18 SEPT. 21, 2024 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED
BY JACK SOBLE
W
hen he grabbed Northern
Illinois redshirt senior run-
ning back Gavin Williams
by the ankles and spun him
down after a 1-yard gain on the final
play of the third quarter, something
clicked inside sophomore Notre Dame
linebacker Jaiden Ausberry.
Ausberry put his right fist up in the
air, signaling fourth down (it had been
third-and-3). He yelled at the ground and
flexed his arms across each other, stung
graduate student safety Xavier Watts
with a violent low-five and even hit him-
self on the helmet with both hands.
As the quarter came to a close and the
teams jogged back to their respective
sidelines, Ausberry's demeanor didn't
change.
"Let's go!" he recalled screaming at
his teammates. "We got to get a stop!"
Ausberry had entered, as he calls it,
his "mode." And he backed up his words
with his actions.
"After I made that one tackle … that
just really got me into my mode for real,"
Ausberry said. "I think I needed that to
really get me going, because I think at the
beginning of the game I was kind of a little
cold and moving kind of slow. And I think
after that I started to pick up the pace."
After the break, Ausberry came right
back with a tackle at the line of scrim-
mage on first-and-10 (NIU committed
holding on his third-down stop, which
BEAST MODE
Sophomore linebacker
Jaiden Ausberry has been
an early-season stud for Notre Dame
