Time for this group of old Notre Dame linebackers to show us something new in 2023

SOUTH BEND — The newness of Notre Dame football preseason camp gets old fast.
Give it four practices over the first four days, one day off before another week of work — in pads — and the interest level drifts like a wide-right field goal. Melts away like a chocolate bar in the summer sun.
Covering Irish football in July (and August), you see just enough to get the juices flowing but not enough to know what’s going on. It’s like running a half marathon when half marathons in town were worth running (finishing the Sunburst at … Century Center?) You’re locked in at the start as the heart and the tunes start pumping. That first mile — like those first few days of camp — everything feels good. Feels easy. Then you settle in and realize it’s a grind.
That’s Notre Dame football now — a march to the Aug. 26 opener against Navy in Dublin, Ireland. It’s a steady (but small) stream of practice viewing windows and post-practice interviews where so little is revealed. Just a taste here and there of what it all might look like once the main course is ready.
Get to the end of August. Get through the grind.
Noie:TE Holden Staes sure looks part for Notre Dame football, but can he play it?
For the players, the feelings likely are similar. But not everyone. Few main guys have been around longer than fifth-year linebackers JD Bertrand and Jack Kiser. Throw in fellow starter/five-year guy Marist Liufau while you’re at it. This is quarterback Sam Hartman’s sixth collegiate season, but his first at Notre Dame, so he doesn’t count.
When Bertrand and Kiser were freshmen trying to find their collective footing in the summer of 2019, the defensive coordinator was Clark Lea and the head coach was Brian Kelly. They spent their first week of preseason practice 50 miles away at Culver Academies.
What’s changed? What hasn’t? The defensive coordinator, the head coach, the systems and the styles, even one year as a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, have kept it fresh for those old LBs.
LB Spotlight:Where's Jaylen Sneed? Could be anywhere this fall for Notre Dame football
There’s always some newness, even when it’s the same old guys doing the same old stuff the same old way. Bertrand and Kiser are two who just get it. All of it. Even another post-practice climb to the interview loft in the Irish Athletics Center (air conditioning, anyone?) is a good day.
“It never gets old,” said Kiser, pursuing a master’s in accounting, so, yeah, the guy’s wicked smart. “There’s been a lot of change throughout my five years. Every year we’re trying to improve what we’re doing, so that kind of rejuvenates you and brings you back.”
So does remembering something that gets lost in the big picture of big-time college football — that it's a game. Yeah, the stakes are high and the pressure to perform every single Saturday seldom ceases, but at the end of a game day, it’s a lot like it was for Kiser when he was Mr. Everything in his one flashing-light hometown of Royal Center, Indiana.
“I have a lot of fun out there,” he said. “There is enjoyment, and it doesn’t get old. My mindset every year is I’ve got to come out and in training camp and prove that I belong and earn a spot, right?”
Graduate linebacker JD Bertrand looks to lead Notre Dame in tackles a third straight season.
A lot of snaps, a lot of stops
It doesn’t much matter what kind of camp Kiser has over the coming weeks. He’s a starter. He's a main guy. Same with Bertrand, studying for a master’s in sports analytics who takes a similar prove-it approach after leading the team in tackles each of the last two seasons. Last time someone did it three straight? Some guy named Manti (2010-12). That’s select company.
Bertrand’s a needed guy (a likely captain), a known a guy, a veteran guy, but in a lot of ways, especially in his last run through a preseason camp, he carries himself less like a graduate student and more like a freshman, albeit one who’s played in 39 games and made 190 tackles.
That mindset followed a 90-minute phone conversation this offseason with former NFL linebacker Sean Lee and another exchange with another former pro, Luke Kuechly. First, some context.
Bertrand queried defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Al Golden and former graduate assistant James Laurenaitis, who has since left to return to his alma mater, Ohio State, in a similar role. Bertrand asked both post-spring one question — who does he remind them of? Separately, Golden and Laurenaitis offered similar comps — Lee, who made 802 tackles in 11 years with Dallas and Kuechly, who made 1,092 stops in eight seasons with Charlotte.
Laurenitis connected Bertrand with both.
“One of the things they told me is take every fall camp and act like you’re a rookie again,” Bertrand said. “I don’t feel like a freshman (but) I try to learn it like them.”
For Bertrand, that means cracking open his linebacker notebook and detailing everything about the first day of install to day number whatever prior to the Navy game. Every note, every adjustment, everything and anything that will allow him to better learn defense. To be overly prepared, not only to do his assignment, but to know what Kiser and Liufau are doing next to him.
Keeping the focus fresh allows both to be even better than they were last season, one that saw Bertrand play 581 snaps and Kiser 338. Liufau led all with a staggering 646. There have been shouts from the shadows that all three play too many snaps. This starting linebacking corps could be among the most experienced, most productive, most consistent in the country, but if you listen closely, you hear the whispers.
Unproven uber-talented sophomore Jaylen Sneed should play more. Fellow sophomore Nolan Zielger should play more. Freshman Drayk Bowen needs to find the field in some form. Anybody but those three.
This veteran group is good, but they’re the first to admit that they can be better. How? Bertrand points to constantly working to perfect their on-field communication/recognition. Kiser highlights a more obvious area — creating turnovers. It took forever (five games) for that group to come up with their first takeaway in 2022.
That put a ton of pressure on the defense. That kept a good group from being really good. Even great.
“You could really feel that on the field,” Kiser said. “We were playing decent ball, but there were times where we needed to step up and we couldn’t get that big game-changing play. That really starts with the linebackers.”
It starts with Bertrand. It starts with Kiser. It starts with Liufau. We know it. They know it. Time for the old guys to show us something new. Now.