Notre Dame football head coach Marcus Freeman and his Fighting Irish are currently in the process of gearing up to take part in the upcoming 2024 college football season, which is slated to get started later this month. Freeman hasn't been able to lift up Notre Dame to its historically lofty heights thus far in his tenure, which began in 2021, but there is optimism that this year might be the year the Fighting Irish start to put some things together.
Unfortunately, those aspirations took a blow earlier this week when a key reserve on the defensive line went down with an injury, as redshirt junior Gabriel Rubio sustained a fractured foot at Wednesday's practice and has since undergone successful surgery from orthopedic surgeon Dr. Thomas Bemenderfer, per the Notre Dame Football PR Team on X, formerly Twitter.
The good news is that Rubio is expected to return to action at some point in the upcoming 2024 season.
Rubio stands at 6'5″ and weighs in at 316 pounds, making him the second heaviest player on the Notre Dame defense, per Mike Beradino of the South Bend Tribune. He appeared in nine games a season ago for the Fighting Irish.
Considering the seismic shifts in the college football landscape as it pertains to 2024 and beyond this past offseason, which resulted in several teams getting much more difficult regular season schedules than they were previously accustomed to, Notre Dame football could be considered to have gotten off relatively well.
Their first game of the year will be a road test against Texas A&M in one of the most difficult environments in the country, but outside of that, there aren't many true measuring stick games for the Fighting Irish outside of a matchup with Florida State, which was shafted out of a playoff appearance a year ago despite going undefeated in the regular season.
In any case, the game vs Texas A&M is officially 30 days away.
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