Two-time All-American Xavier Watts shared a 67-second video goodbye on social media this weekend that highlighted a handful of the 970 snaps on defense the Notre Dame safety logged during the 2024 season, including the protracted College Football Playoff run.
That’s more plays than any Irish defender has subjected his body to since Pro Football Focus began charting snap counts for all the FBS teams in 2014, and more than every defensive player in college football did this past season except for Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron, who played one snap more.
Had Watts elected to cash in his COVID exemption for a sixth year of college football, his run-up to Notre Dame’s menu of 15 spring practices — the format and sequence of which were heavily influenced by both sports science and an unusually late Easter weekend — would have looked very different from last spring, when he was coming off a season where he led all Irish defenders with 708 snaps.
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As it is, the heavy workload in an unprecedented 16-game season and an eye on sports science, prompted Watts to skip the physical testing portions of the NFL Scouting Combine a little over a week ago and defer to Notre Dame’s Pro Day, which itself got pushed back to a still-unannounced date to give all its NFL Draft hopefuls the right balance of postseason recovery time and combine prep time to maximize their performances.
The actual NFL Draft is April 24-26 in Green Bay, Wis.
Only tight end Mitchell Evans, among ND’s eight combine invitees, performed in both positional workouts and tests like the 40-yard dash, vertical leap and standing broad jump.
As for the Irish players who are returning and start spring practice on March 19, the only given commonality among what their spring will look like is the start date, the date of the traditional spring wrap-up — the annual Blue-Gold Game on April 12 — and the rarity of Notre Dame staging several practices this spring AFTER the Blue-Gold Game to get to the NCAA allotted 15 without compressing too much the window to fit those in.
It may be all about, as head coach Marcus Freeman likes to say, team glory, but getting to team glory means a lot of individualization in the spring — not only based on workload. Not only by position group. Not only within a position group.
“We have taken a look at not only our data within sports performance, but also conversations with coaches on what they believe the priorities are,” associate athletic director of sports performance John Wagle said during a meeting with the media this past week. “And learning about what these players really need to reach their full potential.
“And we take all of those things together, and we develop an individualized development plan for each guy.”
Wagle is just one of the faces of what Notre Dame football’s heavy lean into sports science under fourth-year head coach Freeman looks like these days. Director of football performance Loren Landow is probably the most visible and talked about, as he presides over the strength and conditioning program.
But there’s also associate director of sports nutrition Alexa Appelman, team physician Dr. Matt Leiszler — who among other things helps minimize the players’ concussion risk, head football athletic trainer Rob Hunt, and sports psychology program director Joey Ramaeker, among others.
“He [Ramaeker], of course, gives excellent clinical care off the field, Wagle said, “but he has modernized our approach to sports psychology. He leverages the latest technology to help our guys perform in the biggest moments.”
Big moments that Included four playoff games that culminated in a 34-23 loss to Ohio State on Jan. 20 in the CFP National Championship Game in Atlanta.
“We have so much to be proud of with how we moved through that College Football Playoff,” Wagle said, “but maybe what we didn't see was how our sports performance team impacted that journey as well. And we're equally as proud of what happened on the field as what happened off of it.
“And that group strength is really their commitment to collaboration. It’s their commitment to working together. They truly believe that their success is tied together, and that they can amplify their impact by coming together in that way.
“And that shows up in a lot of different ways, quite frankly. So, we have a really precise approach to the way that we design practices, and that's led by Marcus, but it's augmented by our data.”
How that played out during winter workouts was that those actually started for nine of Notre Dame’s 13 early enrolled freshmen and its six January-arriving transfers before ND finished its playoff run.
Then returning players’ winter workout start dates were staggered by those who needed more recovery time because of heavier workloads during the regular season and playoff. And Notre Dame’s four ultra-early enrollees, who helped the team prep for its final three playoff games, started later than the other mid-year enrollees.
“We're going to continue to kind of narrow that funnel for each individual player,” Wagle said of the approach to spring practice, “and really kind of turn the dials of what the emphasis — or lack thereof — is for each guy.”
Traditionally, Notre Dame has had a list of players who miss spring football all together because of injury and/or surgery rehab and recovery, and another group with limited/modified activity for the same reasons.
This spring there will be another group that Hunt, during his Thursday press conference, explained would be given some breaks related to contact or running in spring practices, based on significant roles/snap counts this past season.
That group comprises OT Aamil Wagner, LB Drayk Bowen, S Adon Shuler, CB Christian Gray, CB Leonard Moore, DE Bryce Young, WR Jaden Greathouse, DE Joshua Burnham, RB Jeremiyah Love, and LB Jaylen Sneed.
Love, ND’s leading rusher in 2024, played a manageable 465 snaps — more than 2023 starting running back Audric Estimé did in 12 games in 2023 (388) but far fewer than Kyren Williams’ 606 in 2021.
But Love had to face three rushing defenses ranked in the top 10 nationally during the four playoff games as well as a physical Georgia team, and doing so while coming back from a knee injury he suffered in the Nov. 30 regular-season finale against USC.
“It was not surgical. It was never considered surgical,” trainer Rob Hunt said. “It was an injury that, certainly, the timing of it is frustrating. Had he not had the little pick at it during the Georgia game, it probably would have been less — not theatrical but just more emotion attached to it.
“We had some time there as well, which was in our favor. We had 20 before the Indiana game (on Dec. 20) that served us really well. It allowed us to really have him go quiet for 10 days. Then we had a five-day ramp up, then five days of preparation for that IU game. But surgery wasn’t a piece.
“Then it was just how do we get him enough work? John talked about the development of practice and practice structures as we go through that with each individual player. How much does he need to be healthy? Then how much does he need to be prepared?
“As good of an athlete as Jeremiyah is, you still have to practice. You still have to get the reps and the work in to be able to do that. That was the balance of the challenge of getting him enough work to be able to go through it.
“Then being able to tolerate it. Being able to tolerate the less-than-optimal condition of how you feel and still perform at the highest level against outstanding competition.”
Tackle Aamil Wagner on offense actually played three more snaps than did Watts in 2024 and more than 200 more than offensive lineman Pat Coogan’s team-leading total of 769 in 2023, but not that many more than some Irish players did when high-tempo offenses were more common and the college rules regarding clock stoppages were different.
Offensive linemen Steve Elmer and Nick Martin, for instance, each played 966 snaps in 2014, and center Sam Mustipher played 956 in 2018.
But it’s not just about snap counts, because not all snaps are created equal.
“Snaps matter,” Wagle said, “because every snap is at least paired with a decision being made by that player. And more often than not, a collision event or a sprint effort or anything like that. But we do look a little bit deeper into that.
“A player like Xavier, with his snap counts, they tend to involve a lot of coverage yardage, because he was elite back there, versus some other players that are just in different roles.
“That every snap is a starting point for us, and that's meaningful, but we do need to dive deeper into the context of what those snaps are too.”
And dive into injury prevention and dive into what may have gone wrong when there’s a trend of injuries. But at the same time, there’s a balance in giving Freeman the time and resources to practice often enough, physically enough, intense enough to put together a team that has a chance to win a national title in January.
“From our lens within sports performance, we're very careful there that the goal of practicing football isn't to not get injured or some other ancillary thing,” Wagle said. “The goal of practicing football is to improve our team and to prepare for football in the fall.
“And so, we take every practice day that we're afforded very seriously, because of that opportunity for development and for the opportunity to develop this team into what Marcus envisions it can be next fall.”
The Irish —14-2 in 2024 and No. 2 in the final polls — open the 2025 season Aug. 31 at Miami.
“Our role is really to maximize those opportunities for our coaches,” Wagle continued. “We have the best coaches in the world, and so our approach is: ‘Well, let's figure out the way that we can get the most football in while also individualizing the players-development process and focusing on maybe some other areas that, downstream, if we take a longer-term approach, we are actually going to yield a better version of that player.’”
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