Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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34 PRESEASON 2022 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY ASHTON POLLARD S ometimes unfair, inexplicable things happen. Notre Dame grad- uate student wide receiver Avery Davis has been on the receiving end of that situation. Now multiple times. During practice Aug. 12, Davis was running a jet sweep and planted his right foot the wrong way. He went down with an injury to his knee and had an MRI. The veteran had suffered another ACL tear just more nine months after tearing his left ACL in a November 2021 contest against Navy. It didn't seem real, especially given Davis didn't have to return to Notre Dame for another season. He wanted in on Freeman's first season, eager to help the team during what could be a magical run. The opportunity to do that on the field is gone, at least directly. While you won't see him suited up this fall, you'll surely see him on the sideline. Known by his coaches and teammates as the physical embodiment of selfless- ness, Davis isn't going away that easily. 'I HAD TO HIT BOTTOM' W h e n Texa s n a - tive Avery Davis arrived at Notre Dame in 2017, fail- ure was a foreign concept. At 5-foot-11 and 198 pounds, Davis did not have the body of a prototypical signal-caller. That never stopped him. He was a top-300 dual- threat passer who attended the Elite 11 Finals, a quarterback competition re- served for the nation's best at the high school level. He threw for 2,867 yards with 37 touchdowns during his senior season at Cedar Hill (Texas) High. Davis had reached the pinnacle of high school football. Now, he was hop- ing to be the next in a long line of famed Notre Dame quarterbacks. What Davis didn't know was that he was about to embark on one of the more turbulent Notre Dame careers in recent history, one which would involve play- ing four different positions — quarter- back, running back, defensive back and wide receiver — and switching positions five times. "Every position change is a huge adjustment," Davis told former Notre Dame and current Rice safety Litchfield Ajavon on his "Living Athletics" pod- cast in late July. "Just because you're athletic does not mean you're easily ap- plicable to any other position. "Yeah, I was fast. I knew how to make people miss. But I didn't know how to run inside. I didn't know how to run a route. I didn't know how to read a hole from a running back's perspective. From a defensive back's perspective, I didn't know how to do anything — backpedal, shuffle, identify what the offense is do- ing. I didn't know any of that." Davis would redshirt his freshman season at quarterback. He wouldn't see the field for chunks of time once he switched to running back. He would lose rep after rep after rep at practice as a defensive back. After two full sea- sons in South Bend, it became hard to Davis, who returned to play for Marcus Freeman and chase NFL aspirations, has now suffered a pair of ACL injuries in his left and right knees during the course of the past nine months. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER A SECOND SETBACK After tearing his ACL in fall camp, Avery Davis will be out for the 2022 season