Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1489469
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM FEBRUARY 2023 17 as a camp body for an injury-plagued position did not exactly mesh with that. In the end, though, it was justifiable for a player whose timeline for major contri- butions looked like 2023. The 2022 safety depth chart was a logjam ahead of him. Notre Dame brought back graduate students DJ Brown and Houston Griffith. Notre Dame added former All-American Brandon Joseph from the transfer portal. Junior classmate and fellow safety new- comer Ramon Henderson started the final four games of 2021. It was hardly a sur- prise that Watts spent open portions of spring practice and fall camp in the third safety pairing. He played just six defen- sive snaps in the opener at Ohio State. He tried to stiff-arm thoughts about playing time and waiting a year. He was willing to bide his time if that's what happened, but he did not want to accept that idea before the season even started. "Obviously, you want to play," Watts said. "All the hard work you put in, you don't want it to go to waste. So, I'm coming into the year thinking that if I get my opportunity, I have to do what I have to do. But if it doesn't come, just keep your head high because you never know what will happen." Turns out, the season has a way of changing things. Watts did not head into the Gator Bowl Dec. 30 as a deep cut for those looking ahead to 2023. He became a 2022 starter whose November ascent has widened imaginations for what he could be next year. "You can argue he has made the most growth, not just in playing time, but playmaking," defensive coordinator Al Golden said. The latter comes with the former. Watts ended the regular season third among Notre Dame safeties in defensive snaps played with 304. That was two more than Griffith, 36 more than Hen- derson and 15th on the team. Watts' starting lineup opening came against Navy Nov. 12 as a fill-in for Jo- seph, who suffered an ankle sprain in the win over Clemson Nov. 5. He kept the starter's designation even when Jo- seph returned for the regular-season finale at Southern Cal Nov. 26. Watts totaled 19 tackles in those three games, twice tying for the team lead. He added 2 tackles for loss, 1 sack and 1 pass bro- ken up. All told, Watts' 36 tackles are sev- enth on the team despite playing at least 125 fewer snaps than five of the players ahead of him heading into the Gator Bowl. He missed just three tack- les and allowed catches on only 5 of 11 passes thrown at him in coverage, per Pro Football Focus. The catalyst for his per-play produc- tion and playing time bump, in Golden's eyes, was a commitment to the vocal aspects of playing safety. He challenged Watts to be more assertive in calling out formations, motions and other pre- snap activity. Watts has responded to his liking. "He has reached a comfort level now where he's doing that," Golden said. "You can't be a great safety without be- ing verbal, demonstrative and being in command. "You don't always make the right de- cision, but if you're decisive, loud and we're all playing the same thing, we can fix that. We can't fix when nine guys are playing one thing and two are playing another." Maybe reaching that point simply required more time at the position. Watts' downhill ability, physicality and coverage upside made the positional fit clear when he debuted in the final third of 2021. Command of the finer points, though, isn't reached overnight. Learning every check, every other per- son's job on a play and every teammate's strengths can't be stuffed into a week or even a month. But it can be accelerated or aided with one helpful tool: player-on-player feedback. Notre Dame players of- ten hold extra study sessions on their own — no coaches, no big auditoriums with dozens of other people in there. A meeting with only your position group is sometimes the more comfortable set- ting and less intimidating for a fresh- man or a player learning a new position to ask questions he wouldn't in a larger meeting or to a coach. "It gave me a different perspective," Watts said. "More so just focusing on your position but being in there with all the different guys in the different pieces of defense, hearing what their eyes are like and what they're going through is good to see because it also helps you translate what you need to do." Safety wasn't entirely foreign to Watts, who played it in his final three seasons at Omaha (Neb.) Burke High School. Wide receiver was his primary spot, though. He spent his offseasons training as a receiver. He was mainly re- cruited as a receiver. When he moved to safety in October 2021, the instructions he best remembered from his prior time there were "see ball, get ball." That's still part of how he plays the position now, even as his tasks have grown more complex. "I've translated that over to college, but also being more detailed in my job," Watts said. "Be able to see the ball and don't be afraid to come up and make a tackle. Just take your shot. If you miss, you miss, but you have to be confident when you come up and make a tackle." Navy's triple option caters to that, it seems. Watts debuted on defense in the 2021 Navy game, making 3 tackles in 15 snaps. He was the leading tackler against the Midshipmen this year. One of those stops was a tackle for loss on first-and-goal where Watts started on the far side and chased down a ball car- rier on the boundary, dropping him near the sideline. "It's like in high school — see ball, get ball," Watts said. "You just have to be confident when you're one on one in that alley with the pitch man that you're going to make that tackle or tackle on the fullback dive." That confidence helped launch Watts into the starting lineup when the depth chart portended the opposite. It might keep him there, too. "I try to just come here, do a job, work on myself as best I could and once given the opportunity, display what I can do," Watts said. "That has come for me, and I've done a great job being able to take advantage of my opportunity. "I don't want to stop. I want to keep progressing with more years to come." ✦ "You can argue he has made the most growth, not just in playing time, but playmaking." NOTRE DAME DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR AL GOLDEN ON WATTS