With jobs secure, Notre Dame graduate LBs look to lead defense, mentor youngsters
Notre Dame linebackers Jack Kiser and Drayk Bowen were Mr. Football in Indiana, four years apart.
Kiser, now a graduate student, earned the honor in 2018 with Royal Center (Ind.) Pioneer, while Bowen, a freshman, did it in 2022 with Merrillville (Ind.) Andrean. They’re teammates now, which underscores the dynamic of young and old in Notre Dame’s linebacker room.
“My message to him is that everybody’s journey is different,” Kiser said. “He was a higher-[rated] recruit than I was. But I had a ton of guys in front of me. I had all upperclassmen. There were a lot of guys I had to go through to get on the field, versus him, it’s one or two guys. Like, boom, he’s in the game. He’s on the field. He has to be ready.”
Kiser and fellow graduate linebacker Marist Liufau got their first shots to start in 2020, while their recruiting classmate, graduate linebacker JD Bertrand, had to wait until 2021.
They would be entering their third consecutive season starting together had Liufau not missed the 2021 season due to injury. Even before that, they played together on Notre Dame’s scout team in 2019. Coming into their second year as a trio, they can feel the effects of their experience with each other.
“Just being next to them, I feel very confident,” Liufau said. “Because they know exactly what they’re gonna do, so that makes me feel more confident that everything’s going to be executed well. So yeah, we just feed off of each other.”
Sophomores Jaylen Sneed and Noah Ziegler wait in the wings, as do freshmen Preston Zinter, Jaiden Ausberry and Bowen. All but Zinter were higher-rated recruits than the three graduates. But Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman and defensive coordinator Al Golden have made it clear that not only are the graduates’ job safe, but that the coaches completely comfortable with them on the field.
Still, the five youngsters are the future at the position and they’re seeing plenty of time on the field in fall camp.
“My first fall camp, I might have gotten two reps a day, and everything else was all mental reps,” Kiser said. “For them to actually step foot on the field, feel what it is like to have to go against a 300-pound lineman now instead of getting thrown into the season, it’s a big deal.”
So far, veterans have been more than willing to help their backups develop.
At one point this offseason, Bertrand met with Ziegler and Sneed. He showed them a few Notre Dame plays, asked them to make the the calls and talk through their pre-play checks like they would in a game. Once they had that down, Bertrand gave them a directive.
“We just went through installs one through three,” Bertrand told Ziegler and Sneed. “Now it’s your turn to go to these freshmen and work on teaching them.”
The way Bertrand views it, that teaches the two sophomores as much as it teaches the freshmen. All five of them have taken the initiative and made an effort to learn from their graduate student counterparts, too.
“They latch on,” Kiser said “They’re following JD around. They’re following me around. Like if we’re going to watch extra film, they’re right there. When we’re staying after [practice] doing extra drills, they want to be involved in it. So, they’re really a sponge, soaking everything up from us.”
Still, as healthy for the program as this dynamic is, Liufau, Kiser and Bertrand are not mistaking job security for complacency. Bertrand and Liufau emphasized the need for better communication throughout the defense, not just among the three of them, to get everyone prepared at the snap.
That responsibility falls on the linebackers.
“It’s having the right answers before the motion or the check-empty or stuff like that,” Bertrand said. “And the anticipation ahead of time, of either what they can run out of it or where they can motion and what our next check is.”
Notre Dame also didn’t produce enough impact plays on defense this past season, specifically takeaways. The three graduates know that they have to play faster and more aggressively than in 2022, which could affect the team as a whole.
“We’ve just got to attack the football,” Kiser said. “And I think that’s defense-wide. At the start of last year, we took forever to get our first turnover. And I think you could really feel that on the field. Like we were playing decent ball, but there were times where we needed to step up, and we couldn’t just get that big game-changing play. And I think that really starts with the linebackers. It really does.”
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