Notebook: Conquering adversity fueled Notre Dame OT Charles Jagusah's rise

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — As stunning as freshman offensive tackle Charles Jagusah’s December ascent on the Notre Dame depth chart is, a look at his history before arriving at Notre Dame last June, with months of knee-surgery rehab still ahead of him, hinted at what was possible.

In just five practices through Saturday in preparation for No. 16 ND’s Dec. 29 Sun Bowl date with Oregon State (8-4), the 6-foot-7, 330-pound former Rivals four-star prospect from Rock Island, Ill., leapfrogged Notre Dame’s high-pedigreed, more experienced left tackle options to put himself in position to take his sixth college football snap as a starter. With more to come.

In fact, presumably, he now has the inside track to be the next in the rich Irish left tackle lineage, with 2023 junior unanimous All-American Joe Alt vacating his spot to opt out of the bowl and a senior season at ND for the NFL Draft.

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► Portal postscripts: Tracking how Notre Dame football transfers fared in '23

► Notre Dame 2024 OG commit Peter Jones ready to start journey

► Freeman's Notre Dame Football transcript with personnel, Sun Bowl updates

► Notre Dame football depth chart projection heading into Sun Bowl game

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Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said Saturday that senior Tosh Baker, who’s played 57 snaps over eight games in a reserve role this season, and sophomore Aamil Wagner, with 46 plays over six games, will battle to fill the hole at right tackle for the Irish (9-3) that junior starter Blake Fisher left when he opted out to prep for the NFL Draft.

“He has natural ability,” Freeman explained of Jagusah’s rise over Baker and Wagner, among others. “We noticed that when he got here. There was just not a need at the moment for him to play for us. We had a pretty good left tackle starting for us all year. He’s shown [out] on scout team.

“He’s shown in the bye weeks and individual drills that he’s going to be a future great offensive lineman for us. Throughout the first couple of practices, we rotated guys at different positions, but he continued to flourish at that left tackle position and has done a really good job.”

And before Notre Dame, Jagusah did it in the face of prolonged adversity.

He played more than half his senior football season on a winless Rock Island (Ill.) Alleman High School team going nowhere, with a PCL tear that would require surgery on Feb. 6. It wasn’t until he was training to defend his Illinois state heavyweight wrestling championship after football where he considered the injury might be more serious than his own self-diagnosis of a pulled hamstring.

“It just kind of got to a point where I was cutting weight, and I’m like, ‘I can’t run enough to get my weight down.’” Jagusah told Inside ND Sports last May. “And it hurt too much to do half the wrestling stuff, so I had it looked at, and I just kind of had to shut it down.”

He still drove over to the Notre Dame campus in the spring to take in some practice and to watch film with offensive line coach Joe Rudolph in his office. Jagusah also made time to keep up his part-time job detailing cars at a local car dealership and volunteer mentoring local kids at a middle school chess club.

“I think coming out of high school, Charles Jagusah is as good as Ronnie Stanley and Quenton Nelson and better than Mike McGlinchey,” longtime recruiting analyst Tom Lemming said last spring of ND’s three most recent Irish offensive linemen who evolved into first-round NFL Draft picks.

“The challenge is always the next step. The other three took that next step. Having two great tackles to learn from ahead of him, in Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, is going to help Jagusah. Coaching and desire to be great will figure in too, but he’s built to dominate and seems wired to do that too.”

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No more Irish opt-outs

With three more bowl practices to go in South Bend and four — including a walk-through — at the bowl site, Freeman doesn’t expect any more Sun Bowl roster deletions before the Irish take on Oregon State at 2 p.m. (CBS) on Dec. 29.

That means, in particular, grad senior defensive end Javontae Jean-Baptiste and grad senior linebacker JD Bertrand — both with NFL Draft aspirations — will defer their NFL Draft prep until after the bowl.

The Irish have lost 18 players to opt-outs since the end of the regular season to the transfer portal or for NFL Draft reasons.

“We have clarity in our roster, clarity in terms of who our opponent is,” Freeman said, “and really turned all of our attention toward Oregon State.”

The Beavers are at nine opt-outs, including its transferring No. 1 and 2 QBs — D.J. Uiagalelei (undecided) and Aidan Chiles (Michigan State). Oregon State had been at 10, but the Beavers coaching staff reinstated suspended All-Pac-12 running back Damien Martinez earlier this week.

Sizing up Hartman’s exit, Angeli’s first start

Grad senior Sam Hartman’s about-face about his bowl participation means sophomore Steve Angeli will get his first college start later this month, with freshman Kenny Minchey backing up.

“You’ll have to ask Sam. He made the decision that he’s going to opt out,” Freeman said when asked about Hartman’s apparent change of heart. “He talked to the people that he felt are important in his life and made a decision that he felt was best for him.

“As I’ve told all of the guys that have opted out, I can disagree with your decision and still support you. That’s the same thing I told Sam and every single other one that opted out. ‘I disagree. I think you should play. But I love you and I support you. You’re going to do great things.’”

Meanwhile, whatever Angeli does against Oregon State, he’ll be doing so in the context of notably missing three offensive line starters around him, two of Notre Dame’s leading wide receivers, a 1,000-plus-yard rusher at running back and a productive tight end in Holden Staes — all of whom opted out.

“It’s a challenge,” Freeman said. “First, it took figuring out who actually would be available. Who’s going to play in the game? It’s a great opportunity. It’s a great opportunity for our players, a great opportunity for our coaches to continue to develop, which we know is going to be the future of our offense in our program. But also, we have to be creative.

“You have some news guys in there that haven’t had a whole bunch of experience. We can’t expect them to do what the guys that had two to three years of starting experience to do. It’s a challenge for us to create a game plan that helps our guys play fast. But it’s also a great opportunity for them to continue to develop and get some real meaningful action.”

Angeli has completed 19-of-25 passes for 272 yards and four touchdowns with an interception in his seven relief appearances this season. Freeman hipes to play Minchey as well, but won’t prioritize game action for the freshman who’s attempted two passes in his seven game snaps this season and completed both.

“What Steve has done all year has been tremendous in terms of building confidence in the coaching staff,” Freeman said. “As a backup, you’re getting important reps in practice. Obviously, in the opportunities he’s had the game, he’s done a tremendous job. We have a lot of confidence in Steve Angeli.

“With Kenny, he’ll be able to get some meaningful reps, too. There’s not a plan to try to play two quarterbacks. We’re going to go with Steve. We’re going to make sure we give him the best opportunity to succeed. There’s a lot of confidence from everybody in our football program that Steve Angeli can lead us to where we need to go.”

More personnel matters

With will linebacker Marist Liufau opting out of the Sun Bowl for NFL Draft prep, Freeman said to look for returning grad senior Jack Kiser to move into that role and expanded roles at rover for sophomore Jaylen Sneed and freshman Jaiden Ausberry, and for freshman Drayk Bowen rotating in at the inside linebacker positions.

• Three players with long-time or recurring injuries appear to be in a position to bolster a wide receiver corps that lost four players, including three key rotation pieces, to the transfer portal.

The December contributors working with new receivers coach Mike Brown are junior Jayden Thomas, limited most of the season with a chronic hamstring injury, junior Deion Colzie, coming back from knee surgery, and freshman KK Smith, who missed the entire regular season recovering from offseason shoulder surgery.

“All three are coming along really well,” Freeman said. “From my eyes, it’s been great to see where JT is now, being healthy, Deion being healthy. We haven’t seen KK all year.

“He’s doing some really good things for our offense and our wide receivers room. I’m very pleased with where they’ve gotten to in these first five practices and excited to see where we go.”

Mission accomplished for Kia

A member of Notre Dame’s 2021 freshman class is finally ready to pick up as a sophomore in January as a two-year Mormon mission winds down for vyper end Kahanu Kia.

Kia played in eight games as a freshman and recorded seven tackles.

“I’m excited,” said Freeman, who was ND’d defensive coordinator the last time the last time the Kaneohe, Hawaii product suited up for the Irish. “I loved my one year with Kahanu. He played linebacker for part of the year and moved to vyper part of the year.

“To get him back in this program — the energy, the production, the physicality that he plays with. I’m excited to see. He hasn’t played football for a year-and-a-half, two years, so we understand that.

“But that was an agreement that we had when he told us he was going to go on this mission. I’ll bet you we’ll get a more mature individual. I’m excited to see what he does when he gets back.”