The month of July brings us close to the beginning of another fall camp for Notre Dame football. With practices set to begin soon we are taking a look at each position group ahead of the workouts. Today we turn our attention towards the back end of the defense.
Where We Left Off in Spring
Firstly, a new coach arrived during the spring in Terry Joseph who comes to South Bend via a string of Power 5 stops at North Carolina, Texas A&M, Nebraska, and Tennessee. He walks into a difficult job for a couple of reasons. One, he has many bodies to sort through including many younger and inexperienced options. Two, he’s taking over for departed defensive coordinator Mike Elko who completed a very 2012-like “keep everything in front of you and don’t mess up the rest of the defense” job with the safeties in 2017.
As with most positions, some roster management and shuffling occurred. D.J. Morgan was first moved to the Rover position (I believe this happened really late last season) and worked at Buck linebacker during the spring. Somewhat promising freshman Isaiah Robertson was also moved out of safety and spent the spring at Rover running with the third-team.
The highly-touted Houston Griffith was on campus for spring workouts and moved back to safety after beginning his first practices at corner.
It should also be noted that Nick Coleman (756 snaps in 2017, leading all safeties) spent spring occasionally in the two-deep, sometimes not getting much work, and sometimes playing nickel or dime in sub-packages.
Number One Camp Story Line
Out with the old and in with the new? Coleman is entering his final season with the Irish while Jalen Elliott and Devin Studstill both have 2 years apiece remaining. These 3 accounted for 1,695 of the 1,815 snaps at safety last year and I just checked with Vegas and the over/under on 2018 snaps for the trio is set at 890 total.
From that group Elliott was the most steady during the spring, and still looks to be in line to start when fall camp opens. With that over/under above that means Studstill and Coleman could potentially play very little this year.
Anticipation Level: 8/10
So, let’s just assume for the sake of laying things out that Studstill and Coleman won’t be much of a factor at safety during camp. I do wonder if under Clark Lea as a linebacker coach he’s not messing around with a 191-pound safety such as Coleman. Studstill–who has been on campus since January 2016–has the feel of someone who is going to transfer after this season in January or next May depending on where he is with his credits towards graduation.
We still have rising senior Nicco Fertitta on campus who should continue to provide a presence on special teams while incoming freshman Paul Moala would have to blow the doors off the coaching staff to battle for playing time during camp.
This leaves us with 4 options: Elliott, Alohi Gilman, Griffith, and Derrik Allen.
A pair of freshmen making a large impact in 2018 feels quite adventurous and unlikely. Griffith already has a spring under his belt, held his own once at safety with plenty of two-deep reps, and the summer workout rumors are signaling he’s a real threat to start. So let’s count him in the mix!
Allen is going to be a little more tricky. He’s much larger than Griffith and was officially represented as 6’2″ and 215 pounds during National Signing Day which makes him comparable in size to as many as 8 linebackers on the roster. I suppose he could move to Rover but A) They’ve already moved Robertson there B) Shayne Simon is getting rave-reviews during summer workouts C) Allen would be stuck behind 3 players at Rover anyway and potentially even further away from playing time.
Don’t forget, our entire 18 Stripes staff slightly undervalued both Griffith and Allen compared to their national recruiting rankings. We still liked them a lot, but didn’t see freshmen All-American types straight out of the gate the way you’d sometimes expect with the 1st (Griffith) and 6th (Allen) best recruits in the class. The early returns suggest Griffith could be on that track. I suspect Allen is going to be a little lost in the shuffle, work on special teams, and come back a lot more stronger in 2019.
Alohi Gilman is now eligible after being screwed around with last August by Navy and the NCAA while being ruled ineligible at the very end of last year’s fall camp. He basically ascended to co-starter this past spring and likely opens practices soon opposite Elliott.
Therefore, I’m expecting a duo of Elliott/Gilman with Griffith pushing in immediately and some combination of Allen/Studstill/Coleman getting mixed in with the rest of the reps.
Relative to his national profile/ranking, Studstill may be the most overhyped recruit by the ND media to my admittedly relatively short memory. Basically all of them were “he is easily a 4-star player” while ranked as a mid-to-low 3 star. It seems if anything he had one star too many.
Wasn’t he really, really low rated at one time? I think that played a part in his “hype” before coming to ND, although he’s probably had an average career based on his ranking anyway.
Also think he’s one of those players who has dealt with some injuries that aren’t really publicized too much.
When he first started practicing, he was getting first team reps over Max Redfield because Max Redfield was being Max Redfield. So that played into the hype.
Excited to see what Gilman brings to the table and the safeties in general don’t really have to do much to contribute more than last season.
Not sure I’m bold enough either to say Freshman AA for Griffith, but it will be interesting to see him in the mix too.
I’m cautiously excited for this safety group. Safety play has been mediocre at best for the past couple of years. It looks like we have some quality players, they just need some good coaching to become playmakers for the team instead of a weakness that we need to cover up.
READY FOR SOME POSITIVITY?!?!?!!!?!?!
Safety play will get better, since it would be hard to get worse than the last few years!
^^That, right there^^^
Was our safety play bad last year?
It was unremarkable. Which compared to the last few years is a major improvement. The safeties weren’t asked to do much of anything complicated, and they accomplished that fairly well.
That’s how I felt. I’m a bit more concerned about them after losing Elko. I’ve seen just how bad safeties can be, so it will be a while before I will go into a season with confidence that we will be competent. Thanks a lot, BVG.
I can’t decide whether I like that Coleman won’t be playing, or not. If he is simply passed by good players, then hooray, but if he has just regressed/stagnated, then sad. I was hopeful he would take a big jump after a couple years at the positions, and so much experience last year.
What I wouldn’t give for even a David Bruton or Chinedum Ndukwe right now.
Studstill was affirmatively bad when he played, and Elliot alternated between bad and meh. Coleman was pretty okay all year, which makes his demotion the most surprising development of the offseason to me. If you had told me one of our starters from last year would not be starting in 2018, I would have definitely guessed Elliot.