Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/181992
same time being able to harbor that energy in the right direction and not just burning gas the whole time." After making only three stops in his first road game against Michigan, Grace followed with a combined 18 against Purdue and Michigan State to take the team lead in tackles. He started a game for the first time against the Spartans, another small and steady step toward what his coaches and teammates see as an inevitable future as a front man for the defense. Grace's maturation process was premeditated. Faced with replacing the two critical channels of communication on his defense, Mike linebacker and safety, assistant head coach Bob Diaco carefully examined the methods he would use to ease new players into those jobs. "We have to spend a lot of time on the mental. We need to slow down the practice and have them do it and then hit them with it full speed. We need those layers," Diaco said in July. "We're going to have to make smart choices with the amount of installation and the style of installation." Grace played behind fifth-year senior Dan Fox in training camp and for a significant portion of September. Kelly said he's reached a point where he can now take more ownership of the position and let Fox return more frequently to his natural fit at the Will linebacker spot. Grace leaned on Fox and fellow fifth-year linebacker Carlo Calabrese to know when to speak up during the past couple months. He was at first cautious about asserting his voice while still learning on the fly. "That's something I'm still working on myself," he said. "I'm still working on confidence. I don't want to necessarily be yelling at guys — not in a bad sense but just trying to get them going — if I'm not doing everything right myself. … Right now I'm at a spot where I think about it and sometimes say, 'Oh shoot, I should've [spoken up].' Other times I say, 'OK, I'm glad I said that.' It's a work in progress." Being demonstrative on the field and in the locker room is the current hurdle facing Grace in his calculated construction as a linebacker. He said playing in the middle of the defense comes with some added pressure to speak out, especially because of the precedent set by Te'o in recent years. His coaches and teammates have started to notice Grace's efforts. Senior captain Bennett Jackson said last week that the more Grace plays, the more his volume increases. The confidence helps, and so does the training. He said the role he holds with the team's fellowship meetings helped him build relationships with his teammates that carry over to the field. Watching Te'o pull the team closer together in Grace's first couple years on campus added to his knowledge base. But Kelly believes Grace arrived as that player as much as their careful planning has coaxed it out of him. "I knew not only was he going to be a great player, but he was going to be a leader," Kelly said. "He's lived up to that." ✦