Notre Dame football: Do the Irish have the best OT tandem in the country
By Brad Weiss
The Notre Dame football team is going to be elite along the offensive line, and their bookend offensive tackles may be the best in the country.
Last season, true freshman Blake Fisher earned the starting left tackle job for the Notre Dame football team during training camp. That was an incredible accomplishment for him, as he arrived in South Bend ready to show why he was such a highly-rated player coming out of high school.
However, Fisher was injured during the Florida State game and would go on to miss the rest of the regular season.
For the Irish, that left them with a gaping hole at left tackle, one they tried to fill with a few players. They finally made the move to Joe Alt, and the rest is history, as Alt dominated, and would go on to become a freshman All-American.
Both healthy going into 2022, the sky is the limit for this tandem.
Notre Dame football with the best OT duo in the country?
Recently, Pro Football Focus put out a list of the top offensive tackles in the country, and incredibly, both Alt and Fisher were named in the top 15. That is amazing praise for this duo who are going into their second year on campus and looking to get first-year head coach Marcus Freeman’s career started with a bang.
Fisher would come back for the bowl game, a loss to Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl, and when he returned he was moved to right tackle. It remains to be seen whether or not he will stay on the right side in 2022, but if the Irish were smart, they would move him to the left side, as he has the potential to be an anchor left tackle at the next level.
The Irish have all five starters returning from that bowl game, making them an early-season favorite to win the Joe Moore Award. For Alt and Fisher, this has a chance to be a very special combination for the next two years at a minimum, and starting with elite offensive tackles is a great way for this offensive line to continue to be one of the best in the country.