Notre Dame football: Hardy, Shumate out for Stanford

Two key pieces of the Notre Dame football team’s defensive backfield will be missing Saturday night, when the 25th-ranked Irish (8-3) take on No. 8 Stanford (9-2) in Palo Alto, Calif.

First reported by IrishIllustrated.com, safeties Eilar Hardy and Elijah Shumate were not a part of the Irish traveling party that left early Friday afternoon, because they had missed a team meeting. II cited Hardy’s father, Bill.

Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly confirmed early Friday evening that the pair did not make the trip “due to a violation of team rules.”

Hardy, a junior, had surged into the starting lineup after falling to third on the depth chart earlier this season. He had one tackle in ND’s first six game combined, then recorded 24 over the past five, including a total of 15 in his two starts, against BYU last weekend and Pitt on Nov. 9.

Shumate, a sophomore, had made four starts, most of them early in the season, but had played sparingly the past two games after missing a three-game stretch with a hamstring injury.   

Normal starter, senior Austin Collinsworth, figures to be paired with demoted junior Matthias Farley in the starting lineup Saturday night, with promising freshman Max Redfield as the key backup.