Before too long, Braden Lenzy must decide what his 2021 season means in the context of his professional football hopes.
The Notre Dame wide receiver’s senior year was a positive. He played a full season for the first time in his career. He posted personal bests in catches (25) and yards (290), with three touchdowns and 69 rushing yards. His ball skills improved. The idea he’s a sprinter playing football is dying out.
As for how that affects his next step, nothing is final.
“I haven’t made any decisions yet,” Lenzy said Monday.
Whatever he does, it’ll come after some deserved personal gratification. He had to reach a point where he feels like there’s actually a decision to make. That’s worth acknowledging, considering where he started and how he got here. For Lenzy, 2021 was unique for one reason.
“It was a fun one,” he said.
Fun and prosperous on and off the field. Lenzy graduated earlier this month with a degree in sociology. He earned his diploma in 3.5 years by taking 18 credits this fall while in season. In May, he interned at a Chicago-based wealth management firm.
Not that Lenzy dreaded his first three years, but this one kept the physical and mental roadblocks at a minimum.
There were no hamstring injuries that popped up in camp and gripped him for an entire season. No in-and-out availability due to various nagging maladies. No humbling freshman moment where he realized two periods into his first fall camp practice that he “couldn’t catch.” Nothing that made him wonder if he was in the right spot, which he admittedly did earlier in his career.
“All the time,” Lenzy said. “If anyone doesn’t, they’re lying or they played Day 1 as a freshman. Notre Dame is hard.
“There are a lot of tricky days, but I didn’t come here with the expectation it would be easy. I have my Notre Dame degree. Nobody can say anything to me now. Football or not, I did my time. I played well and worked hard academically.”
Lenzy will try to cap his senior year with a strong Fiesta Bowl performance Jan. 1 against No. 9 Oklahoma State. He ended the regular season with two touchdowns in his last three games and a carry of at least 12 yards in each of those contests.
“The consistency level is at the highest it has been,” offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. “His commitment to preparing is as high as it’s ever been. His selflessness, how he has acted with the team is what you expect a senior to grow into. When [receiver] Avery [Davis] went down, you saw that tick up and hit another notch.”
Now, Lenzy has to decide if he thinks it’s enough to take his shot at the NFL now or return for a fifth year.
On one hand, there’s a hint of finality to his 2021. He put health concerns behind him. He has a degree from Notre Dame. His phone contacts are deep in networking connections he has made, including Notre Dame business school namesake Tom Mendoza, who was helpful in securing Lenzy’s summer gig. He progressed as a wide receiver.
At the same time, though, the production was still modest. Career-bests for him aren’t eye-grabbing in the deep pool of receiver talent in college football. He had three games with just one reception this year. There were occasional miscommunications between he and Notre Dame quarterbacks. Only 57 percent of his targets were catches. As far as professional ability goes, his best trait remains his speed.
Perhaps the advice will be to take another year to build on this one.
“I don’t have any benchmarks,” Lenzy said. “I haven’t gone into this thinking, ‘If I get this grade, I’m gone.’ I don’t really know what I’m going to do.”
The “blessing” to be here, though — at Notre Dame, weighing a stay-or-go-pro decision — isn’t lost on him.
“I didn’t think as a [high school] sophomore when I was visiting Washington State that I would get an offer,” Lenzy said. “I didn’t think a lot of these situations I’d be in were even a consideration. I never grew up thinking these were possibilities until they were just right in front of me.”
Being a senior 12-game starter and a newly minted Notre Dame alumni after three challenging years will give anyone a new perspective on the journey needed to get there. He has imparted his lessons and wisdom gathered along the way on the Irish’s trio of freshman receivers: Deion Colzie, Lorenzo Styles and Jayden Thomas.
Colzie is a second-teamer and has four catches. Styles shoehorned his way into the rotation early on and is now a starter with 16 catches. Thomas has played just 14 snaps. All of those roles are larger than Lenzy’s zero snaps as a freshman. With the plausible exception of Styles, though, they’re still small enough roles for the same restlessness Lenzy battled to creep in. He can tell them that staying the course often leads to fun in the end.
“You might not see the field a single rep that week and you feel like you should be playing,” Lenzy said. “You still have to get up and make that walk, because that’s what you want. You’re working toward something. Especially here. It’s hard. If you don’t want it and you’re not willing to wait, odds are a lot of the time it’s not going to happen here.”
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