Ask head coach Brian Kelly or a member of Notre Dame’s cornerback unit about position coach Mike Mickens’ teaching points, and one word will pop up frequently.
Aggression.
Mickens, Notre Dame’s first-year corners coach, has a track record of coaching it into his players from his previous stop at Cincinnati. He has a track record of embodying it when he was a player at Cincinnati under Kelly. And now, it’s quickly showing up in Notre Dame’s cornerbacks.
“We were an aggressive group on-body competing for throws,” Kelly said a few days after Notre Dame’s season opener against Duke. “Any ball that was out there, we were competing for. There wasn’t a lot of space. I like that about Mike in watching him and his teaching progressions.”
Through two games, primary corners Nick McCloud, TaRiq Bracy, Clarence Lewis and Cam Hart have combined to break up eight passes and allowed eight catches on 21 targets. McCloud is the only one of the four to play meaningful defensive snaps in both games. Bracy was unavailable for the Sept. 19 game at South Florida, and Lewis played only special teams in the opener against Duke. Hart got some work with the starters against USF and stayed in with the backups.
Duke and USF do not own what anyone would call a potent passing attack, and neither challenged Notre Dame much vertically. And yes, two games is a small sample to draw firm conclusions.
Evident in both games, though, is the corners’ ability to locate the ball and get their hands on it. There have been interception opportunities, namely one that hit Lewis in the chest against USF. Even without an interception, Notre Dame corners are on pace to cruise past their 2019 havoc play creation.
“That’s really the big emphasis with coach Mickens,” McCloud said. “Of course we want to have great technique and do our job. But at the end of the day, the most important thing in football is the ball. Having that want-to to finish on the ball every play, that’s something we’ve emphasized throughout camp and are still doing on a daily basis.”
It was sometimes missing from the 2019 cornerback unit, which was assignment-sound and largely prevented big plays but was light on turnover generation and on-ball plays. Last season, the Irish’s top four cornerbacks had a combined 20 passes broken up and two interceptions. Notre Dame ranked 71st nationally in passes defended and had nine interceptions, with four of them from safety Kyle Hamilton.
Three of those primary four corners from last year are gone, with Bracy (a team-high seven passes broken up as a sophomore in 2019) as the lone holdover. Mickens inherited a malleable group with intriguing physical tools. Five of the seven cornerbacks have four years of eligibility left.
Lewis, a freshman, earned a co-starter listing on the first depth chart of the season. North Carolina State graduate transfer McCloud is the clear-cut boundary corner, with 6-2 former receiver Hart (sophomore) still establishing himself at the position.
Under Mickens’ watch last year, Cincinnati ranked 15th nationally in passes defended (68) and ninth in interceptions (16). Bearcats corner Ahmad Gardner, Mickens’ star pupil, had 11 passes broken up and allowed catches on just 39.7 percent of passes thrown at him. Gardner earned a 90.2 coverage grade from Pro Football Focus and was named a Freshman All-American by multiple outlets.
Gardner returned two interceptions for touchdowns, the first Cincinnati player to do so in a single season since Mickens himself. Mickens still holds the school’s career interception record, with 14.
“You can tell he’s not that far removed from the game,” McCloud said. “His tips and coaching style are very modern. … His fire and competitiveness every day, he reminds me a lot of myself. If I’m not ready to go, I know one thing’s for sure, coach Mickens will be ready to go. That edge he brings is beneficial to me and the group.”
Like every other part of Notre Dame’s team, the corners will be scrutinized and judged in the Irish’s biggest games, starting with Nov. 7 against Clemson and its band of highly touted receivers. Until then, Florida State’s stuck-in-mud offense, Louisville’s run-oriented and screen-heavy attack, Pitt’s middling passing game and Georgia Tech’s post-triple option offense may not be the most imposing of challenges, but success against them is still worth something.
(It’s also worth noting Florida State wide receiver Tamorrion Terry led the country with a 57.89 average touchdown length last year despite playing in a bad offense. McCloud will likely see most of the work on him when the Seminoles visit Oct. 10).
Cornerback was reasonably deemed a possible weakness before the season, given the turnover and inexperience at the position. So far, it appears to have the tools to be an asset in most games Notre Dame plays. If nothing else, the position has a noticeable and critical change in demeanor.
A demeanor centered around that A-word.
“There’s an aggressiveness to the corner play,” Kelly said. “I can see that in our guys. They feel when the ball is in the air, it’s their ball. It’s a mindset. It’s developing that kind of mindset where they believe they’re going to take the ball away.”
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