SOUTH BEND, Ind. — In the 198 game snaps Notre Dame cornerback Christian Gray took as a freshman understudy/rotational player for the Irish football team last season, there is little in his film clips that suggested an obvious path of how to take the next step this offseason.
The 6-foot, 187-pound St. Louis product’s season grade from Pro Football Focus, in fact, was slightly higher than that of both 2024 preseason All-America junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison and 2023 unanimous All-America safety Xavier Watts from an Irish defensive backfield that helped ND to the nation’s No. 1 ranking in pass-efficiency defense in 2023.
But behind the numbers Gray struggled with the mental side of the game.
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“Yeah, it was very hard for me,” he said after a recent ND practice ahead of the Aug. 31 season opener at 20th-ranked Texas A&M (7:30 p.m. EDT; ABC-TV). “My mindset [freshman year] was ‘I wanna be great, I wanna be great.’ But if I let up a catch, I would always think about it, think about it.
“So, I just focused on my mental health, meditated, just kept praying to God, kept reading my Bible every day. … ‘Just, how can I change my mindset?’ So, I grew better. Even right now, though I’m still growing, I feel like I’m better and better every day, because my mindset is now on point every time.”
And next Saturday night, he’s expected to make his first career start for No. 7 Notre Dame — opposite Morrison.
Junior Jaden Mickey — who’s primarily trained at the field corner Gray will start at since Mickey’s freshman year — will play plenty as well, Irish defensive backs coach Mike Mickens assured.
ND’s fourth cornerback, at perhaps the strongest position group on the team — but far from the deepest — is freshman boundary corner Leonard Moore, a training camp pleasant surprise.
Morrison said last week that he thinks Moore has a chance to have a better Notre Dame career than what the junior is building, with 2023 likely being his last season before morphing into an NFL first-round draft choice in the spring.
And of Gray and Mickey replacing now-L.A. Chargers rookie Cam Hart?
“I'm seeing two guys who want to have a big impact on our team, and that's the biggest thing,” Morrison said. “Having Mickey and Christian on the other side is going to be awesome, because they play different, but they both know how to find the ball.
“And that's the biggest thing. If you can get the ball at the defensive back position, you can play for a long time.”
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Gray had an interception, two pass breakups and 11 tackles in the 11 games in which he saw action for Notre Dame last season.
“What I’m now taking in is the wisdom,” Gray said of the 2024 version of himself. “Even though I’m growing right now, I’m still a sophomore and 19 years old. I want to have more wisdom, so that I can help the young ones, and to better myself and my future — what I can choose and what I need to do.
“What I take to the field is ‘One play, one life.’ Or ‘Win the interval.’ I took it to heart.”
When Morrison went down with a shoulder injury that required arthroscopic shoulder surgery in late March, Mickey and Gray played at the same time the rest of the spring, with Gray staying in his familiar boundary role.
But as Morrison continued to heal ahead of schedule in time for the season opener, Gray had to make the switch to field corner and battle Mickey. That meant typically faster receivers to match up with and more field to cover.
“At first, it wasn’t nerve-wracking,” Gray said of the switch. “But it was like. ‘OK, I’m at a different position and I’ve got to learn.’ Being over there has been fun, actually. That’s where the most action is.
“So, I like it over there. I was like, “same old thing, just got to go out there and ball.’”
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