What can Irish expect from Notre Dame senior WRs Deion Colzie, Jayden Thomas?
This Notre Dame football article will appear in the August 2024 issue of Blue & Gold Illustrated. To order a single copy or start a subscription, click here.
Jayden Thomas and Deion Colzie are Notre Dame’s two longest tenured wide receivers. They’ve played a combined 45 games for the Fighting Irish, with the latter responsible for 28 of those and the former taking care of the remaining 27.
Only in three of the 45 — just three — have they both caught multiple passes in the same game; against Navy and USC in 2022 and versus Navy in 2023.
That’s it.
April’s Blue-Gold Game was a shining example of Thomas and Colzie, both of whom arrived in South Bend in the recruiting class of 2021, not being able to concurrently produce. Thomas did not suit up for the spring scrimmage because of a hamstring injury. Colzie, meanwhile, took advantage of his cohort’s absence — along with those of fellow WRs Jayden Harrison and Cam Williams — to reel in 4 receptions for 58 yards.
That’s a good day for Colzie, who had 3 catches for 45 yards in the entirety of the 2024 season. All of those came in the season-opener against the Midshipmen. A knee injury unraveled the rest of his junior season.
Thomas can relate.
He also had a strong showing in the season-opener with 4 catches for 63 yards and a touchdown. Colzie scored on one of his 3 catches, too, for that matter. Then Thomas didn’t score against until the Sun Bowl against Oregon State. And Colzie, well, … yeah. His knee injury did him in. Thomas’ hamstring hampered him.
That’s all in the past. They’re both doing everything they can to be available in the future. The immediate future, that is, as seniors. This might be it for them in a blue and gold uniform, even though they each have two years of eligibility remaining because of redshirt seasons. You can only take one year at a time in this era of college football. Who knows where they’ll be in 2025.
They’re still not hanging their heads about what could have been to this point. It’s full-steam ahead.
“It’s just never fun to sit on the sideline and kind of watch the guys have fun and do what we love to do,” Colzie said. “At all costs, I’m trying to be in practice and participating in some way, whether it’s individual and no contact or whatever it has to be. I want to be part of practice.”
“I had a couple of injuries that made me miss some games and not be able to play 100% last year in some games,” Thomas added. “That’s just football. Everybody gets injured. It’s the most physical sport in the world, I would say. I just definitely keep in mind the extra treatment, doing the little things that nobody sees to keep me on the field.”
It’s not so much a keeping Thomas on the field conversation as it is a getting on the field conversation at this point, as optimistic as he may be. It’ll be difficult to be a weekly factor in 2024 with Beaux Collins coming in from Clemson with every intention of being Notre Dame’s starting boundary wide receiver. That complicates the situation for the Irish’s longest standing wideout duo — Collins, Thomas and Colzie all play the same position.
The Irish have a new wide receivers coach in Mike Brown, too, who became a part of the Notre Dame program at the same time as Collins.
“It was kind of like perfect timing,” Collins said.
In taking over for Chansi Stuckey, Brown does not have any preconceived perceptions about any of the 11 scholarship players within his position group. He won’t play favorites. He won’t favor Thomas and Colzie just because they’ve been around longer than anyone else in the room. If anything, he sympathizes with Collins for being a fellow new guy in town. It’s human nature to grow fond of someone with similarities.
Brown is still going to award playing time to the best boundary receiver, though, period — even if that’s true freshman Micah Gilbert. Gilbert, after all, had two touchdowns in the same Blue-Gold Game Colzie had 4 total catches and no end zone entrances.
This isn’t about spring game scores, though. Brown said in the spring he wants a rotation of six players in most games. That allows room for a starter and a backup at all three wide receiver spots. Remember; Collins, Colzie and Thomas are technically all competing for three. Pigeonholing is outdated in football, so any of them can move around and gain traction for playing time somewhere else on the field, but as a general rule that trio is up against each other competing in the boundary.
Colzie and Thomas are going to get a fair shake.
“Deion has been great, man,” Brown said. “He’s been a really good leader for us, first and foremost. Like I say, he’s been a guy that has been around and he knows how things go. He’s really smart. He’s been physical for us when we need him to be in all the jobs we ask him to do, and he’s made plays. It’s gonna be a good competition, and it’s gonna be a good competition, I think, at all of our positions. And so I’m excited just to kind of watch.”
Brown added on Thomas, “I think he’s done an outstanding job of just changing his body round, It looks like he’s moving better. He’s quick, a lot quicker than I thought he was, which has been good. He’s done a good job for us into the boundary. We ask him to do a lot of different jobs. And he’s taking ownership of it.”
Colzie humbly summed up how he can contribute for Notre Dame as a senior in spite of a rocky three-year road leading up to this season.
“Playing my game and not trying to do anything anybody else does,” he said. “Just play a game that Deion knows how to play. I can’t do some things some people can and some people just naturally can’t do what I can. Control what I can control and let it do what it do.”
Has he accomplished everything he set out to when he showed up in South Bend in 2021? No. People wouldn’t be asking more of him if he had. But is there more out there for him to attain? More he can provide? Absolutely. His final chapter in South Bend hasn’t been written. If it had, he’d be suiting up somewhere else.
He’s not. He’s in the same place. So is Thomas. It was never really a firm thought of theirs to try to reinvent themselves away from the only program they’ve ever known, through the good and the bad.
“I love Notre Dame,” Colzie said. “Notre Dame has always and will always have a special place in my heart. I feel like we are growing something really special here. I trust these coaches. I trust Coach Freeman. I trust the players. I feel like that we have a really solid team. I’m willing to do whatever to stay here and just compete with my boys.”
“I’m here to stay,” Thomas added. “I’m here for Notre Dame, and I want to ultimately lead us to a national championship.”
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