Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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freshmen and two true freshmen. "Probably the last half of the spring he realized looking around, 'Wow, there literally is nobody else in our position group' and also just looked at the offense as a whole," Booker said. "He looked around and realized that Coach Kelly talked to him a little bit about the role of a senior. That's what our program does. It prepares guys to be seniors." Booker believes Koyack can be as complete a tight end as the people who he is replacing at the position. To get there, he'll have to make the same jump from ancillary figure to every- down impact player that Eifert and Niklas made when they took the reins. Koyack's confidence started to grow last October when Kelly started to use his second tight end more in the pass- ing game. Koyack caught a touchdown pass against Arizona State on his first catch of the season. Six weeks into the year, it was the first time an Irish quar- terback threw the ball in his direction. He followed that with touchdown catches in two of the next three games and finished the year with 10 total re- ceptions. Notre Dame will need more than 10 catches from the senior this season. "It's not just coming in for a two- tight-end thing. It's more about do- ing it consistently," he said. "I had to focus on being able to do it for more than a couple plays in a row by being more consistent. That's something I definitely did work on." Eifert and Niklas took the same path from a secondary option that could help in spots to a mainstay in the game plan. Koyack plans to do the same, and Notre Dame will be counting on him to start making some noise in the process. ✦