Offseason Discipline Paying Off for Notre Dame OL Aamil Wagner
Notre Dame entered the season with several questions surrounding its offense. Five games into the season, the Fighting Irish have shown flashes of what they can become, but they still have several unanswered questions heading into a key three-game stretch in October.
Joe Rudolph’s offensive line had holes to fill and then the Purdue game happened. Notre Dame lost starting center Ashton Craig for the season and starting right guard Billy Schrauth has yet to return to the field.
Right tackle Aamil Wagner made his first start in the season opener and has quickly become an answer for the Irish offense. The Ohio native has been solid in his first five games as the starter, which has led to his name not even popping up under concerns from outside The Gug.
Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock fell in love quickly with the 6-foot-6, 291-pounder in fall camp and Wagner hasn’t let his coach down.
“I loved, from the beginning, his consistency,” stated Denbrock. “He's an incredibly intelligent young man that even though he didn't have a lot of experience from a game atmosphere standpoint, nothing that was thrown at him by our defense — which as you guys know, throws a lot at him — shook him. He was always able to kind of pull himself back and refocus on the task at hand.”
Wagner, who attended the same high school as Marcus Freeman, has always been confident in his abilities, but starting has only grown that belief in himself.
“I would say physicality and confidence,” Wagner said when asked where he’s improved this season. “Texas A&M, I started off a little bit nervous. First career start. Having the opportunities to get reps in over and over again, especially in the game, has built a lot of confidence and physicality as well.”
During Wagner’s first two years on campus, he worked as a left and right tackle, which allowed him to soak in knowledge from Joe Alt and Blake Fisher. Those lessons and mental notes have paid off this fall as it’s allowed Wagner to find consistency despite not having a ton of game experience.
“I learned a lot from Joe and Blake and getting the chance to sit behind them and taking all the lessons they have to give me,” Wagner stated. “So just be able to do my job consistently where if I do see a weakness, I do see a chink in the armor, be able to correct it.”
And sure, Wagner like every other player likely wished he could have played before this year, but the positive attitude also benefitted his game.
“I think having guys that were some of the best tackles in the country, period, that's setting the example,” explained Wagner. “Whether that's Joe, being detail-oriented or that's Blake with an aggressive mindset, you can take away from these guys as much as possible where I have notebooks full of things that either Joe said or Blake said to correct me. Just to be able to play with the best and learn from the best, it's so important for my development.”
Wagner’s development on the field has never been a message board topic, but fans have been concerned about his weight over the last year. Yet, Denbrock and those around the program have never expressed concern after seeing him attack each day.
“I don't think it was,” Denbrock said when asked if Wagner’s weight worried him. “I guess I judge all of it on: How are you performing? I would probably perform better 20 pounds lighter myself, you know what I mean?
“It's like where does all that fit in? Well, if you're doing the most consistent job and winning 90% of your battles — you're not going to win them all — then you're doing a pretty good job.”
That said, Wagner has worked hard to get his weight to a point where he can have success on Saturday’s. When Wagner finished track after his senior season at Wayne High School, he arrived in South Bend at around 245 pounds.
Alexa Appelman, Notre Dame’s Director of Sports Nutrition, worked with Wagner over the last two years to find ways to add weight in the right ways, which included making sure he was getting his calories up.
“I thought it'd be a little bit easier,” explained Wagner. “It is like 60 to 70 pounds that I'm trying to add coming out of high school. Our strength coaches, nutritionists, everyone does a fantastic job of just supporting me through the process and I can't thank them enough.
“(Loren) Landow has been a game-changer in my life. I feel as fast and as explosive as when I was 240 as I do right now. I feel like I'm almost faster as I was when I was 240. He's been tremendous and Alexa the same way. The combination of those two great people can get me to any weight I need to be.”
One would think adding weight would be easy, but the process has had challenges, including Wagner forcing himself more calories than he’d like.
“Around spring my freshman year, I had like a 2000-calorie protein shake,” Wagner recalled. “It was so thick that it couldn't go through a straw. It was almost pudding. I'll be in class like taking spoonfuls and drinking it down with water and just trying to get down as much as possible.
“That was the worst part. I negotiated for weeks, like cut 200 calories out of it, just something so I can at least drink it. That was daily. Now we're down to like 1500 to 1000, so that's actually drinkable. That was the toughest part by far.”
Wagner will enter Saturday’s rivalry game with Stanford at a healthy 294 pounds, but his focus won’t be on his weight. The junior will be dialed into helping the Irish offense take a step forward and it starts with a daily focus on improving.
“It's a little bit of tunnel vision and just focusing on ourselves and improvement,” said Wagner. “I think when you get a big head and you start looking out to the future, you tend to miss things that are in front of you. So just to be able to hone in and I know Coach Freeman talked about it a little bit, we don't fear any opponent, but you have to have a little bit of like urgency that you could get beat. It just keeps us locked in and reminds us that this is our game this week.”
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