Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 7, 2023 27 MITCHELL EVANS SAVES NOTRE DAME'S PASSING ATTACK Mitchell Evans didn't know his own strength. Sitting before the media after catching 6 passes for 134 yards in Notre Dame's 21-14 victory over Duke, Evans was asked to recall the snazziest snag from his stat line. And oh how snazzy it was. Running over the middle with a de- fender draped on his back, Notre Dame's junior tight end stuck his left hand up in the air to impede the path of a dart flung from the right arm of Irish quarterback Sam Hartman. With so much velocity behind it, the ball bounced off Evans' hand straight into the air. Still sprint- ing with the Duke player in handsy hot pursuit, Evans tracked the ball into both mitts, shed the defender and plowed forward for a gain of 36. It was Notre Dame's most prolific passing play of the game. And Evans couldn't call to mind how he pulled it off. "I really don't remember what hap- pened," he said. "Did he tip that? I don't even know. He tipped it? I tipped it?" Reporters in the room confirmed the latter. "I should have caught it the first time," Evans quipped. Evans did make an eerily similar one- handed catch a week prior versus Ohio State. No tipping necessary on that one. That's the kind of player Evans has quickly become for Notre Dame. When the Irish offense has needed to make a play lately, it has often turned to Evans. And he doesn't just make the ordinary ones. He's capable of the spectacular. Notre Dame was down two of its best wide receivers in junior Jayden Thomas and freshman Jaden Greathouse, both nursing hamstring strains. All of the pregame chatter centered on which wide receiver was going to step up in their absences. The answer: none of them, really. No Notre Dame wideout caught more than two passes. Instead, the answer was Evans. He pulled a page from his pre- decessor's playbook and made himself Hartman's unequivocal No. 1 option. Michael Mayer consistently did that for Drew Pyne a year ago. On third-and-10 and with Notre Dame's back against the wall with two minutes left, Hartman found Evans for a gain of 19. Who else? Evans' rise has been meteoric. Mayer- like. "These last two games, Mitchell Evans is making plays, man," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. "It's a re- flection of the way he practices. He prac- tices at a high level. If you continuously practice at a high level, those are going to be the things you do in the game." Evans has become a matchup night- mare for opposing defenses. Like Mayer, he's too big for defensive backs to com- fortably cover him. But he's also de- ceptively nimble in a way that makes it tough for linebackers to hang with him. Even when Thomas and Greathouse are healthy, the Notre Dame wide re- ceiver room is still one that's on the path DUKE GAME NOTES BY TYLER HORKA AND JACK SOBLE Evans caught 6 passes for 134 yards versus Duke to lead the Irish in both categories. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP