SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A year ago, Jordan Faison was a rumor.
A freshman walk-on wide receiver, recruited to play lacrosse, but never looking out of place on the football field. Even when compared side by side with ND’s higher-pedigreed receivers.
This past spring he was asked to juggle two sports, starting for the eventual national champion Irish men’s lacrosse team and simultaneously learning new offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock’s new scheme in the overlapping spring football season, mostly as a spectator.
And now?
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The 5-foot-10, 182-pound former two-star football prospect is building on his Sun Bowl MVP performance, ascending into a prominent role at the top of Notre Dame’s deep wide receiver rotation and adeptly multitasking between his familiar slot receiver position and giving the Irish another elite speed option on the outside.
“Most of my snaps were out of the slot last year,” Faison said after a recent Irish practice as seventh-ranked Notre Dame begins to ramp up for its Aug. 31 season opener at No. 20 Texas A&M.
“And then coming into this year playing more on the outside a little bit, it’s definitely developed my game and kind of opened my eyes to not only one position, but the kind of the offense as a whole. That’s definitely helped my game and IQ-wise.”
Not that he didn’t display some of that last year. After quietly impressing in practices during 2023’s preseason training camp and incubating on the bench for Notre Dame’s first six games of that season, Faison made his debut in game 7 and ended the season with 19 catches for 322 yards and four touchdowns.
Projected over a 13-game season, that would give him 35 receptions — seven more than ND’s most recent Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown had as an Irish freshman receiver 40 years ago and trailing only Michael Floyd’s 48 in 2008 for the most by a freshman in Notre Dame history.
And yet what seems to excite Faison the most is not his own next step, but the collective one about to be taken by Notre Dame’s 11-man wide receiver group that features six newcomers not on the Irish roster last season.
“We have everything,” Faison said. “We have the big guys, the fast guys, the quick guys. I mean, we can hit you from every angle. We can attack zone, attack man.
“And I think it’s a testimony to what we’ve developed over the years to the guys from last year that kind of started that and then to now, carrying on those same things. We’ve just got guys that can just ball, and that’s a big thing.”
In the six-man rotation wide receivers coach Mike Brown is still envisioning, Faison is a given.
He also is competing with sophomore Jaden Greathouse to be Notre Dame’s No. 1 option as a punt returner, something he dabbled in last season when since-transferred Chris Tyree (Virginia) held the job. Faison averaged 14 yards a return on his two returns in 2023.
“It’s fun,” he said. “I mean, [when the] ball [is] in the air, it’s a little bit scary. You can’t see the defense coming. But once the ball’s in your hands, it’s like ‘Now it’s time to make a play.’
“I did a little bit in high school, but the punts were nowhere near like how James is kicking them. You know what I’m saying?”
“James” is James Rendell, Notre Dame’s 24-year-old Australian import and former Australian Rules Football player.
“He can do it differently,” Faison said of Rendell’s punts. “I mean, he has the rugby kicks, where he’s rolling out and kicking it. And then he can be just straight up kicking it at you and spiraling. “So, it makes it way harder to read the punt as it’s coming off [his foot] and then that affects how the ball comes down and where it comes down. So, it makes it difficult for the punt returner. So, that’s going to be huge for us this season.”
Let alone the distance and the hang time.
“Yeah, if he hits it good, you’re going to hear it,” Faison said. “It echoes.”
That Faison is still making noise of his own in two sports is something he had moments of doubt about at different junctures of his freshman year at Notre Dame. But he’s confident now that he can not only contribute to both football and lacrosse, but be a key figure on both teams.
The two-time defending national champs, incidentally, are ranked No. 1 in the USA Lacrosse Magazine’s Way-Too-Early 2025 poll.
“It was definitely difficult,” Faison said of the two-sport agenda that freshman walk-on wide receiver and No. 1 lacrosse recruit Matt Jeffery has plotted out for himself this year and Faison’s brother, Dylan, a 2026 Irish wide receiver commit, has designs of doing two years from now.
“I mean the body was hurting, the mind’s hurt. You’ve got to kind of take time for yourself. But the sports performance staff was amazing through the whole process. After the national championship, they gave me a break.
“That was the priority of giving me an amount of break before the summer, and that went a long way with recovery and everything and kind of my mental state. It’s just been an amazing ride so far.”
And one he’s convinced he can pull lessons learned from one sport to help with the other.
“I’d say the biggest thing is attention to detail,” Faison said of his lacrosse takeaway. “I mean, it starts in the locker room, and that was the biggest thing in the lacrosse locker room.
“Kind of keeping the locker room clean and everyone cleaning up their own trash and kind of … your helmets had to be a certain way. And that kind of detail translates from in the locker room and off the field to on the field.
“You kind of pay attention to those details, and that goes a long way. It might not seem like it, but it goes a long way and that ultimately helped us get to the national championship.”
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