Florida Trip Provided Momentum & Motivation for Notre Dame Vyper Jordan Botelho

Notre Dame vyper Jordan Botelho has put together a solid career over the last four seasons in South Bend. 

The Hawaii native has tallied 65 tackles, 14 tackles for loss and 10.5 sacks in 47 career games and made 12 starts in 2023. 

Entering his final year, Botelho traveled to Florida to train at X3 Performance in Fort Myers. There, he worked with Fort Wayne native and former Indiana Hoosiers cornerback Lawrence Barnett, who has also worked with former Notre Dame players at Traction Sports (Jaylon Smith). 

“I wanted to keep it rolling,” Botelho said of the trip. “When I came back, I was able to work hard and keep building on top of that.” 

When Botelho arrived in Florida, Barnett ran him through about a week of NFL Combine training, which included advising on a diet and gaining testing numbers. This information is key for guys like Botelho to see their strengths and weaknesses, but it also provides a taste of what they’ll experience during actual Combine training. 

“For Jordan, he’s a big and powerful runner,” explained Barnett. “He accelerates very well, especially coming off the edge. We found out the back end of his sprint is what he’s going to need to work on to fully maximize his speed. 

“From an acceleration standpoint, we took him through some flys. Some of his acceleration flys were the exact same as smaller linebackers and even some safeties and defensive backs we have. I think his flying 10-yard was 1.12. That’s a 10-yard build and a 10-yard fly. He’s showing a lot of acceleration. His fastest 5-yard build, 10-yard fly was 1.259.” 

That’s high praise, as X3 Performance has worked with 39 players who have been drafted in the NFL Draft over the last two years. 

Now, Botelho doesn’t have the length or size Isaiah Foskey, but Barnett was still very impressed with what he saw athletically. 

“He bends well,” stated Barnett. “His burst and change of direction was really good. He can plant his foot in the ground. I did some mock stuff with him where I was an offensive lineman and did not let him get up the field. He did a really good job of putting his foot in the dirt and cutting up under me.” 

Outside of acceleration, Barnett was most impressed with Botelho’s power and strength. From a numbers standpoint, Botelho exceeded the bar for athletes at X3 Performance when it came to the Keiser machine. 

“Jordan’s a very strong kid and his output on the Keiser machine was really high,” Barnett said. “When we do vertical Keiser stuff from a squat rack, we try to get 10xs. Say we put 250 pounds of resistance on there, we try to get times 10 and he was getting times 12 on vertical force production and output, which is really powerful. 

“He definitely showed he’s a very strong kid.” 

If you’re a Notre Dame coach or fan, the most impressive part of this is that Botelho was around 270 pounds when he was in Florida and still put up impressive numbers. 

Botelho mentioned on Tuesday that he’s trimmed down to around 250 pounds after getting serious about his diet. 

“I really just ate smarter,” said Botelho. “I took my diet more seriously, and I was able to drop like 20 pounds. I was at 270. Now, I'm at 250, 255.”

Before Botelho left Florida, Barnett and the team at X3 Performance had a conversation about what his game could look like if he trimmed up. 

“We took his body fat and we did a lot of different assessments on him,” stated Barnett. “We showed him that if he dropped some of his weight, he would move faster and a lot quicker. 

“If he’s 250 right now and he’s moving like he did here, I think he’ll be in a good situation.” 

If Botelho can take his game to the next level, the Irish might be an even bigger problem for opponents as Notre Dame finished in the top five in quarterback pressures a year ago. 

“I feel like we should use that as a standard,” said Botelho, who recorded 4.0 sacks in 2023. “I say that's a baseline, so everything that we did in the past, just build on top of that and just go out each day and improve daily.”

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