SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Benjamin Morrison’s numbers don’t suggest an All-America season is in the works for Notre Dame sophomore cornerback.
What he does to opposing receivers’ statistics says otherwise. And that’s where his evolution from a freshman All-American season is showing up so far for the 10th-ranked Irish (5-1), who face the best offense statistically they’ve seen to date Saturday night at sold-out L&N Stadium (7:30 EDT; ABC) in 25th-ranked Louisville (5-0).
“I think he’s built tremendously off his freshman year,” Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman said during his weekly Thursday Zoom call with the media. “I don’t know exactly what the stats would say, but I know the production he has for our defense in terms of doing your job, in terms of a lot of times being matched up with a lot of great receivers that he's had to go against this year.”
Related Content
► Chat Transcript: Will Notre Dame's investment in WR Merriweather pay off?
► Front and center, Notre Dame WBB lands top post prospect in Kate Koval
► Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love keeps honing details with expanded role
► Opponent Outlook: What Notre Dame football should expect from Louisville
► Notre Dame football depth chart projection for the Louisville game
---------------------------------------------------------------
Two weeks ago, in the 17-14 loss to Ohio State, he helped hold Buckeye wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. — widely regarded as the best non-QB in college football this year — to 32 receiving yards and three receptions, two of his lowest totals in the past two seasons. Harrison had 160 receiving yards and 132 in the two games leading into the clash with the Irish.
On Saturday night, Morrison and field corner Cam Hart will likely tag-team on Georgia State transfer Jamari Thrash, Louisville’s leading receiver with 22 catches for 444 yards and five TDs.
One of 41 newcomers on first-year Cardinal coach Jeff Brohm’s roster, the 6-1, 185-pound Thrash was among the nation’s leaders in receiving last season for Georgia State with 61 receptions for 1,132 yards and seven touchdowns.
As a team in 2023, Louisville has the highest- ranked passing offense (16th nationally), total offensive ranking (11th), scoring offense (21st) and team pass-efficiency ranking (16th) that Notre Dame has faced this season.
Morrison, meanwhile, has 11 tackles — with one for loss — an interception and four pass breakups after recording 33 tackles, six interceptions and a pass breakup in 2022. Some of the drop in tackles and interceptions is a reflection of opposing quarterbacks avoiding this season throwing in his direction after constantly testing Morrison last season.
Notre Dame comes into the Louisville game with the nation’s third-best pass-efficiency defense, a No. 11 national standing in total defense and a rank of 14th in scoring defense.
“He's not perfect. He knows that,” Freeman said of Morrison. “He's the first one to tell you that you're constantly working towards that perfection and making sure that you continue to learn your craft, but that's where the next step is now for him.
“Last year was continuing to learn our defense, to learn what it takes to play at this level. Now you see the growth and, really, the technique and the ability to recognize routes and splits, and things like that. And so, he's really, really developed into an elite corner, and has done a great job for our defense.”
Burnham, for starters
Converted linebacker Josh Burnham will make his first college start Saturday night at Louisville, filling in for starting senior vyper end Jordan Botelho. ND’s leader in sacks must miss the first half of the game with the Cardinals, by rule, after being flagged for targeting in last Saturday’s 21-14 Irish win at Duke.
The 6-4, 248-pound Burnham has 10 tackles, 2.5 for loss with a sack, and two QB hurries in his rotation with Botelho (17 tackles, two sacks, 1 QB hurry) and fellow sophomore Junior Tuihalamaka (7 tackles) this season. Freeman said Thursday that the sophomores would timeshare 50-50 in the first half, then the coaching staff would figure out how to much to work Botelho back in for the second half.
“Both Junior and Josh have done an extremely good job this week in practice,” Freeman said. “Those guys have been playing well all season in their opportunities. And so, I'm excited to see what they do with these opportunities, now being able to go out there and play the majority of the first half.”
Still on track
All four players expected to return from injuries and absences this week remain on track to play for the Irish on Saturday night. ND’s two most-productive wide receivers this season, Jayden Thomas and Jaden Greathouse, each missed the Duke game with a hamstring injury.
Also available, and likely set to make their 2023 season debuts, are two projected rotational players — sophomore tight end Eli Raridon (torn ACL) and sophomore linebacker Nolan Ziegler (personal reasons).
Ziegler’s most likely role Saturday night, after missing virtually all of training camp and the first several weeks of the season, would be on special teams.
“He's on the travel roster. He'll be there,” Freeman said. “I don't know if he'll get the game again or not. That will be determined by situations within the game, but he's ready to go if the opportunity presents itself.”
Special teams coach Marty Biagi, for one, is looking forward to Ziegler’s return and how he night impact that phase of the game.
“I think he can bring a physicality in a big-sized body where — especially late when you get into the season, the aches and the pains start to add up on people — there’s almost a freshness,” Biagi said. “It’s like ‘Hey, this guy can cover a kick. He can get in and go rush a punt.’ He has a bigger-bodied presence that you’re looking for.”
Tackling their missed opportunities
Notre Dame followed up its best tackling performance as a team this season (vs. Ohio State), per Pro Football Focus, with its worst by far in the 21-14 victory at Duke last Saturday night. And that, in turn, dropped the Irish to 85th among the 130 FBS teams in team tackling scores, admittedly, using just one tackling evaluation tool.
“I mean, I thought we had some uncharacteristic missed tackles the other day, which were disappointing, I’m going to be honest with you,” Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden said Tuesday after practice while asserting that he did think the Irish have improved in that area over last season.
“And I'm not talking about at the end, when the running back was running really hard and we were kind of hanging on. I'm not talking about that. That's a different deal. I'm talking about when we had opportunities in the open field, and we just did not trust our technique and bring our training to the game and we didn't really press it.
“We got crossed over a couple of times, and I think that would be the only thing that would be disappointing about that.”
On the season, grad senior linebacker Jack Kiser is rated as ND’s top tackler, per PFF. In fact, of its 13 highest-graded tacklers, the only starters among them are nickelback Thomas Harper (third) and defensive end Javontae Jean-Baptiste (ninth).
So, what does a team do to improve it, especially in light of playing its seventh straight game with no bye week, for recovery, until after its eighth game?
“The actual live tackling, that you can tackle guys to the ground, you can't do that, especially going seven weeks straight and all of fall camp,” Freeman said. “We have to be smart in terms of the way we practice. But there are fundamentals to tackling. It's not just live tackling. We are constantly working on it and looking at new ways to continue to attack it in practice.
“We're always trying to improve as a tackling team. There's no perfect tackling teams in the country. One missed tackle is too much.
“So, how do we continue to work on the fundamentals of tracking? Is it a tracking issue? Are we tracking in the right way? Is it a footwork issue? Is it an actual leverage issue? And so, all those different things that we see from the game, we have to continue to attack in practice and continue to work on it, but we're constantly improving. It's not perfect, but we are definitely addressing it in practice.”
Jean-Baptiste living in the moment
Count NFL Draft analyst Dane Brugler of The Athletic among those in his industry who have seen Irish defensive end Javontae Jean-Baptiste surge the past few weeks and begin to change the narrative about his draft-worthiness.
“Jean-Baptiste has already played more defensive snaps through six games in 2023 than he did in 13 games last year [at Ohio State],” Brugler writes of the 6-5, 260-pound Buckeye grad transfer. “And he ranks second on the Irish in pressures. He’s put himself in draftable territory.”
And Jean-Baptiste’s reaction?
“I kind of haven’t really thought about it.” he said this week. “It’s coming up fast, but I’m just really trying to — and what Coach Free has been teaching us — is to just stay in the moment. So, I can’t think too far ahead.
“I can’t think about the past, because if you think about the past too much, you never learn or get ready for the future. So, I’ve just got to stay in the moment I’m in right now and just be where my feet are at.”
Notable numbers
Notre Dame quarterback Sam Hartman has some history he’d like to reverse Saturday against Louisville, especially recent history.
His Wake Forest teams were 2-3 against the Cardinals in his five seasons with the Demon Deacons, and he played in all five games, including a 62-59 loss during his redshirt season (2019) in which he came off the bench and nearly rallied Wake to the win.
The lowest point came last season, when Wake Forest came into L&N Stadium as the nation’s 10th-ranked team and left with a 48-21 loss. Hartman was 21-of-35 for 271 yards passing with one touchdown and three interceptions.
He was sacked four times and lost three fumbles for Wake, which committed six of its eight turnovers in a third quarter that saw Louisville score 35 unanswered points.
• Louisville is 5-0 for the first time since 2013 and carries a seven-game home winning streak into the game.
• The Cardinals are 7-27-1 all-time against top 10 teams.
• The Notre Dame defense has held its opponents to 18.2 points below their average scoring output of all other games this season.
---------------------------------------------------------------
• Talk with Notre Dame fans on The Insider Lounge.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, Podbean or Pocket Casts.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports channel on YouTube.
• Follow us on Twitter: @insideNDsports, @EHansenND, @TJamesND and @cbowles01.
• Like us on Facebook: Inside ND Sports
• Follow us on Instagram: @insideNDsports
