Xavier Watts wasn’t expecting it.
One week into his sophomore season at Notre Dame, the Irish coaching staff decided to move him from wide receiver to rover linebacker. It came without warning or consulting.
“I was just kind of surprised,” Watts said Tuesday. “There was no conversation before that.”
Until Notre Dame sifted through the carnage of its season opener at Florida State, there was no conversation to be had. Receiver was light on numbers. Linebacker had a set rotation and felt two-deep across its three positions. Then, one by one, they started dropping. Marist Liufau in fall camp. Shayne Simon and Paul Moala in the opener. All out for the season.
The Irish suddenly needed depth. They also wanted to get Watts on the field before long. The staff decided flipping him to defense provided the faster path and could plug a hole.
That was that. Watts began practicing at rover, learning a new position on the fly with a new jersey number (26).
“The first couple days I tried it out, I was like, ‘This is cool,’” Watts recalled. “Then I was like, ‘Maybe I have a better fit at safety. I stuck with it to see what would happen.”
If his last four games are any preview, it was worth the wait and the work.
Watts has averaged 20 snaps per game since making his defensive debut Nov. 6 against Navy’s triple option. He made three tackles that day and stayed disciplined against a tricky offense. The following week, in a road win at Virginia, he made five stops. Three of them were back-to-back-to-back tackles in the second quarter, including two in the open field where he beat block attempts.
All told, Watts has 11 tackles in 82 defensive snaps. He’s one of four members of Notre Dame’s Kyle Hamilton-less safety rotation. In a pleasant surprise, that quartet has held serve since Hamilton’s Oct. 23 knee injury. Watts has helped in the present while making a case to be a fixture in the future.
“During the bye week, we threw him in there a little bit more,” head coach Marcus Freeman said. “He just kept finding a way to make plays. It wasn’t always the greatest technique, he wasn’t always in the perfect position, but he made plays. I said, ‘OK, there’s something about this guy.’
“Then we throw him in the game. The first time he showed up was the Navy game, and I thought, ‘He’s doing some things naturally that not everybody has shown the ability to do. He is still learning exactly where to line up, exactly what his body position should be, but the ability to make plays, sometimes it’s just God-given.”
For safeties coach Chris O’Leary, Watts is a successful heist he had hoped to pull for nearly two years. O’Leary watched him play receiver and envisioned an impact safety.
“The physicality, with his body type, he’s twitchy and explosive,” O’Leary said. “Then you watch him block as a receiver. The time before the receiver injuries happened, we had a deep receiver room. This guy has to play somewhere.”
At first, it was rover. But even there, Watts looked like a better fit at safety. He showed self-described “safety tendencies.”
Such as?
“My instincts and being able to get to the ball, read the ball, read the [offensive players] and just getting to the ball,” Watts said.
Still, it’s no small adjustment. When Watts first switched to defense, he consulted fifth-year senior wide receiver, former positional vagabond and “big brother” Avery Davis for advice on how to handle it. Davis told him to stay the course. He saw Watts’ physical ability up close and figured it was a matter of time before they’d lead to a breakthrough.
“Just keep working, show what you can do,” Watts said, recalling Davis’ message. “No matter where you are, you’re a really good athlete. You’re going to ball out.”
The technique aspect, though, remained just as important. Safety wasn’t foreign, because he played it at Omaha (Neb.) Burke High School just two years earlier. Receiver had most of his attention, though. He needed a technical refresher and to reach a baseline competency with before he could realistically hope to play.
In addition to soaking up Freeman and O’Leary’s teachings, Watts studied his own teammates. Having a top-10 pick at the same position in Kyle Hamilton is ideal for finding teaching tape. Watts even went beyond him.
“DJ Brown is really technical,” Watts said. “He’s a good guy to look at. Houston [Griffith] is as well. I’d say DJ, because he has really good footwork. He’s just really sound as a safety.”
Watts is working his way toward similar status. He’s not there yet, as Freeman said. But he’s close enough to make him – and Notre Dame’s staff – think he has found his home.
“In the beginning, I would have said receiver,” Watts said of his ideal position, “but now that I’ve played safety and seen what it has to bring, I’d say I like safety better.”
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