Blue and Gold Illustrated

8 NOV. 1, 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME Boubacar Traore Surges Onto NFL Draft Radar By Eric Hansen The morphing picture behind running back Jeremiyah Love, when it comes to Notre Dame's NFL Draft prospects, has a new name coming into focus. It's a player who might not even decide to actually submit his name in January, as a redshirt sophomore, and leave two years of college eligibility on the table. But what seems more certain than anything when it comes to Irish defensive end Boubacar Traore and his football future is that his best football is still ahead of him, if he can stay healthy. The best move for the 6-foot-4, 250-pound Traore would seem to be to come back to Notre Dame for the 2026 season and continue to build draft equity. But in what could turn out to be really his first full season of football in the last four, his production is going to drag him into a draft discussion. He's also at a premium position when it comes to drafting and paying players. Traore missed most of his senior high school season with an ankle injury, played just 27 snaps as a redshirting freshman in 2023 and had his sopho- more season truncated last September by an ACL tear. As recruits, it was Keon Keeley in that same 2023 Irish recruiting class who was ticketed for stardom, not Traore. Keeley eventually decommitted and landed at Alabama, where he got his first career sack and ninth career tackle on Oct. 11. Traore, this season alone, had 24 tackles, including 6.5 for loss with 5.5 sacks, heading into last Saturday's showdown with Southern Cal. And he's just getting started. Billy Schrauth Is Prototypical Guard Prospect By Jack Soble I considered a couple more names here. Senior tight end Eli Raridon is one, but his sample size is even smaller than Traore's at this point. Redshirt junior running back Jadarian Price is another, but he doesn't impact the passing game. And there are a few others (Aamil Wagner, Malachi Fields, Drayk Bowen, Adon Shuler, etc.) that NFL teams will like, but I'm skeptical that they have first-round ceilings. Redshirt junior guard Billy Schrauth, though, is as prototypical a guard prospect as you can be. At 6-foot- 4, 310 pounds, Schrauth has arguably been Notre Dame's best offensive lineman this season, and he's definitely its best now that redshirt junior center Ash- ton Craig (knee) is out for the season. Starting in pass protection, Schrauth has been excellent for two seasons. He's allowed only 8 quarterback pressures in 577 pass-blocking opportunities since the start of 2024. But where he's really made a jump from his first year as a full-time starter to his second is in the run game. As a team, Notre Dame has run it 36 times for 303 yards (8.4 yards per carry) and 5 touchdowns through the 1 hole, which resides between the left guard and the center. Each of those numbers is the highest of any gap, and when the Irish run through the 3 hole (between the left guard and left tackle), they've been pretty good, too: 27 carries for 170 yards (6.3 yards per carry). In other words, Notre Dame is at its best when it runs behind Schrauth. He'll make an NFL team equally happy in the near future. Point ✦ Counterpoint: BESIDES JEREMIYAH LOVE, WHO IS NOTRE DAME'S TOP 2026 NFL DRAFT PROSPECT? Former Notre Dame safety Tom Zbikowski (2003-07) became the head football coach at Chicago's St. Patrick High School earlier this year. Zbikowski took the job after making the transition to coaching in 2022 as a defensive quality control coach at Western Michigan followed by two sea- sons as safeties coach at Brown. The Shamrocks went 4-3 in Zbikowski's first seven games as head coach. Zbikowski, a third-round NFL Draft pick in 2008, recently joined Blue & Gold Illustrated's "Third & Gold Podcast." Here are some of the highlights from his appearance. BGI: What did you make of Notre Dame's struggles with the defense at the start and what they've been able to do the last few weeks? Zbikowski: "It takes time. It's a new defensive coordinator. He's got to put his twist on things. It takes time to all get on the same page. The subtle nuances of coverages that no one understands. "Quite literally, no one understands secondary play. Even in the coaching industry, it's hard for people to understand what it's like in the second- ary unless you've really played it or spent years understanding what goes on back there." BGI: What stood out to you about Notre Dame starting quarterback CJ Carr? Zbikowski: "He seems to be really prepared for a young player. He seems to be very comfortable as a young player. He throws a really, really nice ball. He seems like he doesn't have any fear. "And he seems like when things go down, he's going to rise to the occasion. He almost thrives in those situations. It seems like he's got ice running through his veins." BGI: What do you feel like you've been able to get done so far in this first season as St. Patrick? Zbikowski: "They had four wins in two years. We've already gotten to that point. I knew the kids were looking for something. They weren't just in shambles. They had some talent, and they had a lot of resiliency. "I came in in the wintertime, just did some like military-style, fire department-style, crazy work- outs in the gym. Just yelling at them, screaming at them, making them do push-ups. You break them down and build them back up." BGI: How do you like it so far? Zbikowski: "I like it a lot. The Chicago Catholic League's a very good league. A lot of good play- ers, a lot of really good players, a lot of really good teams. It's as close to college as I think you can get in terms of coaching in high school. "I'm pretty happy with the competition and the level of talent that's in the league that we play in." BGI: What burns in your mind about the 2005 game against Southern Cal? Zbikowski: "The Corey Mays hit. The play be- fore the "Bush Push." The ball goes flying back 2-3 yards. We all knew that's where it should have been spotted. But at that point, it's semantics. "We played a really, really, really good team, one of the best teams college football's had. We played them as good as we could have played them. That's just how it goes. We were all upset, but I sleep easy at night with that game. It is honestly one of my favorite games — to go toe- to-toe with an elite college football program." — Tyler James Five Questions With … FORMER NOTRE DAME SAFETY TOM ZBIKOWSKI Zbikowski, a former Notre Dame safety, is cur- rently the head football coach at Chicago St. Patrick High School. PHOTO COURTESY ST. PATRICK HIGH SCHOOL TRAORE SCHRAUTH

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