Notre Dame Defense Striving To Get The "Max" From Redfield
There is a favorite phrase all college coaches like to use this time of the year in preseason camp: Guardedly optimistic.
It balances a positive outlook with the knowledge, through hardened experience or cynicism, that there is no guarantee to anything. There might be no single player on the 2016 Notre Dame football team that better reflects that than senior free safety Max Redfield.
On one hand, nobody on defense returns with more career tackles (144) than the 23-game starter Redfield, whose name is usually prefaced with the line “former five-star recruit.”
On the other, no one on the Fighting Irish roster has had a more checkered football career the past three years than Redfield. One year he is a pivotal figure heralded by the coaches for his performance in a bowl win (31-28 versus LSU in the 2014 Music City Bowl), and the next he is suspended from postseason action (the 44-28 loss last January to Ohio State). So when head coach Brian Kelly was asked after the initial practice this past weekend about what might make Redfield a more consistent force in 2016 than he was this spring — when freshman early entrant Devin Studstill was on the threshold of supplanting him from the starting role — the seventh-year Notre Dame head coach remained on guard.
“We saw great flashes [in 2015] — and then we didn’t see him for a couple weeks,” said Kelly of Redfield. “…If we went through five days here and we saw a consistent performer, I’d be pretty happy with that. It would be hard for me to say after one day, even if he had a really good day… If you come back to me on Day 3 and he put three really good days together, I would say Max is a different player than he was in the spring.”
Despite his experience and recognition as a top-flight athlete, Redfield hasn’t fully translated that into yet being a mainstay at safety the way senior classmates Isaac Rochell, James Onwualu or Cole Luke — all front-runners for a captaincy — are along the line, linebacker and cornerback, respectively.
Nevertheless, on the opening day of August camp this weekend, Redfield was the first free safety to come out with the starting unit, and maintained that the spring was a beneficial period with Studstill seriously pushing him.
“It was great to just grow within myself and understand what I need to do better and the details I need to hone on a play-by-play basis to get the consistency that I’m looking for — and the coaches as well,” he said. “There was competition as well, so there’s kind of a microscope on myself. Every little thing I’m doing wrong, just kind of analyze that and eliminate it.”
Upon further review, Redfield noted that in a given game where he might be on the field 70 to 90 plays, he would have a couple of lapses — “not anything above five” — but his is a position where a few misses will overshadow 65 correct fits.
As the last line of defense, safety can be a thankless task, and one that requires extensive growth over four years. It’s easy to forget that former Notre Dame safety Harrison Smith often struggled his first three seasons (126 tackles, no interceptions, four passes defensed in 2007-09, including red-shirting as a freshman) before breaking out with seven interceptions and seven passes broken up as a senior in 2010 to become an eventual first-round pick in 2012 and, temporarily this summer, becoming the highest paid safety in the NFL.
Likewise, Zeke Motta’s first three seasons (2009-11) were a roller-coaster (102 tackles, two interceptions, three passes defensed) before he was named Defensive MVP with an outstanding senior campaign for the 12-1 Irish in 2012 that was carried by the defense.
Redfield’s numbers his first three years (144 tackles, two interceptions and six passes defensed) are better on paper than Smith’s and Motta’s were, but whereas Smith and Motta blossomed in a more elementary scheme under 2010-13 defensive coordinator Bob Diaco, Redfield had to transition to more complexities under Brian VanGorder, who is now in his third season at Notre Dame.
“It was incredibly difficult,” said Redfield of the change. “Just the verbiage, the concepts in general, running an NFL type defense when before it was more like a college … a lot different than we’re doing now.”
However, Diaco’s scheme also was often criticized in his first two seasons before it all came together in his third season in 2012. Likewise, it is the third season under VanGorder in 2016, and Redfield is counting on the balance of veteran experience meshing with the rising youth to fulfill the promise of a more consistent and reliable defense, especially on the back end which he patrols.
“We’re helping the young guys come along really fast,” Redfield said. “A lot more extra meetings, a lot more work than we’ve ever done. We feel a lot more comfortable than we ever have, and we feel like the young guys are learning faster than they ever have.
“We have the veterans to do it, we have young guys pushing us from the back to make it a more competitive situation. [We’re] making sure we have to do those details on a day-to-day basis so we don’t get replaced, and just having that kind of mind-set to our approach.”
For now and right into the start of the season, it remains a guardedly optimistic one.
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