SOUTH BEND, Ind. — You can see alternately in Notre Dame’s training camp practices that breathtaking skill set in Tobias Merriweather that his Irish football teammates gush about on one play, and a guy who looks like he’s hearing footsteps on the next.
“I see all the [social media] posts, everything I'm tagged in,” the 6-foot-4, 205-pound sophomore wide receiver said Friday after practice of the outside expectations. “And I'm just like, ‘You know, it's in God's hands at this point.’
“My coach is believing in me. Sam [Hartman] believes in me. [My] teammates believe in me. So, whatever happens is going to happen. Hopefully, it is what we all want, because I want the same thing.”
Not that there haven’t been some dramatic transformations already.
A player who first enrolled in June of 2022 at less than 180 pounds and fresh off the Washington high school state 200-meter dash championship has actually gained speed and quickness as he’s muscled up roughly 30 pounds in 14 months.
He sharpens his skills every day in practice against either a freshman All-American, in Ben Morrison, who appears poised for a more impressive sophomore season, or 6-3, 207-pound grad senior corner Cam Hart, who’s been largely fully healthy in camp for the first time in years — and surging.
And Merriweather has a starting quarterback whose proficiency in the deep passing game would seem to only heighten Merriweather’s skills and value to the Irish offense, now directed by first-year ND offensive coordinator Gerad Parker.
“I mean, it's all you want. It’s what you come to Notre Dame for,” Merriweather said of Hartman, a transfer from Wake Forest in his first season with ND after five with Wake. “It's what you play college football for.
“Sam is one of the best quarterbacks who ever stepped foot on a college football field. So, just having that guy throwing the ball every day, you know if we’re great, he’s going to be great. And if he’s great, we’re going to be great.”
The intermediate step that Merriweather is still striving for on his way to greatness, roughly two weeks before his first collegiate start on Aug. 26, is consistency. The 13-ranked Irish face Navy in that game, in Dublin, Ireland. The Mids were second nationally among the FBS’ 130 teams last season in rush defense and 123rd in pass-efficiency defense.
“Just growth. Just everything,” Irish wide receivers coach Chansi Stuckey said of his points of emphasis to Merriweather. “It's route running, contested catches, understanding of the offense and what we're trying to do with position versatility.
“All is in this big circle. Like, if I had to make a pie chart, all those things with every receiver are always the things ... because we forget, I mean, this guy's a true sophomore. True sophomore. That's all he is.
“And he has high, high potential. So, like all the guys in the group, just stay focused. Hey, do the work one play at a time. Win the interval. Let the results take care of themselves.”
And that’s for the wide receiver group as a whole, whose leading receiver in 2022 among them is now a cornerback. At Ohio State.
And junior Lorenzo Styles (30 catches, 340 yards, 3 TDs) isn’t on an arc to be a factor in the teams’ 2023 meeting on Sept. 23 in Notre Dame Stadium.
The remaining receivers who are expected to be front and center for the Irish in that game don’t have a lot of statistical equity beyond junior Jayden Thomas’ 25 catches for 362 yards and three TDs. Of the other two projected starting wideouts, senior Chris Tyree is a converted running back and Merriweather has one career catch.
Two of the three backups/rotational players are freshmen — Rico Flores Jr. and Jaden Greathouse.
So it’s a big mental step up in navigating expectations for all of them.
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“If they're here with not high expectations, we've got the wrong guy, first of all,” Stuckey said. “So, we should have the best in the country at each position here, and I think we're getting to that at the receiver position. But you meet each guy where he is.
“You don't want to put more expectations on him than other people do,” Stuckey said specifically of Merriweather. “I will never kind of tell him what the outside world is saying, even though you read it. I try to stay focused on who he is and what we're trying to do in the building and what he needs to improve on.
“When you start listening to outside noise and you start reading your own clippings of where I should be doing and not should be doing, you lose focus. So, I try to keep all my guys focused. That's why our love is so strong in our room, because it's right here, right now. … You need to train to have success, and that's what I work with the guys on.”
What that looked like Tuesday night in an off-campus practice open to the media, was a work-in-progress — at best. The media collectively hyperventilated about the Irish defense, which in turn prompted a tsunami of concern on Twitter/X about the progress of the Notre Dame offense.
“It's so hard, because a lot of our offensive juice comes from the defense on game day,” Merriweather said, when asked if that was a typical outcome in practice, an outlier or something in between.
“It's easier for them to be ‘rah rah’ and banging heads and yelling. They’ve just got to go out there and hit something, and we’ve got to go out there and execute. So, it’s a different intensity in terms of offense/defense.
“But we’ll have our days when we will get the best of them and they'll get the best of us. Like today, during two-minute [drills], we did really good and made them look like how we looked on that Tuesday.”
In the limited media-open window during Friday’s practice, No. 14 of training camp, Merriweather’s first rep of a passing drill with no defense resulted in a misread on his part and the ball being thrown roughly eight yards behind him.
On the next rep, he tracked a ball that traveled more than 50 yards in the air perfectly, accelerating to catch up to what initially appeared to be an overthrow like few on the Irish roster can.
“It's the truth of who he is,” Stuckey said.
And who he may become. Bur sooner? Later?
“I mean, I'm young,” Merriweather said, “but everyone has to start somewhere. And I feel like it's my time.”
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