Jordan Botelho’s opportunity is here, but reaching it was no small feat itself

Jordan Botelho is, by his own admission, “a quiet guy.” It checks out. One had to almost lean in to hear him speak Wednesday morning as he stood behind a high table in the Irish Athletic Center’s second floor lounge. A recorder on the opposite edge of the table might not have picked up his voice. Wednesday was the Notre Dame senior-to-be defensive end’s first media availability since enrolling in January 2020, fitting for a soft-spoken player outside the lines.

This is Botelho off the field, or at least the image he wanted to portray. Gentle. Cautious. Reserved, but pleasant.

On it? Strap in the helmet, and the persona does a full 180.

“I just love football,” Botelho said. “My passion comes out.”

Anyone who has watched Botelho’s 271 defensive snaps and 125 special teams plays the last three years knows that yes, that sounds about right. Practice viewings in that time span have revealed the same. Botelho is a heat-seeking missile. Blocking him on kick returns ought to feel like trying to stop a tidal wave with sandbags. He doesn’t just play to the whistle. He plays through it.

That aggressiveness made his speed off the edge and burst off the snap hard to miss, even in his intermittent chances to showcase them. Botelho’s sporadic usage has never been about a lack of physical tools. He had to prove he could harness them and keep that passion channeled in the right direction, on and off the field.

Notre Dame is counting on him to meet the challenge of being a pass-rush staple in 2023. To do it, he will have to prove that a 2022 season of relative stability, a stable home at vyper defensive end and breakout performance in the Gator Bowl was a preview, not an outlier.

“I feel like I’m moving in the right direction right now, and if I can just stay at that level, just keep getting better every day,” Botelho said. “Just limit the setbacks and just really get better every day.”

Botelho’s 2-sack, 10-pressure day in the 45-38 win over South Carolina is good supporting evidence. Open viewings of spring practice so far have contained disruptive flashes from him. If there have been significant on-field setbacks this spring, they have gone undetected or unspoken.

“Jordan has to take care of Jordan,” defensive line coach Al Washington said. “He has to take care of his business. He has to take care of his body. He has to take care of the things that are important to him, keep the main thing the main thing, and everything else will take care of itself.”

The way Botelho measures a successful practice aligns with that focus.

“By how many errors I’ve made,” Botelho said. “Hopefully, I didn’t make any, and that’ll be a good day. And by my effort and running to the ball.”

Botelho merely being at Notre Dame suggests the main thing is top of mind most days. At first, it was anything but. He was sent home to Hawaii in the summer of 2020 for violating team COVID-19 protocols. His return was not without bumps either.

An eventual channeled focus off the field, though, didn’t lead to significant action on it. He played just 18 snaps in 2020. He didn’t play on defense until the fourth game of 2021. That year, he had four games of at least 19 snaps and four with fewer than five. He was a vyper in 2020, then ping-ponged between linebacker and rover in 2021.

Botelho had been around long enough and played little enough to wonder if it would happen for him at Notre Dame. He had cleared enough hurdles to wonder if there would be a payoff. But he never reached the point of walking away and shoved away thoughts about restarting somewhere else. This 2023 opportunity is his reward for sticking around.

“He’s really mature and really made a point to go for it,” Washington said. “He could have went any other way but forward with it, and he decided to go forward with it.”

For that, Botelho can thank an influential figure at home.

“My mom’s a great example,” he said. “She works very hard, and I know she has many setbacks too, but she just kept going. She’s done a great job, so I kind of modeled myself after her, just try my best and never give up.”

Notre Dame could afford to wait for him to pick his lane. Isaiah Foskey was the Irish’s pass-rush staple the last two years and the starter at vyper. He posted back-to-back 11-sack seasons and set the program’s all-time sack record. Now, though, Foskey is NFL bound and Notre Dame is reconstructing its pass rush after losing three starters on the defensive line.

In recent years, the Irish have had experienced rotation players ready to slide in for departed starters. This year, the new wave is less proven. Botelho might have starting-caliber talent, but he was not a weekly contributor last year. He played 127 snaps, 48 of which came in the Gator Bowl. But that final game re-lit the fuse on long-held breakout visions. He earned the start after Foskey left for the NFL and pestered South Carolina’ pass protection.

“I saw it as an opportunity, so I wanted to go out and try my best and just see what I could do,” Botelho said.

The result will remake Notre Dame’s pass rush if he can produce anything like it this fall. It’s hard to imagine the Irish finishing top-15 in sacks per game again if he’s not a consistent producer.

More than anything, though, he wants to show the Irish can rely on him – and not just as a pass rusher. Asked what he wants people to find out this year, he didn’t start listing pass rush moves he hopes to unleash on offensive tackles. He started with a mindset that he has worked just as hard to build.

“That I’m under control,” Botelho said, “play hard, focused, and a team player.”

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