Redefining the term "Notre Dame kid"

In recruiting, the term “Notre Dame kid” is used to describe certain individuals. It’s complimentary, but it always refers to how players are off the field. It’s often about them as a student or how they will fit into the Notre Dame community as a whole.

That’s not how it is with most football programs. If a recruit gets labeled a “Georgia kid” or “Alabama kid”, it’s about their physical traits and how they fit with other players on those teams.

People might start using the term “Notre Dame kid” a bit differently than they have in the past, though. It’s because there’s been a common theme emerging with Irish football players as of late, specifically on defense.

They love football. They are obsessed with getting better at it. They have been empowered by their coaches and have shown that they have the intelligence to handle the things that defensive coordinator Al Golden throws at them.

“One of our biggest tenets is just empowerment, let them figure things out — teach them how to fish, if you will,” Golden relayed in the spring. “Don't feed them. Don't stand behind them during practice and tell them to get lined up here or lined up there or ‘you should have done that.’ Don't yell at them during the play or before the play. Let them learn how to do it. Let them go through it and let them learn how to make decisions.

“In other words, don't create an environment where indecision is OK. Let them learn how to make a decision. And then when they come over to the sideline, we help them understand, ‘Well, maybe try this next time’ or ‘That was a great solution, but here's what we would want to do in a game.’ So, that's really how we're based.”

Golden has that trust in his players because they have earned it. He’s seen that play out with his defense last season becoming one of the best in the country. He’s also seen that from the players who moved to the NFL and aced the combine interviews because of what they learned at Notre Dame.

“Yeah, the thing that you become very proud of as a coach is that when the guys come back from the combine or they come back from the Senior Bowl, and they say, ‘Yeah, we were all over it. We had the answers to the test because of those things.’” Golden said earlier this week. “Those fundamentals that are built into situational football— all of those things. So, it's a little bit more of an undertaking, but when you get it in the locker room, it's fun. It's fun to come to work every day.”

It’s the kind of thing that gave linebacker Marist Liufau a boost with his draft stock. He was selected in the third round by the Dallas Cowboys and their defensive coordinator, Mike Zimmer, said, “You sold me when you told me what everyone on the defense was doing when you were here on your visit.”

Football IQ and a passion for the game didn’t leave the program when players like Liufau and JD Bertrand moved on to the NFL. It’s carried on with Jack Kiser as a sixth-year senior. He’s someone All-American safety Xavier Watts describes as a “computer-machine” with his knowledge of the defense. And there are underclassmen who are hungry for bigger roles in the defense who clearly care deeply about the game and play fast in a complex defense because they have put in the time to learn it.

One of those underclassmen is linebacker Drayk Bowen. He credits Bertrand for setting a great example for him and the other linebackers and Bertrand was happy to take on the role of mentor to show Bowen the way.

“JD helped me a lot last year. He was more of a mentor for me. Anything I needed to go to with him, I could do,” Bowen stated in the spring. ”I asked a lot of questions. I asked how he did things, how he handled himself in class, the weight room, football study and out on the field. That part I learned a lot from him.”

This isn’t just something that is being developed within the program either. High football IQ and a passion for the game is something that Notre Dame has identified as key traits when recruiting players from high school and in the transfer portal.

Spend five minutes talking with graduate transfer Jordan Clark and it’s obvious that he is someone who obsessively studies the nickel position in order to get better. It’s the same with graduate transfer Rod Heard, who approaches the game in a similar way to Clark. The defensive backs as a whole share their passion and knowledge with each to make them both better.

“Rod and I talk ball all the time. He’s a real football head, so even in positions he hasn’t played, he has a lot of knowledge about them,” Clark said. “So just in playing concepts, trying to figure out the defense, things that can potentially happen that are beaters…we talk about that a lot.

“And it helps us both because he gets there and I get reps there and he gets reps at boundary safety too and he teaches me what he sees there in case I ever need to plug in there as well and it’s been awesome being able to bounce ideas off him. But we all do it for each other. BMo and I, X (Watts) and I, everybody kind of helps out where they can…Adon (Shuler)…so it’s awesome.”

Shuler is someone Golden and defensive backs/defensive pass game coordinator Mike Mickens have praised because he’s hungry for knowledge and it’s helping Shuler push Heard for a starting position. True freshmen safety Kennedy Urlacher and nickel Karson Hobbs might not be pushing to start quite yet, but they fit right in with the older players because, as Clark described them, they are students of the game.

The three biggest reasons why Golden believes true freshman Kyngstonn Vililamu-Asa is putting himself in a position to compete for playing time are because of his “preparation, maturity, and IQ”. Golden has called him “an exceptional learner” and noted how much effort KVA puts in to become better.

It’s not a coincidence. These are the types of players Notre Dame is targeting to play in their defense. They better care about football…A LOT. They have to because they will be surrounded by others who feel the same way.

“Yeah, if football is social for you, like this is not the place,” stated Golden. “If you want to be great, if you want to be really coached in the fundamentals of the game — the ball disruption, how to defend the screen, how to tackle, different techniques in the running game. If you want to be challenged with that all day — how to play situational football — you want to be challenged with that every day until every one of those tools becomes your own, this is the place to come. And that's the truth.

“If you just want to roll the ball out and just play the same coverage every play, this is not it. This is an NFL system that we execute and that we are giving to the guys. They're empowered to take it over and execute at a high level. And to do that, you need to recruit the type of young man that you're talking about. We couldn't be happier than we are with those guys that have come in, in the transfer portal.”

In a world where so much of recruiting in college football is about flash and NIL dollars, it may be difficult to get the message across to high school players and transfers. The ones who are looking for like-minded individuals as teammates and also looking to play in a system that gets them ready for the NFL want to be developed at Notre Dame.

“We try to sell ourselves,’ said Golden. “You would hope that that would be appealing to a lot of young men, that they’re going to leave here with the skill set and a variety of different things. Again, if you're going to put in 10,000 hours over the next three or four [years], put it into a system that's going to apply at the next level.

“Don't put it into a system where you're going to have to start from scratch three years from now. I think that's where hearing Marist (Liufau) and JD (Bertrand) and Javontae (Jean-Baptiste) and those guys come back from their experience and say, ‘Coach, thank you, thank you to the staff. Thank you.’ To do all those little things, it takes a little bit more, but at the end, it's preparing you for a career.”

“Notre Dame kid” will likely always be used to describe how someone fits as a student-athlete. Don’t be surprised if that phrase takes on another meaning one day, though, because Notre Dame is clearly looking for a certain type of player on defense and they have filled out their roster with individuals who are obsessed with the game of football.

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