Despite significant injuries and new staff, Notre Dame's defense found unexpected growth and emerging playmakers during a chaotic spring.
It was a very chaotic spring for the Notre Dame defense. Defensive coordinator Chris Ash is heading into his second year, but it's his first year with the new defensive assistant coaches. Defensive line coach Charlie Partridge, linebackers coach Brian Jean-Mary and defensive backs coach Aaron Henry were all hired before the start of spring and they all, to some degree, had to navigate some impactful injuries upon their arrival.
Linebackers Drayk Bowen and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa were going to be out this spring. Defensive tackle Jason Onye finished half of spring before sitting out the rest with a hand injury. Star cornerback Leonard Moore was banged up early in spring, came back for the bulk and then sat out during Saturday's Blue-Gold game. Rising sophomore Dallas Golden missed the jersey scrimmage and the Blue-Gold game due to an injury.
Dealing with that many injuries is never ideal, but none of them were too severe and most, if not all, will be back during fall camp. Despite all the moving pieces, Ash saw growth in the Notre Dame defense this offseason. It might not have always looked the way we thought it should, but when you have premier players missing time, you make adjustments. One of those adjustments was having linebacker Jaiden Ausberry take over at Mike and playing alongside Jaylen Sneed.
"They really haven't played together a lot," Ash explained. "They had to work together on communication to set the front and adjust things because they really haven't played the middle linebacker position. Both of them did a lot of that here this spring, so it was new for them. I know they've played a lot of snaps here. They've played a lot of linebacker, but playing Mike is different. But it was great to see those two guys through the course of spring really work together and communicate together. As we went through, they got a lot better and more comfortable adjusting things out and playing off of each other."
Another player that has started to emerge this spring is Michigan transfer Jayden Sanders. He's really started to come along and he's gotten time at all three cornerback spots throughout spring training. He predominantly played nickel, but on Saturday, we saw him at boundary with Moore out.
"Jay Sands has done a great job for us all spring," Ash shared. "We've had him at nickel a lot but he's never played nickel. We needed him there so most of his snaps this spring were at nickel. But today before kickoff, we had to make an adjustment. We put him out at boundary corner and he went out there and did a great job. It just speaks to him as a person and what he's done here in such a short amount of time to learn multiple positions. What we ask him to do, he's going to try to go do it and he's done a great job. We're really happy he's here."
It's not just the players that are playing some new positions. Every position group has a new position coach with Partridge, Jean-Mary and Henry taking over for the previous assistants. They've grown a lot as a staff this spring; the players have put in the work to build a relationship with their coaches and the coaches have put in the work to build a relationship with their players.
"We needed to make sure that we connected and we build a relationship with the new coaches quickly," Ash explained. "We don't have a lot of time left before spring ends. These guys need to coach the way our players need to be coached. These players invested a lot of time to get to know their coaches and what we were able to accomplish here this spring is improvement with every player. It's really a credit to the players and what they've done and the level of work this new coaching staff put in."
This defense has the opportunity to be an elite unit this fall. We saw improvement from the defense this spring despite missing some key pieces at every level. The ceiling is exceptionally high for this unit. I'm looking forward to seeing what this unit looks like in the fall with guys like Bowen, Viliamu-Asa, Golden and Onye returning along with the improved players from the spring and incoming players this summer.
-------
Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!