We generally only do impromptu posts here for breaking news – usually a quick blurb about whatever development it was, so we both respond in short order and give you all somewhere to chat about it. Well, today we had to start over about fifteen times because news kept breaking. It seems like the last two weeks have held as much intrigue as entire calendar year normally does for the program. Injuries, departures, roster moves, shadowy availability updates… We’ve had it all today! We’ll do our best to make some sense of it all.
Lawrence Keys III Moving On
The first nugget that dropped, from multiple sources last night, is that senior receiver Lawrence Keys has decided to leave the program. Per reports and then Brian Kelly himself, Keys will focus on finishing up his degree this semester and then re-evaluate his future. The timing is a bit odd; presumably he knew where he stood in the depth chart before camp broke, and if he didn’t like it I don’t quite understand why he would go through the first game before stepping away. However, kids have their reasons, and whatever the process was it’s complete at this point. Kelly didn’t explicitly close the door on Keys returning to the team, but I would imagine that a return is exceedingly unlikely for a number of reasons.
Wide receiver depth has taken a hit in 2021, as Keys is the fifth receiver in the last seven months to leave the team. Previously, Micah Jones transferred to Illinois State, Kendall Abdur-Rahman transferred to Western Kentucky, Jordan Johnson transferred to Central Florida, and Jay Brunelle transferred to Yale. Those departures mean that only five of the ten receivers Notre Dame signed in the 2018-20 recruiting classes remain in the program, and only three of those remain on the receiver depth chart (more on that in a bit). All three are from the 2018 class (Kevin Austin, Braden Lenzy, and Joe Wilkins), so there are no 2019-20 receiver signees left at receiver.
The silver lining here is that the 2021 class has a couple of potential early contributors in Lorenzo Styles (who was in the two deep before Keys left) and Deion Colzie, and a third that has drawn positive early reviews in Jayden Thomas. And the 2022 class looks like it has two early contributors too in Tobias Merriweather and CJ Williams, so things are definitely trending up. But, yikes.
More specific to 2021, Brian Kelly noted today that the second string receivers have changed from Wilkins-Keys-Styles to Colzie-Wilkins-Styles. Wilkins as a bigger slot receiver is certainly an interesting twist, as is the entrance of Colzie, who was one of the tougher covers in camp.
Injury Updates
Brian Kelly confirmed what we had heard on a couple of guys, colored in some rather unfortunate details on one player we weren’t sure about, and offered the barest details on a few who were unavailable for Florida State.
- Blake Fisher had surgery for a torn meniscus and is out eight weeks; in Kelly’s words, “we’re hopeful we’ll have him back this year.” (Translation: Don’t count on it.)
- Kevin Bauman, who had a very good camp, had surgery for a broken fibula yesterday and has a six week timetable for a return. Kelly said “hopeful” again though, so…
- The team doctors have never heard of someone tearing each Achilles tendon in successive years, as Paul Moala did. Not an award you want.
- We knew Shayne Simon hurt his shoulder, but we didn’t know the extent of it. It turns out he’s done for the year with a torn labrum.
- Kelly relayed that Logan Diggs, who was unavailable for Florida State but in street clothes on the sideline, is available once again.
- C’bo Flemister and Jordan Botelho, meanwhile, are still unavailable, and that’s all we officially know.
Of course nobody is quite sure what’s up with Flemister and Botelho, but I would point out once again that their unavailability (and Diggs’s) has been officially discussed to this point in the same way that COVID quarantines were discussed last season. It’s quite possible to miss two games in a single quarantine, also; the return to play protocol requires isolation and then a few full days of practice to ensure conditioning. Two games six days apart could easily fall within that window. Regarding Flemister, it’s also worth remembering that he cracked up his (used, we’re not OSU) BMW at 2:00 AM a couple of months ago and may have some dues to pay for that.
Regarding Botelho, we have it on very good authority that it’s nothing he did and that he’ll be back soon. We don’t have more specifics than that, and in fact if not for the character assassination of the kid we wouldn’t even have bothered to relay that much. But we very much trust where we heard this from and the rumors that have already been flamed are enough.
Anyway… Two weeks ago we considered linebacker depth to be possibly the greatest strength of the team. Fast forward to today, and we’ve lost Marist Liufau, Paul Moala, and Shayne Simon for the season. Life comes at you fast. The staff picked an interesting way to address that sudden attrition…
Xavier Watts Switching Sides
The most unexpected news item by far is Xavier Watts moving to rover. A move to defense wouldn’t have surprised us too much – he was a very good two-way player in high school, and early in his time on campus which side of the ball he would land on was an open question. But rover? That surprised us quite a bit. On the other hand, there was conjecture from some folks even as a recruit that his best position was cornerback or safety, so perhaps not quite as out of left field as it seems.
Note the plays at 1:11, 1:28, 2:12, 2:24, 4:19, 4:49, and 4:55.
Watts joins Cam Hart as the two 2018-20 receiver signees to end up on defense. He’s listed at 5’11-7/8″ and 195 pounds, which definitely seems undersized for rover; however, there’s no doubting his athleticism or appetite for contact.
Here’s how Brian Kelly described the decision making process behind the move (emphasis added):
“One of my jobs is to get really good players on the field. We had a little bit of a log jam at the receiver position and Xavier is a really good football player. We need to get good players on the field. Finding ways to get him on the field and then by happenstance, we get banged up at the Rover position. Jack gives us some flexibility at Rover and inside backer, so it strengthened our hand.
“We had been having conversations for finding a role for X because he’s such a fine player and fine athlete.
“He’s certainly looks the part. We’re going to play him on Saturday. He’s going to play Rover when we get into the right situation. He doesn’t have all the knowledge of the position. We’re going to pick our spots. You’re not going to see him line up on the first play or first series, but we’re going to pick our spots and get him involved. He’s involved in more special teams right away now.
“We like him. We wouldn’t trade him. He’s a guy we want on the field and we value him a lot. This is a way to get him going.”
(Credit to IrishSportsDaily for the presser transcript.)
So not only is he moving to rover, but he’s going to see action in an actual game against an actual opponent a couple of days after moving. Bonkers. Kelly also talked about true freshman Prince Kollie moving into the two-deep at Will – he’s now JD Bertrand’s backup – and Jack Kiser cross-training at Will as well, where he saw some snaps last year. Brave new world.
Oh, and if you’re curious, Watts has switched his number from 2 to 26 – DJ Brown was already 2, and we all know you can’t have two guys with the same number on the field.
Also – I know some reaction to this will include presumptions that Watts will transfer. I don’t think so, at least not now; I think we can safely assume that the staff talked to him before announcing the position change, and if he wasn’t OK with it he would’ve decided to transfer then. Whether we get to the spring and he’s still OK with it, who knows.
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that he can always switch back once LB depth is no longer a pressing problem. Travis Thomas says hello here.
Right, it’s not like there are plenty of WRs on the depth chart for this year or for next (esp. depending on what the seniors do).
It’s more fun to play defense than offense, so once he gets some game action on D hopefully he’ll be having a good time and forget all about being a receiver
Watts was lined up as a safety in all of the defensive clips in his highlight reel, never corner, so that’s a shorter transition to rover than if he was a WR/cornerback.
Freeman’s rover last year at Cincinnati was three star, Cincinnati local, Jarell White who was listed as 5-10, 205 and led the team in tackles, second in TFL, Sacks, and QB hurries, so I’m definitely hopeful Freeman has and can execute a plan that puts Watts in position to succeed.
Great point about White. Would like Watts to be a little bigger, but in time I suspect he’ll pack on a little weight to accompany the move.
Just a question — with all of the 1st and 2nd year players at CB, I’m guessing that they are all too small to make a move to rover? Seems like there is an abundance of bodies at CB compared to WR (especially with Keys gone now)
That’s a very good question. And beyond just the Henderson/Offord types, I know DJ Brown had some bad moments- but even playing Brown + Griffith + Hamilton at the same time would kinda make sense to at least have experienced members of the, you know, defense out there. IIRC that was kinda Lea thing when he had Hamilton + Gilman + Elliott all on the field a few times together as three safeties a couple years back.
Watts is listed at 195, which is slightly less than Griffith and Brown who are 202 and 200. So they’re going to be very light either way on the field whenever Watts is in.
I think a couple could move to safety but I don’t know about rover. I think Ryan Barnes will probably end up at safety. Philip Riley could, but my guess is he’ll stay at boundary corner. From the previous class they like Ramon Henderson at corner, don’t see him moving. The rest of the young corners are definitely too small.
At safety, Justin Walters has a high ceiling, don’t think they’d move him. Khari Gee is almost definitely going to end up at rover but don’t think he’s ready yet. The idea of Jayden Thomas at rover has floated around – he’s apparently a very solid dude – but with all the WR attrition I think it’s more likely he’ll stay there.
0 WRs from the 2019 and 2020 classes, yikes. Realize recruiting has improved the last couple years, but, still, things not exactly coming up Del.
The coaches should be back-channeling to the Ohio State WR room starting, like, tonight. There’s way too much talent there and too few passes to go around, and we’re going to need people likely as soon as next year.
While I love this idea in theory, I’m not sure any of those guys will transfer. 2 WRs will be first round picks and their QB will be a Sophomore with likely a full season of starting experience. ND will be starting a Sophomore who likely hasn’t started a competitive football game in 3 years. I would love if it happened, but I don’t think it is likely.
If I remember correctly, the Ohio State University athletes don’t go there to play school. Could any of those WR’s even get into Notre Dame?
Yup. Earlier this summer when talking about the free transfer rule Kelly said that while the NCAA has changed, standards for an undergrad transfer coming into Notre Dame are not impossible, but very challenging and typically unlikely. Getting graduate students in is a different matter and where they can do much more. And no WR you’d want from tOSU is getting a degree and staying a 5th year, they’re already well into an NFL career by then.
Well, I recalled that ND had aggressively recruited a couple of them… but apparently one has moved to tight end! https://ohiostatebuckeyes.com/roster/gee-scott-jr/
Totally wild that they have top-100 guys who need to switch positions because their two-deep is a bunch of top-50 guys.
The talent level is just crazy at Bama, OSU, and Georgia: https://247sports.com/Season/2021-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite/
It would be a big win for us if we could just consistently match even the # of 4 stars these teams have (even without having ANY 5 stars or have a couple).
Then the next huge step could be matching the # of 3 stars they have (presuming we aren’t getting many 5 stars) and so having more 4 stars than they have but still lacking in 5 stars (which is never happening – this year those three teams have between 14-19 5 stars on the roster!) That would make it something like having less than 20 3 stars (we have 39 currently) – so about 65 4 stars.
I wonder whether there’s any possibility of Litchfield Ajavon moving down to linebacker/rover. I remember he had a bit of a moment in the spring as a big hitter but just isn’t quite the athlete they need at safety. Such a sure fire all-name team selection shouldn’t be so buried on the depth chart.
In all of this, if it is COVID for C’bo and Jordan, (a) I hope they are all right if they got it, it is still a damn tricky virus; and (b) I wonder if they were vaccinated?
Brendan, forgive the gratuitous comment, but this is really well written — informative, analytical, and perky. Thanks!