Braden Lenzy Pt. II: Hurdling A Great Number Of Obstacles
After a 35-17 win in the season opener against Louisville, Notre Dame sophomore wide receiver Braden Lenzy celebrated with his teammates but when it was time to see his family, his heart sank to the pit of his stomach.
Both of his parents were there from Oregon, as was an uncle and cousin. But he didn't have it in him to celebrate with them. Lenzy quickly exchanged pleasantries and rejoined his team.
He felt ashamed that he didn’t play.
"I can't even look them in the eye because they came expecting me to play, and I didn't even step on the field," Lenzy said. "I was like, 'all right, not again. This needs to stop because it was embarrassing.' I mean what do you tell them? Like dawg, 'sorry about those couple of hundred bucks. Hope you had good seats.' What do you tell them? So I just gave them a hug and walked away. I didn't say any words."
Lenzy did not play a single snap his freshman season in 2018, but it still seemed conceivable that he would play in the 2019 season opener or possibly even start. He skipped track in the spring to focus on adding strength and, during the offseason, space opened up on the depth chart once Miles Boykin entered the NFL Draft with one year of eligibility remaining.
Junior Michael Young, Jr., seemed like the logical choice to start once senior Chase Claypool moved from the field wide receiver position to the boundary. But Young was sidelined with a fractured collarbone in fall camp.
A spot was there for the taking.
Instead, the speedy Lenzy, who reportedly ran a 4.4-second 40-yard dash at a team-run combine in the spring, had trouble catching the ball and wouldn't play a meaningful snap until week seven of the season.
It didn't help that Lenzy also dealt with health issues throughout the season and discontent set in, especially when he was unable to travel for the game at Georgia due to a concussion.
Once Lenzy got back on the practice field, he was determined to turn his season trajectory around and catch everything thrown his way. He estimates that he's dropped all of three balls since.
"That was like a big thing for me. It wasn't really an issue like it was like last year," he said. "When I came in, I couldn't even catch like half the balls. But now like I'm not dropping [anything]. Then I was like, 'all right, now I can work on my routes."
The sophomore wide receiver saw some time in a 52-0 route of Bowling Green in week six but didn't touch the ball once. But the following week against USC, Lenzy showed everyone at Notre Dame Stadium just how electric he could be by breaking off a touchdown run that, at the time, was the team’s longest of the season.
Due to fatigue, Lenzy ended up missing the Duke game a few weeks later but came back against Navy and capped off the final three weeks of the season with the most productive stretch of his collegiate career. Over that span of games, he had 254 from scrimmage and two touchdowns on a total of 10 offensive touches — six on the ground and four through the air.
He finished the season with 435 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns in eight games.
"I definitely think there aren't questions about what I can do as much anymore, cause now there's game film over consistent weeks," Lenzy said.
Still, for as far as he's come, Lenzy knows he has a lot of developing to do, especially when it comes to his technique.
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In terms of Lenzy’s on-the-field progression, nothing impressed Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly more than the sophomore wide receiver's ability to push through difficult times.
"I think like most players, what you're looking for is how did they handle the adversity that was in front of them in terms of whether it be an injury or a setback, did they come back stronger?" Lenzy said. "I think he came back stronger. Sometimes you wonder will they regain the level of confidence that they were building. He's, I think, gained even more confidence."
Now, this self-assurance could come from simply hitting on a few big plays against slower defenders, but Kelly believes it was more than that.
"He came back with a sense of, 'I'm a good player and I'm going to go prove it more so than I'm going to feel my way around here,' Kelly said. "I think that says a lot about his internal kind of motivation to want to do well."
While Lenzy's sophomore campaign was tumultuous, it shouldn't be a surprise that he was able to overcome every obstacle and end up better off than he was before.
In high school, Lenzy faced significant criticism throughout his recruitment. As a four-star athlete according to Rivals, he initially committed to Notre Dame, only to decommit five months later due to a misunderstanding and flipped to Oregon.
Soon after, he received significant backlash on social media from Fighting Irish fans. One person even said he hoped Lenzy would tear his ACL.
"I got another one saying negative things about my family and how I was raised," Lenzy wrote in a 2017 Players' Tribune article. "And then, I started getting some death threats. There were around 100 messages total. It got to where I would cringe every time my phone buzzed."
Then in December of his senior year, then Oregon head coach Willie Taggart left for Florida State and Lenzy reopened his recruitment.
Given all the negativity he had received from Notre Dame fans, one would think he'd be done with the Fighting Irish. Instead Lenzy had the maturity to not let the silent minority impact such an important decision, and he recommitted to Notre Dame.
This time, Oregon fans took to social media to attack him, including Oregon politician Bill Post.
In the end, he was able to ignore critics from both Oregon and Notre Dame.
"It made me grow up a lot because I was 18," Lenzy said. "I was like, 'It's a game.' It was crazy. I read them all, obviously. And I'm assuming you've seen it, [but] it hasn't really impacted me cause like odds are if you're that stupid to send that to a kid, you probably didn't go to Notre Dame, so I'm not going to entertain you."
Some of his maturity could be explained by being around high-level athletes at such a young age. His father, Melvin, spent 13 years working for Nike, which sent his family all over the world.
This gave also Braden Lenzy access to Nike-sponsored athletes, such as former NBA player and future Hall-of-Famer Kobe Bryant.
“He was always really cool because he was one of my role models growing up, and my dad working at Nike," Braden Lenzy said. "He was around him a little. Even though I wasn’t really much of a basketball player, his mentality I guess always has inspired me. I went to a Kobe camp when I was like third grade maybe. Just seeing how he took his actions toward the game really impacted me.
"It kind of changed my mindset that nothing’s going to be really easy, you just have to grind.”
All of these experiences have helped Lenzy become the player he is today — one that is only starting to scratch the surface based on his immense potential.
While his time at Notre Dame has certainly been filled with bumps and bruises and setbacks, Lenzy isn't exactly behind when it comes to his overall development, either.
"We knew that we had a young man that was going to need to be developed," Kelly said. "From a technical standpoint, he was very raw. He played a lot of defense [in high school] and the offense was one where it was going to have to come over time. But I think where he's really improved and is catching the football. We thought in his first year that could be a struggle for him.
"I think he's done a really good job of becoming okay at that. And I think he's got a chance to be a really solid ball catcher."
That's all he needs because once the ball is in his hands, Lenzy becomes one of the most dangerous offensive weapons Notre Dame has had in years.
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