Eric Hansen

The sometimes-choreographed, always-perky rhetoric coming from Notre Dame’s preseason football camp was punctured Friday by Irish fourth-year head coach Charlie Weis.

Sophomore tight end Mike Ragone would miss the season, he said, the result of knee surgery all parties had hoped could wait until the end of the 2008 season.

"This summer while running routes, Mike tweaked his knee and partially tore his left ACL," Weis said in a statement. "His two options were to have the knee fixed immediately or to brace it and try to play. He understood that eventually the knee would have to be fixed.

"Mike had continued to practice but felt his progress had deteriorated. Thursday afternoon, Mike came to me and decided that having the surgery done now prior to the start of school would be best. Together with (ND head trainer) Jim Russ and our team doctors, we quickly arranged surgery for late Friday morning. The surgery was successful, and Mike will spend the 2008 season rehabbing to be ready for the 2009 season."

So what does that do to the Irish in 2008?

Ragone looked and played like a wide receiver in a bad mood last season as a 230-pound freshman. This August, he looked the part of a tight end — a complete tight end, a 6-foot-5, 251-pounder who could flatten linebackers and outrun them just as adeptly. Coming off a season in which he amassed just one catch for 7 yards in the nation’s worst offense, Ragone may have been the most improved Irish offensive player this side of quarterback Jimmy Clausen.

His absence — along with projected starting cornerback Darrin Walls’ previously announced departure for the season — presents Weis more of an opportunity than saddling him with crisis, however.

The juxtaposition of two Bowl Championship Series seasons in 2005 and ’06, when Weis’ first two rosters were teeming with veteran players, against 2007’s meltdown, with a collection of players that had significantly fewer ties to ex-coach Tyrone Willingham, left questions about whether Weis really could develop talent at the college level, rather than just being a master tweaker.

The mass movement up the depth chart by the freshman class this August seems to suggest that perhaps Weis’ offseason soul-searching and subsequent make-over constitutes an evolutionary leap and not empty rhetoric.

What makes this youth movement all the more impressive is that there weren’t the plethora of cracks and holes in the depth chart for the freshmen to naturally fill by need. They’re doing it largely by coming of age early and loudly.

And they were doing so at the two recently diluted positions — cornerback and tight end — before the surprise exits. Freshman cornerback Robert Blanton and tight end Kyle Rudolph were going to force the issue anyway and work their way into the mix somehow, some way.

All four freshman linebackers — Darius Fleming, Steve Filer, David Posluszny and Anthony McDonald — are pushing into the two-deeps, too. A deep core of defensive lineman, led by Ethan Johnson and Brandon Newman, can’t and won’t be ignored.

On offense, Braxston Cave is already the No. 2 center, Trevor Robinson the No. 2 right guard. And then there’s class prodigy Michael Floyd, an unassuming wide receiver standout whose modest beginnings and self-immersion into charity work have grounded him for the onslaught of attention about to come his way.

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