Max Redfield’s three years at Notre Dame has been an absolute rollercoaster ride.

The highly treasured 5 star 247 sports composite ranked recruit from sexy recruiting hotbed Mission Viejo, Calif. was originally committed to play football at the University of Spoiled Children U$C.  He rescinded this commitment fairly late in the recruiting cycle in November, and committed to Notre Dame in early January of 2013. Sporting an impressive offer list (LSU, Oklahoma, USC, Ole Miss, Tennessee, UCLA, and Ohio State among others), the 30^th ranked recruit in the country had many choices, but chose to sign with the Irish and be a member of #IrishMob13 (the clever hashtag/nickname characterizing the 2013 recruiting class).

Redfield saw action as a true freshman, registering 12 total tackles in former defensive coordinator Bob Diaco’s defense. The controversial decision to start Redfield against Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl prevented the chance to preserve a year of eligibility. Hindsight is always 20/20, but preserving a year of eligibility may have been a more conservative and beneficial approach.

Enter 2014, and with it a new defensive coordinator in Brian Van Gorder. Redfield worked his way into a starting role, starting 11 games and playing in all 13 games – contributing 68 total tackles, 0.5 tackles for loss, and 1 interception.

Redfield, however, didn’t mince words about the difficulties within the new defensive system, as he told Lou Somogyi of Blue and Gold Illustrated:

An eloquent and confident speaker, Redfield has carried 18-credit academic course loads at Notre Dame per semester, most notably learning Mandarin Chinese. When asked whether VanGorder’s defense or Chinese was more difficult, he paused. “That’s a pretty good question,” he responded. “I would say consistently being successful in that scheme is harder than learning Chinese.”

Redfield rode the rollercoaster throughout 2014, with a low point coming during the Arizona State loss when he was criticized for his overall lack of effort. Consequently, he found himself benched and in the Brian Kelly doghouse the next two games, which were incredibly frustrating losses to Northwestern and Louisville.

Season ending injuries to Austin Collinsworth (shoulder) and Drue Tranquill (1^st of 2 ACL injuries) forced Redfield into a starting role once again during the impressive Music City Bowl victory against LSU. The bowl win was indisputably Redfield’s most productive individual performance, recording 14 tackles. Many believed the former five-star safety had turned the corner and was destined for a monster 2015 season – including college football pundit Phil Steele who named Redfield a 2015 First Team Preseason All-American.

Unfortunately, this prediction did not come to fruition. 2015 was not a monster season, nor was it an epic failure of a season. It was every bit of luke-warm mediocrity.  Redfield failed to surpass his sophomore totals in tackles, making 64 total tackles in 2015, 2.5 tackles for loss, 1 sack, and notching another interception (much in thanks to a tip drill executed by KeiVarae Russell, now of the Kansas City Chiefs). Redfield ended the season on a low point when he was sent home from the Fiesta Bowl for allegedly missing curfew repeatedly. Redfield took to Instagram to post a (backhanded?) apology leaving many to wonder if he had played his last down with #NDFB. Thankfully, Redfield is still enrolled at Notre Dame and participated in the 2016 spring practices.

Moving into the summer and eventually into fall camp, this is undoubtedly a do or die season for the senior.  There isn’t a coach or fan that would claim Redfield is lacking in the department of athleticism. The criticisms often come from mental breakdowns and lapses that consequently result in big plays for the offense. These errors in judgement and off the field issues must be put to bed.

If there is a proverbial switch to be flipped, then it better happen quickly because true freshman (early enrollee) Devin Studstill was one of the most highly praised defensive players of the spring and reportedly took first team reps – relegating Redfield to some second team reps. Perhaps this is a motivational ploy instrumented by the coaching staff, or maybe Studstill is simply that good. With that being said, don’t count out Redfield just yet. The Irish have a history of producing high performing safeties late in their collegiate career. It took former #NDFB safety Harrison Smith, current Minnesota Viking and recent Pro Bowl performer, years of growing pains before the light eventually turned on and he recorded an astonishing and team leading 7 interceptions his senior year (most since Shane Walton also picked off 7 passes back in 2002).

Max Redfield has obviously had his fair share of highs and lows aboard the #NDFB rollercoaster.  Here’s to hoping he can learn from his past hardships and develop a mature outlook on his upcoming senior year.  With all of the intangible pieces in place, he needs to add and maintain a mental consistency to allow his five-star athletic frame fly around and make plays.  I’m well aware that this is an overly simplistic solution, but the truth is that Redfield has one final season to answer the questions: Did the recruiting analysts whiff on this five-star? Or, like Harrison Smith, did Redfield need to endure a few years of growing pains to develop into the game-changing and potential NFL safety we all thought he could be?

I believe the light will turn on for Redfield and he will become the commanding leader of the defense’s back end. I won’t give up on him just yet because of his sheer athleticism. Redfield has been his own worst enemy. But if he can put as much effort in the film room as it looks like he does in the weight room, then this upcoming season will be the one where we consistently see what recruiting analysts saw in this five-star talent in 2013.

Cheers and go Irish!

Previous “5 Questions” Posts

• Will The Irish Defense Improve Its Pass Rush?
• Will Another Star Receiver Emerge in ’16?

The post Will Redfield Prove Five-Star Talent? appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Don’t get me wrong, the feature was great, but a basically started at my title of “Fall Camp Practice Report #3: CB Report” for about an hour and realized there was no way that I could even drag 100 words out of the topic.

So I passed on the post. Ten more practices are in the books (ND completed practices #12 and #13 yesterday) across the past eight days and quite a bit has happened. It’s time to play some catch-up.

So today, it’s time to enjoy a very Irish-centric special edition of the Roundup. Think of this as the quick way to catch up the past week of fall camp.

The Roundup

I will never cease to be amazed at the freaks of nature we have at TE. Koyack should not be able to move as fast for how big he is. Tyler Luata is also an absolute freak of nature. Just check out the pancake he delivers at 3:20 in the clip. Yeah, that’s a freshman.

The first day of practice in full pads is probably the real first glimpse of what we can expect this season. I think this goes double for defense. For most of the videos to this point, we’ve seen the secondary just abuse receivers with incredibly physical play. Throughout this clip though, they seem to have backed off behavior that would draw out more defensive PI flags than Sparty trying to stop Tommy Rees. Other highlights that I liked: Sheldon Day looking like a beast and Ishaq Williams putting some good rushes together:

The August 9 practice gave us a peak the Irish in the red zone. Spoiler alert: THEY RAN THE DAMN BALL! In all seriousness, the last bit of the video has Greg Bryant flat out GOING OFF on two great runs. Once the Irish got inside the 10, we saw Bryant get a blow and Cam tried to punch it in. The next play featured Bryant in a personnel package that included freshman beast Tyler Luata that got the TD. As for the rest of the practice? Probably the most physical highlights we’ve seen thus far:

The RB profile gave us no clues on the depth chart battle. The combination of Cam McDaniel, Tarean Folston, and Greg Bryant make this position one of the most exciting on the team. With their talent though, it’s hard to project who is going to come out of the gate as the starter or how all three will rotate. If I could read any of the tea leaves that Tony Alford was throwing out there, it appears that Bryant might have the most work to do out of the trio.

The profile on the safeties led me to an interesting conclusion. Kerry Cooks said a few different things that jumped out at me. Firstly, Austin Collinsworth has clearly jumped out as the QB of the defense. The mention that he can play both positions jumped out at me as well. Cooks also mentioned that Max Redfield was making noticeable improvement. Mathias Farley was listed in the video as a S/CB. Finally, Cooks touted Shumate as the most talented of the group. All of this together leads me to believe that nickel and dime packages might feature some hybrid roles that we haven’t seen before. Either that or we are going to see a crazy, constant rotation:

Here’s a shocker, Everett Golson is your starting QB for Rice. Yes, “for Rice”, much like the same language Kelly used in 2012. That’s fine, I’m good with it and I’m sure Malik Zaire is going to see the field a fair amount this season (hopefully not due to injury). Want to know what really stood out to me though? The managers got to play the pitch man for the QBs during an option drill and I’m forever sad that I didn’t get to do that:

Yesterday’s practice video focused on the defensive line. Honestly, I thought this was one of the more enlightening position profile videos to date. The D-line has to be the lead as far as question marks go considering all the talent that was lost. Listening Mike Elston break down everyone’s performance and what they expect of everyone was great. I know Andrew Trumbetti made a lot of waves this week (more on that later), but it’s good to hear that another freshman, Johnny Williams is standing out a bit as well, even if it appears he is behind a touch on the learning curve:

And here’s your main event: Brian Kelly’s August 13th presser. Loads of information in this one, including our first peak into portions of the depth chart. I had a few things that stood out to me:

• Kelly talked a lot about rotations on defense, especially in the front seven.
• Mentioned that VanGorder’s defense allows the young guys to just go and play on instinct.
• In fact, for all that’s been made about how complicated the schemes on defense are, I have a feeling VanGorder is scheming to his talent.
• Kelly seemed frustrated with questions about if ND had their base defense installed. I read that as “we won’t have a traditional base”.
• Everett can check out of plays, but he probably won’t need to due to the way the offense is designed.
• No major injuries on the O-line, but with various guys being out for a day, the starting five is still up in the air.
• Kelly is taking a look at individual competitive drills before he decides who is on the special teams units.

With all that in mind, here’s the depth chart. Or rather, what Kelly confirmed explicitly thus far:

And now you’re moment of Nix…

What is this I don't even #MSPaintMonday pic.twitter.com/MBKxDzX8Yw

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) August 12, 2014

The Booze

Summer is nearly done and I haven’t yet had one of my favorite summer whiskey cocktails, the Lynchburg Lemonade:

1 part Jack
1 part Triple Sec
1 part Sour Mix
4 parts lemon-lime soda

You can sub in Jack with a bourbon as well (obviously it kills the Lunchburg namesake, but whatever).

Cheers.

The post Friday Roundup: The “Notre Dame Fall Camp 2014 Catch-Up” Edition appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Now, unfortunately, I don’t have anything particularly witty, funny, or really anything intelligent to say to lead off this week’s version. Let’s just say I’m going to set the bar extremely low so I can continuously trip over it all year.

Thankfully though, there was quite a bit of news that broke this week from Notre Dame and around college football to make up for my failures at creativity so let’s get to it!

The Roundup

Charlie Strong is NOT screwing around. Around here, a common narrative is that Texas has had a “country club” culture for years and has created a soft team prone to failure. Well, that is definitely gone now. I can only imagine how nervous this made some regents when he was hired. Perhaps this is why his contract has no buyout.

So college football managed to effect the WWE and it’s a dream true. The only downside, it was Rose Bowl Champion Sparty that caused this, leading Daniel Bryan’s now famous “YES!” chant in a packed arena. Still though, rumor is the WWE caught wind of that and accelerated Daniel Bryan’s storyline in this past week’s episode of RAW.

Big Lou is talking and you should listen. He did an interview with Eric Hansen and filled in the blanks on why he signed with an agent so early among other topics like the NFL draft. Speaking of…

Dear Jerry Jones, please give me something to be happy about again. The team is a disaster, especially on the defensive line. Mel Kiper has three Domers hanging around your draft slot, grab one. Bonus points if it’s Nix because I will buy that jersey immediately.

Austin Collinsworth, Christian Lombard, Kendall Moore and Justin Utupo will be back for fifth years. Irish Illustrated apparently broke this news, but the only thing that I could find to link was an ESPN mention of the report. Lo Wood, another potential fifth year, has decided to go to Miami University along with his former position coach Chuck Martin.

And now your moment of zen…THE SUBWAY DOMER IS BACK, Y’ALL! (Hey does this mean I’m off the hook of IBG leadership duties now?)

Put These Games Shows on Your Radar

There will be two Notre Dame specials of note this weekend. Be sure to tune in or set your DVRs!

The Booze

So, yeah, Subway’s back and that means it’s PBR time y’all (save the Trojan Bloods for later).

The post Friday Roundup: The “Back to Business” Edition appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

To refresh, here’s how ND started to assign players to defend the option after the 2010 disaster in the Meadowlands:

1. FB Dive (Blue) – The DE and NG function as true interior DTs and attack the A-gaps that they line up over to stuff the dive.
2. QB Keeper (Red) – The Cat and DE get to the outside of the tackle and either make a play on the QB, force him back inside to the waiting safeties in second level support, or force a pitch.
3. Pitch to RB (Yellow) – The outside Will and Dog LBs contain the RB (or “pitch-man”), ensuring they are never beaten to the outside. As soon as they see the pitch, they attack the RB. The CBs serve as additional outside containment.
4. Manti Te’o (Orange) – Read the play and attempt to disrupt in the backfield if possible

While options #1-3 take care of the usual possibilities of the triple option, #4 was where Notre Dame’s defense was truly dangerous. Diaco used Te’o’s natural instincts and superb closing speed to force Navy into mistakes or quicker decisions on what to do with the football.

In 2011, Te’o had 23 tackles combined against Navy and Air Force, with 5 of those being tackles for loss (TFL). In 2012, Navy managed to avoid any Te’o TFL, but Te’o still managed 8 total tackles and 1 INT. As much as Navy tried to avoid Manti, they couldn’t do so completely.

To put it lightly, Diaco leaned on Manti and depended on him for defensive success against the option. So now that Manti’s gone, who fills his role? Or does Diaco go back to the drawing board and use a more traditional scheme without any unique wrinkles?

Personally, I would love to see Jaylon Smith slide inside and get a shot at filling Manti’s role in this kind of defense. He definitely has the raw talent and he demonstrated some impressive instincts against Southern Cal. If you are going to pick one guy from this LB corps to pretend to be Te’o flying to the ball, give me the one with the best instincts and closing speed.

This would give us a front seven that looks like this:

• DT (FB Dive): Rotation of Nix/Day/Schwenke
• DE (QB): Rotation of Shembo/Tuitt/Ishaq/Jones
• OLB (RB): Fox/Calabrese
• MLB (Rover): Smith

All that being said, and as awesome as I think it would be, I seriously doubt Kelly and Diaco would go for that idea. It would be a lot for a freshman to absorb and, if Kelly’s history is any indication, he does seem to favor experience in considering such large moves (remember, Jaylon likely isn’t playing as much as he is if Councell is healthy). So most likely the front seven will look like this:

• DT (FB Dive): Rotation of Nix/Day/Schwenke
• DE (QB): Rotation of Shembo/Tuitt/Ishaq/Jones
• OLB (RB): Fox/Smith
• MLB (Rover): Calabrese

Now, Carlo doesn’t have the same physical tools that Jaylon does, much less Manti. While I think he can do an adequate job in this role, I don’t see him completely filling the void. Because of this, I expect to see a lot more safety help than we are used to seeing. Specifically, look for the Strong Safety (SS), Elijah Shumate, to fill this role, giving almost a 4-4 look to the defense and, in a sense, having two people fill in the Manti void.

This then leaves the Free Safety (FS), Austin Collinsworth, to play “center field” and serve as the last line of defense on any run and ensure no receiver beats the secondary deep should Air Force sneak in a deep pass.

The Irish will most certainly miss Manti in defending the option, but Diaco has more than enough talent on this current squad to compensate.

The post Defending the Option: Who Takes Over for Te’o? appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Jamoris Slaughter

Position: S
Year: 5th Year Senior
Height/Weight: 6’0″/200 lbs.

Fifth-year senior Jamoris Slaughter will be charged with leading the Irish secondary in 2012 following former captain Harrison Smith’s first round selection by the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL Draft. Slaughter played in all 13 games for the Irish last year, registering 45 tackles (25 solo, 20 assisted), 1 interception, and 2 pass breakups. Slaughter also forced a fumble and picked off a pass in a 59-33 win over Air Force. With the Irish graduating the majority of their secondary from last year, and with Austin Collinsworth out for the season with an injury, Slaughter will be called on to be the anchor of a relatively untested unit.

Following the injury to Collinsworth, discussions of Slaughter filling in at corner have slowed though the coaching staff insists it is still a possibility. Along with cornerback, many Irish fans (like myself) would like to see Jamoris spend more time at the hybrid safety-outside linebacker role that he excelled in late in the season, including in the Champs Sports Bowl against Florida State in which he registered two huge sacks (unfortunately he did not sack Tommy before those red zone interceptions).  With Smith and his 181 tackles over the past two seasons out of the picture, we will likely see Slaughter’s statistical production increase drastically in 2012. Possibly more important than the stat line, though, will be his ability to lead an inexperienced secondary and to make sure Bennett Jackson and the Lo Wood/Josh Atkinson/maybe-Davonte-Neal combo know where they’re supposed to be.

I’m also hoping we see a loooooot more of this:

T.J. McDonald

Position: S
Year: Senior
Height/Weight: 6’3″/205 lbs.

All-American T.J. McDonald of USC will be the best safety that the Irish offense will have the task of working against in 2012. McDonald, who is the younger half of USC’s first father/son All-American pair and first father/son captain pair (…….excuse me, needed to go vomit a little bit), returns to the Trojans as a third year starter at free safety. His father, Tim McDonald, played 13 NFL seasons at safety for the Cardinals and 49ers, winning a Super Bowl ring (XXIX) and earning his way into 6 Pro Bowls.

The younger McDonald recorded 67 tackles, 3 interceptions, 2 pass breakups, a fumble recovery and a blocked punt in 2011. He registered 5 tackles when the Trojans visited South Bend, but otherwise had a statistically quiet game. Coming off an excellent past season, McDonald has received some pre-season love in being named to the watch lists for the Thorpe, Bednarik and Nagurski awards. He was also named a 1^st-team preseason All-American by Phil Steele, and we will likely see him on numerous more preseason lists as we get closer to the start of the season (44 days till Dublin!).

Analysis: Among the seniors returning for their fifth season in South Bend, none are as critical to the team’s success in 2012 as Jamoris Slaughter. While you could argue that Kapron Lewis-Moore and Braxston Cave are stronger overall players, the importance of Slaughter’s position as leader in the depleted secondary cannot be understated.  With games against Heisman contenders Matt Barkley and Landry Jones, the ability of Slaughter and the defensive backfield to be competitive will be an essential element to a strong third season for Brian Kelly. Also, while this series of position previews at HLS is focused on the top player at each position, Zeke Motta (who has a knack for being in perfect position to make a play and then whiffing) will need to step in his final season as well if the Irish hope to effectively defend their opponents’ aerial attacks.

Follow Twibby on Twitter: @HLS_Twibby

Previous Entries

Punter & Kicker
Offensive Line
Defensive Line

The post Know Thyself, Know Thy Enemy: Safety appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.