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Notre Dame Football

Durham Smythe: "Tight ends need consistency"

March 27, 2017
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The first thing that you notice about Durham Smythe right away is that he looks bigger and more prepared for the season. In fact, he commented that he gained ten pounds this offseason around a schedule that, according to Durham, involved eating almost every two hours.

When asked if he put on the weight to play more inside, Durham stated, "We need consistency, over the last few years we have had flashes of great play, but we need to be a consistent group of the 4-5 of us. We are trying to be sufficient in the run game, and then the next play run a 30 yard whatever.”

This desire for consistency may come from the new leadership in the tight ends room. Durham was very excited to have Coach Chip Long teaching the group of tight ends. He says, “He’s a great influence in the room already, with his energy that he brings, and his personality meshes well with everyone in the room. It’s only been three weeks, but we’re all really excited to play for him.”

It seems like this is exactly what the tight ends need right now. After years of dominance from Tyler Eifert, Kyle Rudolph, and others, the tight ends have settled on relative mediocrity as of late. It is not because of lack of talent, but because of reasons we may never know but can probably be attributed to a combination of coaching, effort, academic issues and most of all: consistency.

The tight ends need someone to come in and fire up the room, and hopefully, that new coach with the combination of two dominant high school players in Brock Wright and Cole Kmet along with the return of Alize Jones and the experienced Durham Smythe will return the tight end position back to its former glory.

But to get to this glory, we will all be waiting to see the new offensive scheme that Chip Long has installed. Smythe was emphatic that one of the best parts of the scheme would be the tempo. He states, “The scheme runs defenses down later in the game. I think the strength staff has gotten us ready to play at our best in the third and fourth quarters where last year statistically, we weren’t the best. I think that it's something Ballis has preached.”

And with his many duties, many people were concerned that he might not spend all his time in the tight end room, but Durham assured us that Coach Long is in the room with the tight ends all the time.

However, Durham does not spend every waking moment in the tight ends room, in his spare time, he is, according to himself, “far and away the best ping pong player on the team.” And he stated that he has had many epic games at the gug ping pong table. Let’s hope that this season, with the help of the new scheme from Coach Long, the extra weight, and the aggressive strength program that those epic matches can take place in Notre Dame Stadium as well.

 
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