{"id":906963,"date":"2026-06-01T09:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T09:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/906963\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T09:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T09:42:21","slug":"triple-threat-nolan-james-boubacar-traore-and-jasper-scaife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/906963\/","title":{"rendered":"TRIPLE THREAT: Nolan James, Boubacar Traore, and Jasper Scaife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone loves to do a player countdown for Notre Dame as we face toward the college football season, but in all fairness, the offseason is much shorter than you think. It\u2019s really only two months in the grand scheme of things, and there will be much more to talk about in the middle of July with media days \u2014 so why not deal with the profiles before then?<\/p>\n

Welcome to the Triple Threat series. We will profile every player on Notre Dame\u2019s roster, but I\u2019m going to give you three at a time to save some time. Every Triple Threat post will include one offensive player, one defensive player, and one newcomer (freshman or transfer) until we have to do some different combos down the road.<\/p>\n

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So let\u2019s get started with today\u2019s Triple Threat:<\/p>\n

RB Nolan James #2
DE Boubacar Traore #5
P Jasper Scaife #39<\/p>\n

NOLAN JAMES #2\"\"<\/p>\n

HEIGHT 5-10
WEIGHT 212
HOMETOWN WESTWOOD, NJ
HIGH SCHOOL DEPAUL CATHOLIC
CLASS FRESHMAN<\/p>\n

Nolan James is a very interesting player for the Irish. First of all\u2026 I have a special affinity for New Jersey running backs, and I have a special disdain for players that attend Boston College and are actually good (looking right at you Luke). James was once committed to the Eagles, but as the recruiting process played out \u2014 the Irish won him over. As a freshman last year, I was excited to see what he could do during spring practice in 2025, but I came away with a feeling that he still needed some time before he\u2019ll be ready.<\/p>\n

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As the Irish entered 2026 spring football, James had an even bigger spotlight on him as the Irish are looking to replace two first round running backs. Despite reports of him having a good spring (which I\u2019m not dismissing) there was very little put in front of the Irish fans at the Blue-Gold game. I\u2019m not sure what to expect just yet, but my biggest hope is that he makes things interesting at RB during fall camp (in a good way).<\/p>\n

BOUBACAR TRAORE #5\"\"<\/p>\n

HEIGHT 6-5
WEIGHT 253
CLASS JUNIOR
HOMETOWN BOSTON, MA
HIGH SCHOOL CATHOLIC MEMORIAL<\/p>\n

Continuing a theme about Backup College \u2014 Boubacar Traore was once committed to the Boston College Eagles while in high school (I swear this pairing was just a funny coincidence). Anyways \u2014 Traore was a big recruiting win, but mostly because of the potential he brought with him and not necessarily where he was as a player. He was more of a developmental project, and that\u2019s perfectly fine when it works \u2014 and it seems like it\u2019s working. After a promising start to the 2024 season, Traore was injured during the Louisville game and missed the rest of the year. In 2025, Traore became the starter on the edge and became arguably Notre Dame\u2019s best pass rusher.<\/p>\n

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The bar for Traore is even higher now, and the competition around him is even deeper. Notre Dame needs him to be a terror in the pass rush, and improve upon his 2025 season that saw 6.5 sacks and 11 TFLs. The pass rush lives symbiotically with the secondary, and there is real hope that Traore will be one of the big producers from that relationship.<\/p>\n

JASPER SCAIFE #39\"\"<\/p>\n

HEIGHT 6-6
WEIGHT 215
CLASS FRESHMAN
HOMETOWN WEST PERTH, WEST AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALIA
HIGH SCHOOL WARWICK SENIOR<\/p>\n

Notre Dame went punt hunting down in the Outback again. Actually\u2026 I have no idea if West Perth is anywhere near the Outback, but the Irish have definitely made \u201chey are you an Australian rugby player?\u201d a definitive line on its recruiting sheets.<\/p>\n

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Yes, we fully expect Jasper Scaife to come in and take over the punting duties that James Rendell left behind. I do love that our Aussie rugby punters have been \u201cget off the bus first\u201d guys, and I have nothing more to add. Boom that ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone loves to do a player countdown for Notre Dame as we face toward the college football season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":906964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[952,58065,6777,7,121572,49,48,121571,1401,4732,3861,121570],"class_list":["post-906963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-boston-college","tag-boubacar-traore","tag-college-football-season","tag-football","tag-jasper-scaife","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-nolan-james","tag-notre-dame","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-pittsburgh-panthers","tag-triple-threat"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116674202695169866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}