Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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8 NOV. 22, 2025 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME Jordan Faison Moves The Chains By Tyler Horka Not only is Jordan Faison Notre Dame's leader in receptions (43) and receiving yards (545) through nine games, but he's also capable of things nobody else on the Fighting Irish roster can manage. He had forced 19 missed tackles going into the Pitts- burgh game, which tied for third in the nation among all wide receivers. The next-closest player to Faison in that category on the Notre Dame roster at the same time was Will Pauling with 7. Faison is in a different stratosphere in terms of what he can do as a runner after catching the football. Fai- son is the team leader in another key metric. What's the point of the sport? Moving the ball and putting points on the board. Unless you can do that all in one shot — which, to Malachi Fields' credit, he's the best Notre Dame has as a wide receiver in that regard — it's always more likely to do it methodically. Faison had 32 receptions that went for first downs through nine games. Fields ranked second on the team in the same stat with 21 at that time. There's a lot to be said for Faison leading the team in targets through nine games, too, with 54. Nobody else at Notre Dame had more than 45 at the three-quarters of the season point. Faison had at least 4 receptions in all but one of Notre Dame's first nine games, and even in the one he didn't get to that number he still had 2. Redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr is constantly looking in his direction. If Carr trusts him the most, shouldn't the rest of us? Absolutely. Throw It Up To Malachi Fields By Tyler James Notre Dame even having multiple valid answers to this question shows the improvement at the position under wide receivers coach Mike Brown. The correct answer may depend on what you're looking for the wide receiver to accomplish. But give me Malachi Fields, and I'm confident that he'll win difficult cover- age matchups. The 6-foot-4, 222-pound Fields hasn't necessarily been prolific in his lone season with the Irish follow- ing a graduate transfer from Virginia. But he's done everything the Irish have asked of him with 25 catches for 497 yards and 3 touchdowns in the first nine games of the season. Fields is Notre Dame's best deep threat with an aver- age depth of target 17.4 yards, per Pro Football Focus, through nine games. Fields can create separation to get open downfield, which has led to redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr repeatedly testing the defense with Fields. Fields also led the team through nine games with 7 contested catches, per PFF. He made those receptions on 14 contested targets, which was also a team high. That's proof of how much Carr trusts him. Fields rarely drops a pass thrown his way either. His first drop of the season came against Navy on his 44th target of the season. Don't forget that Fields can make things happen after he secures a catch, too. Only Faison (263 yards) and junior running back Jeremiyah Love (242) racked up more yards after catch than Fields (169) through the first nine games. Point ✦ Counterpoint: WHICH NOTRE DAME WIDE RECEIVER DO YOU TRUST THE MOST? Mitch Jeter hasn't given up on a professional career as a kicker. Ten months removed from end- ing his college career with one season at Notre Dame following four seasons at South Carolina, Jeter is juggling a potential future in the finance world while staying ready for any placekicking auditions. Jeter, who made a 41-yard field goal with 26 seconds remaining to win Notre Dame's College Football Playoff semifinal against Penn State, recently joined Blue & Gold Illustrated's "Third & Gold Podcast." Here are some highlights from his interview. BGI: Can you take us through how your injury started last season? Jeter: "I was kicking off, I believe it was the first kickoff of the Stanford game where I actually kicked a football. And when you kick the football, a lot of impact is taken onto your groin, your hip, your quad. Something in my hip popped. So, I tore something in my groin. I ended up having some swelling, some bleeding, kind of in my groin area. My leg was black and blue for like the next three weeks. "That was kind of what was going on there. It wasn't just like, hey, this guy, he just doesn't have it anymore. Like physically, my leg was very [much] in shambles." BGI: When did you finally feel 100 percent last season? Jeter: "We had a couple weeks off before the playoff. Then once we got back to Indiana, that kind of game, I was like, all right, I can kick and feel normal. And then, really, when I felt my best back to 100 percent was when I was kicking off again, which would have been the Georgia game. "Because I was like, all right, I'm back to the Mitch Jeter that I know. I can do both jobs at an elite level." BGI: How do you prepare to kick when you're not fully healthy? Jeter: "I relate a lot of kicking to a golfer's mind- set. Whether a golfer has a tweak in whatever back, neck, they're not going out to the range and beating balls trying to get better. They're be- ing smart about how many balls they're hitting. "That's kind of what I was doing is being smart about how many kicks I would kick in practice, the rep count that I had. To still get quality work but not be overkicking in a sense." BGI: What was your mindset at the end of the Penn State game? Jeter: "Not a lot of people think about this, but I talk with the specialists on that unit a lot: myself, Rino Monteforte and Chris Salerno, the snapper and holder. We all are pretty much in agreeance that we felt like the harder kick was the extra point beforehand. "It was after wide receiver [Jaden] Greathouse's touchdown, and it was 23-24, and there's prob- ably four minutes left in the game. We got to go out and make an extra point to tie the game. So, that was probably a more stressful kick." BGI: Why does golf relate so much to kicking? Jeter: "You're by yourself. You're having to men- tally grind through something, whether that's a swing change or that's a form-driven change. Be- ing able to compare the two, it's countless hours of fighting your own mind. "And that's the same thing with kicking. You're trying to make a gain and you're working count- less hours to do that." — Tyler James Five Questions With … FORMER NOTRE DAME KICKER MITCH JETER Jeter, who spent one season with the Irish, booted a game-winning field goal against Penn State in the College Football Playoff semifinal in January. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER FAISON FIELDS