Credit: Irish Sports Daily

Nyles Morgan’s surprising resurgence continues. Today, he was named to the Butkus Award preseason watch list. The Butkus Award is given annually to the nation’s top linebacker. Jaylon Smith and Manti Te’o are Notre Dame’s most recent award-winners. Could Nyles Morgan be the next?

The Butkus Award honors the best linebacker in high school and in college. Both Te’o and Smith won at both levels. Semifinalists will be named at the end of October and finalists at the end of November. The winner will be announced on December 6, 2016.

Nyles Morgan finished last season with nine (9) solo and eight (8) assisted tackles, behind Daniel Cage, Jarrett Grace, and Greer Martini. By all accounts, 2015 was a season to forget for the Irish linebacker. For some, his drop in productivity was the result of mismanagement, or worse, by the coaching staff. Regardless, his freshman year was more than solid: forty-seven (47) total tackles, of which twenty-three (23) were solo.

I think this nod by the national nabobs is more evidence that Morgan’s performance last season had more to do with what goes on the in the dark of the Gug and far less with the player’s ability to learn the scheme. How else to explain his inability to find the field last season?

While Coach Kelly has admitted that his staff were loyal to Joe Schmidt “to a fault,” that, in and of itself, cannot explain how a player with a freshman season like consistently loses out on snaps to a guy whose speed put the “walk” in “walk on.” Morgan’s absence from the field, and when he was on the field, from the play, made 2015 tough to watch. That he is counted amount the country’s fifty-one best linebackers at the moment is equal parts recognition of his talent and potential.

Without Joe Schmidt and Jaylon Smith in front of him, Morgan’s options this year are few: sink or swim. How he fares against a markedly improved Texas team to open the season will go a long way towards telling us what choice, if it is a choice, he has made. More profoundly, though, Nyles’ productivity at the Mike position will play an out-sized role in how much slack, if any, Coach VanGorder gets at the helm of the defense. If Morgan is successful and he calls solid games, BVG may just be onto something. If, however, the Irish continue to break down, I can’t see Uncle Rico driving the van back to South Bend for another season.

Injury can excuse a lot of poor performances, e.g. 2014. So can academic suspensions, e.g. well, you get the idea. With the Irish healthy and experienced in the defensive scheme, this should be the season where Nyles Morgan goes from the backup’s backup to the Butkus Award.

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LINEBACKER: THE IRISH

Manti Te’o won every award available to a linebacker, save one, last season, thereby leaving behind giant, Hawaii’an shoes to fill. With no disrespect intended to Carlo Calabrese, or Dan Fox, or Danny Spond, Prince Shembo is my pick for this piece and the Irish linebacker most likely to end thefts of bicycle seats for all time. Seriously, if Prince yelled at me and accused me of taking his bike seat, I likely would not only have peed a little, I probably would have given him my own bike seat and that of every first born male child in my ancestral village. What would you have done?

As a player, Shembo’s got three seasons under his belt and absolutely blew it up last year. A Butkus Award watch-listee, the 6’2″ 258 pound native of Charlotte, North Carolina tallied some rather impressive numbers over thirteen games: 22 solo tackles, 29 assisted tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, 7.5 sacks, 12 quarterback hurries and 1 pass break up. His fellow watch-listee, Carlo Calabrese, had 19 solo tackles, 30 assisted tackles, 3 tackles for loss, and 1 forced fumble. His other fellow watch-listee (yep, we have THREE), Dan Fox, had 30 solo talckles, 33 assisted tackles, 2 tackles for loss, 1 sack, 2 broken up passes, and 2 quarterback hurries. Highlights here:

http://youtu.be/6g-eLm6a2a0

LINEBACKER: THE ENEMY

Of all the linebackers on all the teams the Irish will face in the upcoming campaign, BYU’s Kyle Van Noy is likely the best of them all. Slightly taller at 6’3″ than Prince Shembo, and about fifteen pounds lighter, Van Noy is all over the field, even returning a punt. Which maybe Shembo can do for us. I don’t know. We should try something. How could make it worse? Amiright?

Last season Van Noy, a consensus preseason First Team All-American, put up some crazy numbers that harken back to the days when a fella played both sides of the ball, smoked Lucky Strikes and went off to fight the Hun: 37 solo tackles, 22 tackles for loss, 15 assisted tackles, 2 interceptions, 13 sacks, 8 quarterback hurries, 6 forced fumbles, 2 blocked kicks, and the aforementioned punt return.

Check out his action here:

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You may also recall that 4 years ago Te’o won the inaugural high school Butkus award. Well, fast forward to today and while Manti was being awarded the collegiate version Notre Dame commit Jaylon Smith became the 5th winner of the high school Butkus Award. Yup, these are good times in South Bend.

To give you a better idea of what kind of company Te’o is in with this award, just look at the previous winners:

While early indications from “Stiff Arm Trophy” (a website that collects voting information from Heisman voters that publicly release their top 3) show Te’o firmly implanted in second place, we can still hold out hope that the most deserving player — representing the best defense and the best team in the country — brings home Heisman #8 for Notre Dame.

If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to watch Manti’s Heisman music video below by Pat McKillen, a Notre Dame graduate and friend of Her Loyal Sons. Also check out his ND themed original “Loyal Sons” by clicking here, and find some of his excellent non-ND music at www.patmckillen.com.

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