Eli Raridon hardly remembers first Notre Dame touchdown catch: ‘I blacked out'

Eli Raridon lined up attached to Joe Alt’s outside hip early in the third quarter on Saturday, expecting the ball to go elsewhere.

Notre Dame led 17-7 with the ball at the Wake Forest 19-yard line and desperately needed a score to break the game open.

Upon the snap, he faked a block, forcing Wake Forest defensive back Evan Slocum to crash on play action temporarily before sprinting down the field on a corner route. 

Quarterback Sam Hartman pulled the handoff, quickly scanned the field and fired a throw off his backfoot to Raridon in the end zone. 

“I looked up, and the ball was already out,” Raridon said. “After that, I don't even remember what happened. I blacked out.”

Details of the play might be fuzzy, but the tranced Raridon came down with an over-the-shoulder catch amidst double coverage and held onto the ball after Slocum tackled him. 

He then stood up and flexed his biceps, swelling with joy.

The 6-foot-7, 250-pound tight end had just snagged the first touchdown catch of his Notre Dame career, a 19-yard score and his third reception of the game.  

Still, the moment meant so much more to him than any individual statistic could encompass. 

It signified a return to form following a taxing rehab. 

Last October, Raridon tore the ACL in his right knee for the second time in 10 months. He elected to reconstruct the damaged ligament with a graft from his patellar tendon, a procedure that reduces the likelihood of another tear but the recovery process can be more arduous. 

“With my surgery, it was a little more traumatic on my knee with the patellar tendon,” Raridon said. “I was getting a lot more pain than the first time.”

Of course, the biggest hurdle was the mental aspect of a second straight ACL tear. 

“I met with a sports psychologist, too,” Raridon said. “That helped, but I think it was more just getting physically into things. It’s hard. I didn’t play football for a year. I had to get used to blocking guys again. It took me a couple of weeks to get back in the groove of playing again. It just happened over time really.”

Raridon returned to action on Oct. 7 and played 10, 14 and 8 snaps in his first three games back.  

His minutes significantly increased once tight end Mitchell Evans was lost for the season with a knee injury against Pitt. He played 28 snaps in the loss to Clemson but still hadn’t been targeted in the passing game.

That obviously changed on Saturday against Wake Forest, with Hartman targeting him three times for a trio of receptions, 39 yards and a score.

“You unlock another key to your game coming back from what he’s went through,” Gerad Parker said. “You get to that point, catch the football the way he did and run with it and kind of have both worlds come together in block and pass, I just think it put him in a confidence mode that he had not yet gotten to.”

Now that he’s shown what he can do, it should open up more opportunities for him in the offense.

He’s a willing blocker, but he hopes to continue developing in the pass game now that he’s back to 100 percent health.  

“I can work on everything, but the thing I can improve most is definitely my route game,” Raridon said. “In high school, I never learned about different coverages or how to run routes really, so when I came here, that was kind of new. 

“I’ve always been athletic, so it worked out in high school. But when you come to college, you have to know how to run routes, you have to know what coverages are happening when you go out there.”

The sky’s the limit going forward after his first touchdown on Saturday. 

“He played his best football, minus the touchdown (on Saturday),” Parker said. “Throw that into it, I think you’ve got yourselves a chance for him to continue to grow and become a special player.”

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