Henry pushes Notre Dame's elite secondary to embrace elite performance, aiming to transform star power into undeniable greatness.
I'm extremely confident in saying that Notre Dame has the best returning secondary in college football, and I'd argue it isn't overly close. They return the No. 1 cornerback in the country in Leonard Moore, the No. 1 safety duo in the country in Adon Shuler and Tae Johnson, a soon-to-be three-year starter in Christian Gray and a host of young talent including Dallas Golden, Mark Zackery, Michigan transfer Jayden Sanders and safety Luke Talich and that doesn't include DJ McKinney coming over from Colorado in the summer or any of the true freshman.
New defensive backs coach Aaron Henry is stepping into some big shoes with Mike Mickens departing for the NFL. Now, the team is over the halfway mark in spring training and Henry has a really good grasp on this elite-level secondary and how good they can be this upcoming season.
"They’re hearing about how good they are or how good they could be, and every day we walk in that building and I’m trying to humble them," Henry explained. "We have some great young men; these young men are incredible. They take the coaching, they take the points and they’re very gracious. But I don’t want to be just good, man.
"I tell them all the time, it’s like you’re at a buffet," Henry continued. "You cannot get full. I want to be elite, I want to be great, and I don’t just want to talk about it. I want to do it. So every time we line up in practice, if you think you’re the best, I need to see that. You need to practice like that and your preparation has to be like that. You’re not going to say you’re great and then start slow."
There's a lot of truth to what Henry stated in his press conference on Friday morning. Notre Dame's secondary is loaded with star power and star power-potential. Outside of Moore returning after his Unanimous All-American season, you have a returning captain in Shuler, a returning Freshman All-American in Johnson and Gray who has started the last two seasons and has top-level talent. Getting those players to play at the highest level is the next step.
"All of them have next-level NFL ability," Henry shared. "Every guy in our room has that. They’re still young men. I’m sure every day they walk out of this building, every day they get on social media, they are hearing how good they are. They’re hearing that, which is awesome. But as cool as that is, they’re still young people.
"When they walk in that building, I’m trying to be real and transparent with them," Henry continued. "Coach [Marcus] Freeman talked about leaving no doubt. Every day I have reminders. Every session, or at least once a week, I try to have reminders from last year that the guys were in, and they’re not good reminders. They’re bad reminders. But I want to remind them of what the pain was when we don’t properly execute something."
Even though Henry wasn't on the coaching staff in 2025, the pain of what Notre Dame went through sticks with him. He's adopted the ideology that Freeman has preached from the top-down since the end of last season and that's what is going to make this unit better and more prepared for the 2026 season.
"It’s a part of me now," Henry stated. "If you don’t learn from something, you have a history to repeat it. We don’t want to repeat bad things; we want to repeat good things. Let’s learn from those situations. How do we want to handle certain things during the course of the game. How are we playing this call now?
"Are we tweaking this call, are we spinning motions, are we running with motions?" Henry continued. "All those little fine details, that is the difference between a secondary taking the next step and them digressing. It’s a very, very small detail, but it can be major during the course of a game because that can be the difference between winning and losing."
The Notre Dame defense ended last season on an extremely high note, but it was their start to the season that put them in a situation where they needed to rattle of 10-straight wins to give them an opportunity to make the playoffs, which they ultimately didn't. The work they're putting in this offseason is to prevent that same situation from happening again in 2026 and they absolutely have the talent and the experience to do so.
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