Considering the fact we are now only two flips of the calendar away from the start of football season (most schools must only get to August, but Notre Dame is one of the few taking the first weekend off to get the most of summer vacation), it's time to really start looking ahead at the specifics of Irish opponents.  Over the next few weeks - with the obligatory break for the 4th this Friday - Rakes is going to look at specific players and units from opposing teams that will cause the most trouble in Charlie Weis' fourth campaign.  We start off on the other side of the country with an old coach's shiny new toy. . .

• Player: Jake Locker
• School: Washington
• Position: QB
• Year: Sophomore (Red Shirt)

If Washington was a few games better in the win column last year, the Jake Locker Phenomenon would have been an even bigger deal.  He was Tim Tebow West, the Great White Hope of the Pacific Northwest, a savior to a Washington program under the merciless golf gloved thumb of Ty Willingham.  The 85th ranked recruit on Scout and 68th on Rivals, Locker was behind only Tim Tebow, our old friend Demetrius Jones and Jevan Snead as a "dual-threat" QB.  He won roughly every award a high school player in Washington could win, led his team to a state title, played defensive back in addition to his signal calling duties and was also an All-State baseball player.

His 2007 was statistically impressive while still showing plenty of room for improvement.  If not for a late season injury that cost him nearly two games, he would have eclipsed a thousand yards rushing and 2000 yards passing.  His completion percentage (47.3%) and TD:INT ratio (14:15) leave a lot to be desired, but he was a redshirt freshman thrown to the wolves against a touch schedule and starring in an offensive system everyone is pretty sure is completely incompetent.  He won his first two starts against Syracuse and Boise State, and had a second quarter lead against Ohio State when everything - the game and season - unraveled.  Locker threw three picks in that game, but also rushed for 102 yards.

As a runner he's everything you would want in a tailback playing quarterback: fast, elusive, strong enough to drag tacklers and absolutely unafraid to take a shot.  In addition to that, he's capable of uncorking deep balls off one foot and finding outlet receivers with defenders hanging off of him.  Locker was at the height of his powers against Arizona, where he threw for 336 yards and two TD's while running for 152 yards and another pair of scores in a 48-41 loss.  This is a perfect example of Locker's first season, as it contained some mind-boggling awesome plays and some killer turnovers, like the pair in the fourth quarter that helped Arizona complete a big-time comeback.

There were certainly mistakes last season, but the natural progression of a young quarterback - plus SMQ's theory that freshman quarterbacks will simply gravitate towards the mean, whether that means improvement or slippage - lead me to believe the Irish are going to have all sorts of trouble containing Locker.  While they didn't face a truly mobile quarterback in 2007, nightmares of Drew Stanton and Troy Smith giddily romping around still fill my heart with dread.  The easiest way to counter a running quarterback playing in a spread-like offense is to just blitz him until you hurt him, so perhaps Coach Tenuta's new attacking mantra will prove very useful here.  We can also hope his endeavors into summer baseball will prove a distraction, but I wouldn't count on that.

Plus, I just don't trust Locker, who seems like some sort of prototype American in the vein of Joe Mauer who is awesome at two sports, dating beauty queens and still managing to be beloved by all.  He's the kind of guy you'd want your sister to bring home, but then you'd find out he'd wooed your mom into a threesome because heck, he's that charming.  Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Jim Moore begins a Father's Day weekend column with "This is yet another Jake Locker column. It bothers me that I like him so much and want to hug him every time I see him. By now, I should be sick of hearing everyone say what a great kid he is, but I'm not because that's what he is."

It's so perfect it must be devious.  His Wikipedia page even slips in that he's very involved with the community and helps cancer patients, which seems like a perfect smoke screen for a defrosted Nazi supersoldier ready to entrance the minds and hearts of America with his goodness, only to turn that cache of adoration into a potential new fascist superpower, like in that Lois and Clark episode.  Jake Locker: All-American guy with a heart of pure, unadulterated evil, and we don't even have Dean Cain to protect us.

This is Locker and his dad.  I don't actually think that he's a Nazi super soldier or anything other than a really nice guy.  Please consider the above two paragraphs entirely in jest.

October 25th Notre Dame will travel to face the Huskies in Washington in a game that'll be very important not just because every win is necessary to get back to a respectable record, but because you know Weis realizes nothing would look worse at the end of 2008 than a loss to the man he replaced.  The one advantage the Irish will have is that Locker might not have anyone to throw to or hand it off to, but as he nearly showed a few times last season, even against the likes of Ohio State and Southern Cal, he's practically capable of winning a game on his own.  While the Husky defense will be stout, the sole focus of Corwin Brown and Tenuta will be to try and stop Jake Locker, much more easily written than done.