The cornerback room had quite the season in 2025 full of some incredibly high moments and frustrating stretches that we wish could’ve been avoided. In some ways, it was a season of chaos led by a veteran who played the most snaps. In other ways, it was yet another strong performance from the cornerback position that was part of the 6th best defensive passer rating in the country. Let’s dive into more today.
Wrong Foot
It’s not all the cornerbacks’ fault of course, but the Irish allowed at least a 140 passing rating in each of the first 3 games in 2025. Half of the passing touchdowns allowed on the season (7 of 14) came in these 3 games with an average of 289 yards allowed through the air. It was not going very well early on.
This unit was supposed to be a major strength of the team, but cornerback got off on the wrong foot. Quality backup Jaden Mickey transferred out to Boise State during the off-season and then Alabama transfer DeVonta Smith started the year banged up and missing time.
Depth was suddenly a problem and lightly experienced true sophomore Karson Hobbs was thrust into nickelback snaps where he struggled in a bright spotlight, lost confidence, and fell away from seeing the field for the remainder of 2025.
Snaps
This was far from a poor season, and while All-American Leonard Moore continued his development to become one of the best defenders in the country, several other players ended up stepping up too.
Prime chaos agent Christian Gray led the way with a healthy 638 snaps, or 78.2% of all defensive snaps for the team in 2025.
| PLAYER | SNAPS |
|---|---|
| Christian Gray | 638 |
| Leonard Moore | 632 |
| Dallas Golden | 311 |
| Mark Zackery | 307 |
| DeVonta Smith | 287 |
| Karson Hobbs | 108 |
| Chance Tucker | 36 |
| Cree Thomas | 30 |
| Ben Minich | 11 |
While Moore is set to come back for at least one more year (he’s a solid projected 1st round pick for the 2027 NFL Draft so you can cross your fingers but he’s unlikely to return after this fall) it was the rise of a pair of true freshmen that turned some heads in South Bend.
Both Dallas Golden and Mark Zackery experienced a baptism by fire in 2025.
Gray has played so much football for the Irish.
Combining for 618 snaps without a postseason for the pair of true freshmen is the type of experience that will be massive for the defense in the coming years. On a snaps per game basis, Golden and Zackery played the most among all freshmen defenders from the 2024-25 except unit-mate Leonard Moore of course.
In contrast, Hobbs was sent to the shadow realm basically never to be seen again since his early season struggles. His future is probably brighter than he showed (and perhaps the coaching staff owns some blame for the situation too) in those first few games while he’ll continue his career at Florida State in 2026. The Noles are coming off 7 losses but it’s not like Hobbs transferred to a MAC school.
Minimal snaps were left over for the rest of the roster. Forever backup Chance Tucker hit the portal with a home TBD as of this writing. Cree Thomas saw the writing on the wall with his classmates and transferred to Colorado. We saw a few flashes from Ben Minich as a safety during practices, but he was moved to nickel which always felt like an awkward fit, and he has since left for the turtle neck and sweater vest coach at Miami, Ohio.
Grade: B+
Notre Dame has to be pissed that this wasn’t a grade of A for 2025, if they were to agree with me on that judgement. The injury to Smith, the loss of confidence from Hobbs, and the trials and tribulations of Gray have to drag this grade down at least a little bit.
The continued excellence of Moore, plus the development of a pair of true freshmen are huge boosts to the grade in 2025. It’s really big time that this trio is coming back next year in addition to Lord Chaos Agent Gray, as well.
This group reminds me of our running back review a little bit. It’s too bad Notre Dame didn’t get a chance to fight in the playoffs because the corners would’ve been in a great position to lock down most offenses and it really could been a redemptive arc after the opening two losses.
It will be very interesting to see how a fully healthy C Gray will play. Plus presumably with less snaps, so fresher? Anyone else have relatively high hopes ?
I have extremely high hopes for this unit, especially now that our glass eyed DC appears to have figured out how to use the group. Losing their position coach is obviously concerning, but so long as they don’t try to put Gray in man-to-man coverage against WRs who have truly elite speed, I think this is almost certainly the best returning unit in the country.
It might be interesting if they try Gray at nickel.
One thing about last season, that I still cannot wrap my head around, is how an experienced DC like Ash could have that defense so unprepared at the start of last season. Clearly he did a great job as the season went along, but man those first few games were rough
The position coaches were the same as 24 (Bullough got an upgrade) so the D being so out of whack is weird. I’d guess all the D coaches got a talking to about getting on the same page after A&M. Also, there were some big plays in the first two where players were in the right position but inexplicitly didn’t make the play.