Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/156066
Pack Mentality Offensive line deals with shifts, but still moves as one G By Lou Somogyi radually the Notre Dame football players file out individually from the Guglielmino Athletics Complex dressing room while heading to practice. Sometimes they are in conversation with a teammate or someone else, and other times they are solo and immersed in their own thoughts. Then, like a herd of buffalo stampeding on the prairie, there is the unmistakable sound of the group that files out together. It's the offensive linemen walking in unison. "They do everything together," noted Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly. "There's a continuity in that group that exists in their DNA as offensive linemen … that's probably one of the units that I'm less concerned about playing together, because they do it as a way of life." Last year under first-year offensive line coach Harry Hiestand, a mindset was instilled within them to be the first position group out to practice. "He's always made it important that the offensive line is going to be the closest group and the hardest working group on the field on the team," fifth-year senior and fourth-year starting left tackle Zack Martin said. "The kind of things he's taught us — not only on the field but off the field — have helped with some of our success as an offensive line. It's made a big difference." For the first time in more than a decade, Notre Dame in 2012 started to become a legitimate running team that could more consistently take control along the line of scrimmage. This included outrushing Oklahoma (215‑15) and USC (222‑95) in road victories, holding its own against the physicaloriented Stanford Cardinal (outrushing them 150‑147 after totaling 57 yards rushing the previous year), and even amassing 292 yards rushing against a powerful BYU defense that finished second nationally against the run (86.9 yards allowed per contest). The unit enters this season ranked as the 12th-best offensive line in the country by Phil Steele's College Football Preview, and fifth-year senior left guard Chris Watt sees no reason why more upgrade can't occur. "Last summer we were tying to do stuff that Coach Hiestand taught us