Jack Kiser received a flurry of texts from old high school teammates this week.
They saw his name atop the Notre Dame football depth chart at rover linebacker and wanted to congratulate him. Some of them also wanted to ask him a question.
“What do the ‘or’s mean?” Kiser paraphrased.
Those “or”s appear in three places on the Notre Dame depth chart; twice next to the two other names under Kiser’s at rover and once between senior George Takacs and sophomore Kevin Bauman at tight end. They designate Takacs and Bauman as 2B and 2C behind sophomore Michael Mayer in the hierarchy of Irish tight ends.
That makes Kiser, graduate senior Isaiah Pryor and senior Paul Moala 1A, 1B and 1C at rover. They’re all going to play. Perhaps Kiser will play more than the other two. That can be presumed by his placement at 1A.
Nobody really knows for sure, though. Kiser said as much on Tuesday.
“We don’t really know what’s going on,” Kiser said. “Everybody is practicing like they’re going to be the one. You have to have the confidence when your name is called to go in and make plays.”
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah isn’t dressing up in blue and gold anymore. The 2020 Butkus Award winner can’t play any snap, any situation for Notre Dame like he did last season. That’s a major reason why Kiser, Pryor and Moala have shared so much playing time.
“If you look at the three of us, we all have a little different style of play,” Kiser said.
Pryor is probably the most athletic of the three. He’s comfortable in coverage and running up on ball carriers coming out of the backfield. He’s a former Ohio State safety, after all. Kiser called him “twitchy and quick.”
Kiser called Moala a playmaker, meanwhile. He wasn’t able to showcase much last season after suffering a season-ending achilles injury in the third game. Ironically, that game was against Florida State. He’s back in the fold ahead of this week’s matchup with the Seminoles, and it sounds like he’s not going anywhere. Head coach Brian Kelly said Moala “has had a really good camp.”
“And then you got me, who I would like to think I’m very consistent in doing my job and not letting the team down,” Kiser said. “We don’t have a guy with the skill set of (Owusu-Koramoah), but I think as a corps, as a unit, we can fill in his shoes together.”
The key word there is together.
“As a whole linebacker unit, we’re very close,” Kiser said. “We understand there needs to be a healthy competition in order to make everybody better. If you watch during practice, we’re always talking to each other and having a good time. But also at the same time, there is a competition. Someone has to walk out on the first snap.
“But we’re always going to be supportive of each other. It’s just one of those things that when you put in so much work next to a guy, you gain that respect for him. You gain that bond. A starting position versus a backup position isn’t going to take that away.”
It’s been necessary for the rover linebackers to lean on each other this offseason. They’ve been tasked with learning a new scheme under defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman. Kiser said there are more man coverage responsibilities at the position under Freeman than there were under former Notre Dame DC and new Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea.
It hasn’t been anything the player many of his teammates picked as the Notre Dame player they’d most like to have as a professor in a recent social media video can’t handle. That’d be Kiser, by the way. Mr. 1A himself.
That 1A stands for more than his slot on the depth chart, too. Just three years ago, Kiser played Class A football at Pioneer High School in Royal Center, Indiana. Population? Somewhere between 800 and 900. Now Kiser could start in front of 80,000 any given Saturday.
“I’m in the moment trying to make the best out of my situation, but I could certainly see how kids from a small school with no stoplights surrounded by cornfields is going to look up (to me),” Kiser said. “I do take pride in that, and that is something special.
“I certainly had a lot of help along the way. I had a lot of people help mold me into who I am. Certainly the whole community of Royal Center and Pioneer. If I can me a role model for somebody, that’s amazing. I would love to be that.”
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