Chansi Stuckey embraces the challenge of Notre Dame's numbers game at WR
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Chansi Stuckey is smiling.
Three days after the already limited personnel in Notre Dame’s wide receiver room shrunk by another person and its leadership ranks proportionally sustained even more erosion.
“In life,” the 38-year-old, first year Irish wide receivers coach said Monday after practice 10 of training camp, “we don’t find out who we are until we’re thrust into a position to do something that we haven’t planned. And that’s what’s happening now.
“You’re seeing guys starting to emerge personality-wise, leadership-wise, raise their level of play. So, it’s been a beautiful sight to see.”
That’s not to say the seven remaining scholarship wideouts, five of whom are fully healthy, and a gaggle of walk-ons have turned the page completely on sixth-year captain Avery Davis after his second ACL tear in the span of nine months.
If anything, Davis remains front and center. As a quasi-coach. As an inspiration.
“He’s still a part of us,” Stuckey said. “The word concern is always thrown around, but I tell my guys, ‘It’s about what we do in this room. It’s about our belief in our room. And then we have to go out and bear the fruit out of it.’
“We’re not in the business of proving people wrong. We're in the business of proving ourselves right — what we believe, what we can do.
“Unless we go out and do it, that talk is still going to be there. So it’s just a belief in that room that when we go out on the field, we’re going to make plays and help our team win.”
Statistically, the best defenses from the 2021 season that fifth-ranked Notre Dame will face in 2022 come in a four-week stretch late in the season that starts with Syracuse on Oct. 29 (19th in total D) and Clemson on Nov. 5 (8th).
But second-ranked Ohio State (59th in 2021) — ND’s season-opening opponent on Sept. 3 — is athletic, has a new defensive guru in former Oklahoma State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, and is complemented by a prolific offense that allows the defense to take chances and gives them more margin for error.
What is making a difference in Notre Dame’s receiving corps being ready for that kind of challenge from a pragmatic standpoint, if you ask any of the receivers, is Stuckey’s ability to highlight the importance of and teach the finer details of the position.
Where they benefit the most from a mental standpoint is Stuckey continually raising the standard, even as the group sustains waves of adversity. He recently brought in former Notre Dame All-American Derrick Mayes to help make his point.
“For those guys to hear him (Mayes) say it, it’s like a father,” Stuckey said. “You tell your child something. You tell him 100 times. And then some random person tells them, and they’re like, ‘Oh, OK.’ But I told you 100 times. To hear it from another voice was huge.
“So allowing these guys to understand, you’re not just playing receiver in 2022. You’re representing a whole conglomerate of Notre Dame wide receivers who were here before you.
“Like these guys know your name, and they expect you to uphold the standard that they’ve started. I think those guys are like, ‘Ok, this is kind of a big deal. Rocket and Derrick Mayes and Tim Brown. OK, I’m in elite company. Let me put my name on the wall.’
“And I think those guys are buying into that.”
They’re buying into the “attention to detail” message, too. And it’s easy to see why.
Think about the Irish wide receivers in recent years before Stuckey’s arrival who put up good numbers on the field for the Irish, but not proportional to how they tested in the 40-yard dash and other physical gauges leading up to their respective NFL Drafts (Chase Claypool, Miles Boykin, Kevin Austin Jr., etc.)
“It’s interesting,” Stuckey said. “Football’s one of the only games where you can be — on a scale of 1 to 10 — athleticism 2 and be a great receiver. Because detail just allows you to do that.
“If you lock in on the details and understand why your break point needs to be this, why your toe has to be pointed that way, why are we running this concept versus this coverage … everything happens at a hundredth of a second.
“If I can gain a hundredth of a second and understand faster and process faster, I’ve done better than this guy (the cornerback), because he doesn’t know what I’m doing. I know what I’m doing. So, I’m manipulating him to think one thing when I’m doing another.
“Then, if you can really hone in on those details, then you start playing really, really fast. In anything we do, if we’re not quite sure, we’re a little hesitant. If I run a 4.5 (in the 40), now I’m running a 4.7. But if I’m into the details, maybe I can get it down to a 4.4, because I’m playing so fast.
“So I’m just teaching these guys that if you just lock in on the details and you have talent, then you’re hard to stop.”
There is a reality check when it comes to the low numbers at wide receiver, and that’s how the team practices. The ideal number of scholarship players in a given workout is 10, per Stuckey, a number Notre Dame won’t even achieve next year likely unless they add three more bodies to the three wide receiver commitments they have in the 2023 class so far.
“You really have to try to manipulate kind of the emphasis of that day, how many reps we have,” Stuckey explained of practicing short-handed. “Is it short, intermediate, deep? That affects what I do in the individual (periods). I try to find a lot of ways for them to catch balls and to save their legs. So instead of running a 20-yard comeback, we’ll just do the last 5 (yards).
“So they have the understanding and they’re saving their legs. It makes other guys in the room have to be available. (Walk-on) Henry Cook has to be available to get some reps. Conor Ratigan has to be able to jump in there. Because we can’t run our guys into the ground. We have to get them to Sept. 3.
“That’s why Tobias coming along really helps us.”
Freshman Tobias Merriweather was ND’s lone wide receiver signee in his class, after CJ Williams (USC) and Amorion Walker (Michigan) were 11th-hour defections following former ND head coach Brian Kelly’s defection to LSU on Nov. 30.
Kelly, incidentally was chowing on BBQ burnt ends at Merriweather’s house during a recruiting visit when he got the call that the LSU deal was finalized.
As good as Dom Merriweather’s cooking purportedly is, his son Tobias has been that on the football field over the summer after enrolling in June and during training camp.
“I push him to see how he reacts when things aren’t good,” Stuckey said of the 6-5, 200-pound Camas, Wash., product. “It’s always funny, when it goes from recruiter to coach, there’s always a ‘Hold on, who’s that? You’re the football coach now. He’s on me now.’
“So, I have to create him a mindset that we can trust him to go on the field. You see how he reacts. Because most of these guys, at a place like Notre Dame, everyone’s highly recruited. They were the best guy in their state – or whatever it was.
“And then you come here, and there are other really, really good people. And the guys on the other side of the ball are really, really good too. So, how are you going to react?
“Just trying to get him to the place, so from midseason to the end of the season he’s a very reliable guy. It’s unrealistic in game 1 against Ohio State to say, “OK, we need 70 snaps from you.’ You can ruin a guy like that.
“So just bringing him along. He’ll get what he’s earned. That’s the main thing, you’ll get what you’ve earned.”
Stuckey in turn has earned the credibility to tell his group adversity should bring out the best in them, because it did in him. Over and over.
“You go from breaking my foot in college to getting drafted not where I thought I was going to be to get to the NFL. Foot being broken again to the NFL being over. To transitioning out of that into a new life.
“To getting married to becoming a father. Getting back into coaching at age 34. You name it. All kinds of hard stuff.
“Dealing with my father’s death the night I got the (Notre Dame) job. You talk about hard. But with the grace of God at the same time, you revel in those types of things, so that other people who are going through things like that can hear, ‘Hey man, he went through it, I’ll be all right.’
“Always having joy. Happiness can be taken, but joy is given. It’s a choice.”
Stuckey flashes another smile.
“Our mantra is ‘Choose hard’. We don’t want the easy route for anything,” he said. “And whatever comes our way we’ll deal with it and keep moving forward.”
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