SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Amidst a steady stream of offensive line drama/surprises in preseason camp, perhaps the most undeserved upstaged facet of seventh-ranked Notre Dame’s run-up to the college football season has been an Irish pass defense coming off its first-ever statistical national title in pass-efficiency defense.
With a real chance to be even better in 2024.
No. 20 Texas A&M and its former borderline five-star QB prospect Conner Weigman on Saturday night will get the initial first-hand look at the Irish secondary that returns two players dubbed preseason All-Americans, in junior cornerback Benjamin Morrison and grad senior safety Xavier Watts, as well as one of ND’s most shrouded and yet convincing offseason ascenders on either side of the ball.
Sophomore safety Adon Shuler.
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Shuler beat out Northwestern grad transfer Rod Heard II, among others, to earn his first college start as Watts’ safety sidekick. That will unfold Saturday at presumably sweltering and sonorous Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, with kickoff on ABC set for 7:30 p.m. EDT.
The sixth-ever meeting between the Irish and the Aggies, and first since 2001, will be preceded by the ESPN College GameDay crew setting up shop ahead of an Irish game for the 37th time.
Shuler’s classmate, Christian Gray, edged junior Jaden Mickey for the field cornerback nod, opposite Morrison. When Notre Dame puts five DBs on the field, the starting nickel will be Arizona State grad transfer Jordan Clark at the outset.
Notre Dame did see a reduction in its DBs numbers, though, when senior reserve cornerback Chance Tucker went down with an injury on Aug. 17 in the team’s final preseason intrasquad scrimmage. Irish third-year head coach Marcus Freeman revealed on Monday the extent of Tucker’s injury — an ACL tear that will wipe out his 2024 season.
“I love Chance. He’s a great teammate,” Freeman said. “He’s a great person. You feel terrible for him that he loses this season. But as far as the DBs … we’ve developed. We’ve got a lot of depth there. I’m very confident in the depth of both the safety and the corners room.
“Rod Heard’s a guy that can play multiple positions. He can play corner. He can play safety. He can play nickel. So, he gives you added depth to both rooms. Then we’ve got some good, young guys, like [freshman cornerbacks] Leonard Moore and Karson Hobbs, and some of those guys that are all going to be able to help us this year.”
The same couldn’t be said definitively of Shuler entering spring practice, after battling through an injury-filled preseason in 2023 and logging just 52 snaps as a reserve safety last season, 21 of those coming in the Sun Bowl against Oregon State after a December practice surge.
He finished the season with six tackles in five games as a true freshman in 2023 and saw his tackling grade from Pro Football Focus improve from 28.0 in his college debut against Tennessee State last Sept. 2 to 79.4 in the 40-8 rout of Oregon State on Dec. 29 in El Paso, Texas.
That momentum continued to build in the offseason, with Shuler surging in the spring before Heard arrived in June. The 6-foot, 200-pound Shuler then continued to do so in the months that followed.
“Adon Shuler has done a great job at proving he can be trusted and counted on,” Freeman said. “He’s going to be a really good player for us.”
So are, Freeman projects, some of ND’s other safeties, including the versatile Heard. Fellow sophomore Luke Talich will likely be included in the safety rotation and so might freshman Kennedy Urlacher. Others, like freshman Tae Johnson, could rise later in the season and push for playing time in the deep safety group.
“I reminded our team last week that in my two years here, out of 52 possible starting lineups — with O and D — we’ve had 39 different starting lineups,” Freeman said. “That’s about 82 different starters, and it’s just a reminder that there’s one guarantee: that the future is uncertain.
“So, everybody on this trip has to be ready for any role, and we’re going to need everybody. Everybody that makes the trip down there [and], as we go throughout the season, we’re going to need them all.”
Coming in hot
Notre Dame spent preseason camp talking about how it could combat the expected heat and humidity it was likely to encounter in College Station, Texas, on Saturday night. And Freeman and his coaches built deep player rotations for it, too.
They also installed habits, including how to hydrate properly, to help them handle the potential culture shock.
And then Mother Nature gave the Irish an unexpected-but-welcomed dress rehearsal.
Temps and humidity soared over the weekend with the mercury topping out in the low 90s on Monday, with the Irish practicing in the late afternoon. The expected high on Tuesday is 99 degrees. The weather forecast for College Station on Saturday is a high of 89 and low of 76, with scattered thunderstorms possible.
“Appreciate the good Lord almighty bringing the heat here,” Freeman said. “What else would you want, being here at Notre Dame? Our Mother on top of the Golden Dome will bring a little heat on Monday, Tuesday and probably into Wednesday. No, it’s not too late.
“We’ve been preparing for the heat, but now it’s not just preparing. You’ll feel it. You’ll feel it out at practice. It’s probably going to be warmer tomorrow during practice than it probably will be for the game. It’s a great reminder for our players. You have your routines for hydration and refueling, but now you have to do it with the heat.
“It’s not just, hey, remind you to drink fluids and to have carbs during these breaks that we have. The heat will force you to do that too. It’s going to be good for our team to really just feel the heat and double down on that routine we talked about to help them perform at a high level.”
A win for sports science
The announcement Monday of cornerback Chance Tucker’s injury as season-ending and original starting left tackle Charles Jagusah’s season-ending torn pectoral muscle on day 4 of camp tend to be the types of preseason events that create questions — if not doubts — about a college football program’s strength-and-conditioning approach.
Freeman’s deep research gave those kinds of reactions a reality check on Monday.
“This has been the healthiest fall camp, really, since I’ve been head coach,” he said. “But as we’ve really taken data — probably from the last 12 to 15 years — we’ve had the fewest injuries in, I think, 15 years.
“We practiced 15% more this fall camp than we had previously. We only had one concussion, and we’re down 30% overall in concussions, strains and sprains. Just wanted to say I’d like to give credit to our sports performance team and the way they’ve supported our players outside of practice, and to our coaches that have bought into the adjustments we’ve had to make going into each practice.
“The way we’ve structured practice, the results have shown and it’s been really good. We’ve practiced more and had less injuries, and that’s a great statistic.”
Freeman has leaned heavily into sports science since he became head coach in December of 2021. Two summers ago, he hired John Wagle as associate athletics director of sports performance. Then last December, director of football performance Loren Landow was added to the mix.
Along the way, Freeman was proactive in doing research in visiting other college programs and NFL teams.
“You have to practice,” he said. “You’ve got to get the reps you believe you need to have a team prepared. So, it was intentional to make sure that we practiced more, but the changes came in how we structured practice. How we structured it and the flows of practice.”
Squibs
• Quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli will be the only one of Notre Dame’s 10 full-time assistant coaches who will operate from the press box during Saturday night’s game. The other nine, including both coordinators, will coach from the sideline.
Guidugli will have company on both sides of the ball in the form of grad assistants and analysts.
• Freeman was liberal with the “OR” designation with his depth chart this week, particularly as it pertained to his six-man wide receiver rotation.
There’s a grad transfer involved in a timeshare at all three receiver positions — Beaux Collins with senior Jayden Thomas at the boundary, Kris Mitchell with sophomore Jordan Faison at the field outside receiver, and Jayden Harrison with sophomore Jaden Greathouse in the slot.
“All six guys have played with the 1s in fall camp,” Freeman said. “That’s why we decided to have ‘ORs.’ I don’t care who goes out with the first group, all six guys are going to play. We have a lot of confidence in all six of them.”
• Snapping on special teams turned out to be somewhat of a timeshare. Sophomore Andrew Kros will be used to snap on punts, while junior Rino Monteforte will take care of snapping on field goals and extra points.
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