Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 23, 2023 17 T he brothers' influence has tended to come through sports. Also no surprise. Also natural. Sher- wood had a brother play lacrosse at North Carolina and another play tennis at Wake Forest. None of them played big-time, major college football, though, so Sherwood hasn't ever had a familial touchdown celebration to keep alive. Until Week 2 of this season, he hadn't ever needed one anyway. Sherwood showed up in South Bend in 2021 as a walk-on linebacker. He wasn't thinking "I'm going to score a touchdown for Notre Dame someday." That changed after his freshman sea- son when the Fighting Irish moved him to tight end. Two weeks before the sea- son opener at Ohio State, he was placed on scholarship. He keeps a checklist of career goals. When he crossed off "earn a scholarship," he added "score a touchdown." Just more than a year to the day at NC State in his home state of North Car- olina, he did. And even though none of Sherwood's broth- ers could warn him what that would be like, one of them, Rick, planned a touchdown celebration with Davis the night before it occurred. It was semifinal Friday at the U.S. Open, and Rick is a big tennis fan. He showed Davis videos of 20-year-old Ben Shelton hanging up a fake phone, one made with his own hand, on some of the world's best players after beat- ing them throughout the tournament. World No. 1 Novak Djokovic took down Shelton in the semis and enacted the celebration himself. I t wa s n 't u n t i l a f te r S h e rwo o d dropped the ball to the turf after lunging through a Wolfpack defender and over the goal line with it in his arms when he realized the universal hand symbol for a telephone, the one he was about to form with his right phalanges just like Shelton and Djokovic, sort of resembles NC State's "Wolfie" hand sign. That made it even sweeter when he forcefully slammed it down after put- ting Notre Dame ahead by two touch- downs in the fourth quarter in an even- tual 45-24 Irish triumph. "I was like, 'Ah, it looks like the Wolf- pack, so I'm going to silence the Wolf- pack' because at that point we put them out of the game," Sherwood said. "Hung up the phone on the Wolfpack." Sherwood said his brother took off his jersey in the stands at Carter-Finley Stadium and waved it around like a rally towel. "He said he almost had a heart at- tack," Sherwood added. The Sherwood family has come to ex- pect things like Davis seeing the hang up the phone celebration and tying it to NC State's hand sign. His brain has always worked in wonderous ways. In high school, he built two comput- ers. He likened that to "advanced Legos." Picking up parts and putting them to- gether. Simple as that. His favorite TV show growing up was "Pawn Stars," not "South Park" or "Family Guy." He follows the stock market and is big on invest- ing any name, image and likeness (NIL) money that goes his way. Not spending it on clothes or accessories. Being "a little nerdy" is something Sherwood wouldn't ever trade for being a straight-up jock. "I grew to be comfortable being me," Sherwood said. "There are all different types of people I'm friends with, so I could connect and be friends with not just athletes and people on the football team but also the people in my classes because I take pretty challenging aca- demic classes." He studies science business wants to be an oral surgeon when he's finished playing football. Yeah, challenging aca- demic classes are definitely a prerequi- site for that. In a way, Sherwood is just as nerdy of a football player as he is a student. "He prepares as well as anybody in our football program," Notre Dame of- fensive coordinator Gerad Parker said. "He's very intelligent. He knows every- thing on the offense. He knows where everybody goes in the tight end room. Understands fits. He's really smart. "He studies his hind end off and has put himself in a position to be able to hold up and do the things we've asked him to do. And the ball found him. Re- ally cool for him." Sherwood's teammates' found him, too, one after the other following the TD. Junior right tackle Blake Fisher. Fel- low tight ends Holden Staes and Mitch- ell Evans. Junior running back Audric Estimé. Offensive linemen Zeke Cor- rell, the center, and Rocco Spindler, the right guard. They were all there to slap Sherwood on the helmet and watch him hang up on the Wolfpack. You'd have thought graduate student quarter- back Sam Hartman went flying into the end zone again like he did in the home opener versus Tennessee State. "The way everybody felt for him is a big testament to who we are in our locker room," Parker said. "When we celebrate, I really feel like it's something we've got that's dif- ferent than a lot of people." It's a Notre Dame thing, yes. But it's a l s o a S h e r wo o d thing. Everyone in the room sees the 6-foot-3, 238-pound former walk-on linebacker who played a dozen snaps per game on offense and the third-most special teams snaps of any Notre Dame player in the Irish's first three games of 2023 as a shared success story. He's been there for everyone in a blue-and- gold uniform during his journey, so they were there for him when that journey hit a new all-time high. "He's a guy that continues to work and thrive and improve," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. "To see him get a little bit of a reward for that hard work and to be able to score a touchdown was great." Freeman didn't take his shirt off like Rick and he might not have known the genesis of Sherwood's celebration, but he was surely in the long line of Notre Dame players and coaches to give Sher- wood his due on the sideline. "The way our guys are doing this right now and the way they are celebrating each other's success is something you hope we bottle up and keep because that's what's going to get us through the rest of a tough schedule," Parker said. ✦ "He studies his hind end off and has put himself in a position to be able to hold up and do the things we've asked him to do. And the ball found him. Really cool for him." NOTRE DAME OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR GERAD PARKER ON SHERWOOD'S FIRST CAREER TOUCHDOWN RECEPTION