Winning individual awards in college football isn't easy.
As consistently great as Notre Dame has been during Brian Kelly's tenure, you could count on one hand until last year how many major individual awards Irish players have won during his 11 years and counting in South Bend according to ESPN's database.
Linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah became the sixth Notre Dame player to take home individual postseason hardware during Kelly's reign when he won the Butkus Award last season. Will there be a seventh this season?
Four Notre Dame players — junior safety Kyle Hamilton, junior running back Kyren Williams, sophomore tight end Michael Mayer and senior offensive lineman Jarrett Patterson — popped up on preseason watch lists this week for awards given annually at their respective positions or sides of the ball.
If you had to pick one of the four to come out a winner, there's a case it shouldn't be the player who has appeared in the top 10 of multiple lists identifying the best players in college football regardless of position — Hamilton.
That's because it should be Mayer.
We all know the Mayer storylines by now. He tied for the team lead in receptions last season with 42. He finished second in receiving yards with 450. He scored two touchdowns. And he did it all as a true freshman.
The Mackey Trophy, given to the best tight end in college football, released its watch list Friday morning. To none's surprise, Mayer was on it. He was named to the Biletnikoff Award watch list, after all, and no tight end has ever claimed that prize. It has gone to a wide receiver every year since its inception in 1994.
Notre Dame has seven senior wide receivers desperate to make an impact. None of them are proven commodities in the passing game, though. Mayer is. He could go for somewhere around 1,000 yards and 70 or so catches if the Irish’s aerial attack takes the step forward Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Rees is hoping for. Mayer might need to reach those numbers just to keep the Irish afloat if it doesn’t materialize like Rees wants it to as well.
Either way, Mayer is going to be a heavily utilized option for Notre Dame. Usage always seems to be part of the recipe when it comes time to determine award winners. That's why if you had to pick one player from Notre Dame who will have something to place on his mantle at the end of the year, it’s Mayer — the Irish player who returns in 2021 with more catches and receiving yards than anybody else on the roster.
That's no slight to Hamilton, Patterson or Williams, either. There are reasons to suggest none of those players — though all incredibly valuable to Notre Dame in 2021 — will not walk away with hardware at the end of the season.
Linebacker Manti Te'o won the Butkus Award and six other awards in 2012, tight end Tyler Eifert won the Mackey Award in the same stellar season, linebacker Jaylon Smith claimed the Butkus Award in 2015 and linebacker Drue Tranquill took home the Wuerffel Trophy in 2018, and Owusu-Koramoah won the Butkus Award last year.
That's it as far as Notre Dame award winners went from 2010-20.
The 2000s were even more sparse. Wide receiver Golden Tate (Biletnikoff Award, 2009) and quarterback Brady Quinn (Maxwell Award and Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, 2006) were the only Notre Dame players to win awards in that decade.
By now the point should seem pretty clear. It was written in the first sentence of this article; winning individual awards in college football isn't easy — even if your helmet is gold and your football field has the letter 'N' over the letter 'D' at the 50-yard line.
Te'o is the only Notre Dame player to ever win the two awards — the Bednarik Award and the Lott IMPACT Trophy — Hamilton has already been placed on watch lists for. No Irish defensive back has ever come out on top for the Thorpe Award, which Hamilton will likely also see his name surface on a watch list for.
Hamilton could have a standout season worthy of earning him a top 10 or 15 selection in the 2022 NFL Draft. He could be the best player wearing blue and gold every Saturday. Or the best player from either team, for that matter. But someone else might have better statistics at the end of the season to earn the hardware. That's the way these things go a lot of the time.
The same goes for Williams, who is on watch lists for the Maxwell Award and the Doak Walker Award. The former is issued to the top player in all of college football, offense or defense. Consider it a not-so-poor-man’s Heisman Trophy. The latter is given to the best running back.
Though six Irish players have won the Maxwell Award a total of seven times, it isn’t easy to do for obvious reasons. The winner of the Heisman Trophy has won the Maxwell Award in the same year in six of the last seven seasons.
The Doak Walker Award won’t be a cake walk for Williams either, especially if Rees gets sophomore Chris Tyree more involved in the ground game. Senior running back C'Bo Flemister has made his case for more carries too. A stable of three solid running backs usually isn't conducive to having the workload generally required to win the Doak Walker.
As for Patterson, Kelly seems very keen on starting Zeke Correll at center. That would wipe out Patterson's chances of winning the Rimington from the moment Correll snaps the ball for the first time in the season opener on Sept. 5 at Florida State.
More Notre Dame players could appear on watch lists as the offseason progresses and pushes closer to September. But even as that happens, one thing is already pretty obvious: Mayer is the most likely Notre Dame player to hoist an individual trophy at the end of the year.
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