Notre Dame football ranked No. 5 in preseason AP Poll
There are officially less than 20 days until the start of Notre Dame’s 2022 season. The release of the preseason Associated Press Poll Monday afternoon made it feel even closer.
The Fighting Irish checked in the poll at No. 5. It’s the program’s fifth-straight year to be ranked in the preseason edition of the poll. The Irish have appeared in it in 10 of the last 11 years. This is Notre Dame’s highest preseason AP Poll ranking since coming in at No. 2 in 2006.
Notre Dame has often exceeded expectations set by the preseason AP Poll. In four of the last five years, the Irish have finished the season with a better AP Poll ranking than they started with.
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Of course, those finishes were orchestrated by former head coach Brian Kelly. The knock on Kelly was he could never win the “big” game, but he surely won enough of the others to put Notre Dame in a position to be widely talked about come December. That’s now the task of first-year head coach Marcus Freeman.
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There’s a buzz about Notre Dame with Freeman at the helm that Kelly could never quite generate, but the Irish are still going to have to overcome a lot to live up to their preseason ranking. The first obstacle is a road date with No. 2 Ohio State in the season opener on Sept. 3. A loss would give Freeman a record of 0-2 as a head coach after Notre Dame dropped the Fiesta Bowl to Oklahoma State on New Year’s Day.
The Irish go into their game against the Buckeyes with a first-time starting quarterback. Freeman named sophomore Tyler Buchner Notre Dame’s starter this past Saturday. Freeman and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees have an immense amount of confidence in Buchner, but there will likely be growing pains as the 19-year-old comes along in his first year as a starting quarterback at any level of football since 2019.
It’s not just AP pollsters who believe Notre Dame will overcome the challenge of navigating the season with a rookie head coach and inexperienced quarterback. The Irish landed at No. 5 in the preseason USA Today Coaches Poll last week, which was also the program’s highest preseason mark in that poll since 2006.
