's show, we recapped how each player performed at the combine and discussed whether it improved their draft stock or not. The rest of the show was our weekly Buy/Sell/Hold and the premium message board members brought it again with another week of great submissions. We discussed multiple topics ranging from future NFL careers and the outlook of the offensive line to various movie topics and the running back room. You can watch all of that and more in today's edition of the Irish Breakdown Podcast.
You can watch the entire episode here:
Here are some of the submissions we discussed on today's show:
On If We Consider Spring Ball Being The Start Of A New Season...
"For me, it's when the winter rosters are released. That's our first opportunity to see what the new and upcoming roster will look like. Some of the new players are on campus as early enrollees and some of the transfer portal players are on campus. Obviously, there will still be players arriving after the spring, but when the winter rosters are released is when the page has turned for me on the new season. I get where you're coming from with this submission, but I'm already in the 'new season' mode prior to the start of spring ball. But I definitely buy the spirit of your submission."
On Notre Dame Not Receiving A First-Round Bye Despite Being 12-0...
"If Notre Dame makes it through the regular season undefeated, there's no chance that they aren't receiving a bye in the first round of the playoffs unless every P4 conference winner goes undefeated. The bigger question is if Notre Dame will be the No. 1 ranked team heading into the playoffs if they're undefeated compared to a 13-0 conference winner or a 12-1 conference champion winner. I don't see a scenario where they don't receive a first round bye if they go undefeated during the regular season."
On If Armel Mukam Is Going To Flash The Most At Defensive Tackle In The Offseason...
"I definitely buy it as a possibility. With Armel, I just need to see it first. The biggest hurdle was getting him back from entering the portal. Now it's about turning that potential into production which he is more than capable of doing. But there's some other guys in the room like Jason Onye or Francis Brewu who will also flash quite a bit this offseason. I wouldn't doubt it if Christopher Burgess starts to really flash during the offseason as well."
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