Notre Dame defensive lineman Gabriel Rubio suffers fractured foot injury, undergoes surgery

Blue and Gold‘s Jack Soble reports Thursday that Notre Dame defensive lineman Gabriel Rubio suffered a fractured foot injury during the Irish’s first practice of fall camp on Wednesday. Already undergoing a successful surgery and is expected to return at some point during the 2024 season.

Rubio’s injury comes ahead of his fourth season with Notre Dame, appearing in nine games last season with 136 defensive snaps for the Fighting Irish where he recorded 11 tackles, five quarterback hurries, forced a fumble, and batted down a pass at the line of scrimmage.

He joined Notre Dame as a part of the team’s 2021 recruiting class, playing high school football at Lutheran of St Charles County in Saint Peters (MO) where he was a four-star prospect ranked the No. 249 overall player and the No. 24 defensive lineman in the country according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

The 6-foot-5, 306-pound defensive lineman missed three games last due to a knee injury that required arthroscopic surgery following Notre Dame’s Week 0 matchup against Navy. Now suffering yet another untimely injury prior to Week 1 of the college football season.

Head coach Marcus Freeman also revealed that that sophomore linebacker Kahanu Kia would also be missing some time ahead of fall camp for Notre Dame after suffering a torn ACL in the summer.

The loss of Rubio for an extended amount of time takes a hit to the Fighting Irish defensive line, a position group of strength for Notre Dame that returned Second Team All-American Howard Cross and added Duke transfer defensive lineman RJ Oben.

Marcus Freeman addresses quarterback battle between Riley Leonard, Steve Angeli

Fall Camp is underway for Notre Dame. With that, have come questions for head coach Marcus Freeman about a potential quarterback battle between Riley Leonard and Steve Angeli.

Freeman addressed that battle following the first practice for Notre Dame, explaining that right now Leonard is working with the first string unit.

“Riley is going with the ones. Steve’s going with the twos,” Marcus Freeman said. “I didn’t get a chance to watch a whole bunch of seven-on-seven. I was with the other group, but I’ll go back and watch film.”

Riley Leonard is in his first season with the Notre Dame program after transferring in from Duke. However, injuries have derailed his practice time and ability to workout throughout the offseason. Now, he’s starting to get pushed by Steve Angeli.

“The time that I was over there, I was pleased with both of them,” Freeman said. “They both made some good plays in those last two periods and, again, this is day one and I’m sure there’s a lot of learning but I’m excited for what they’ll do.”

On3’s Dan Morrison contributed to this report