Why does Notre Dame have College Football Playoff expectations? Start with these 4 seniors

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Marcus Freeman wanted to meet in his office the day after Notre Dame lost to Clemson. The players could make it. It was harder for their parents getting back from South Carolina. Would a Zoom work instead? That depended, with parents spread among Florida, New Jersey, Nebraska and Indiana, all trying to help their sons make a stay-or-go decision that would shape Notre Dame’s next season and perhaps the trajectory of its head coach, too.

So as the tide started to go out on last season with a limp loss in Death Valley on Nov. 4, it began to come in on the next. Because before hiring a new coordinator and re-signing another, and before bringing in eight transfers, including quarterback Riley Leonard, Notre Dame needed to recruit its own roster. Not only did Freeman have to get to yes from Howard Cross III, Jack Kiser, Rylie Mills and Xavier Watts, but he probably needed to do so in that order.

Lose the first and maybe lose the other three. Lose all four and Notre Dame’s designs on making the first 12-team College Football Playoff probably fall apart before Freeman could draft the blueprints.

“To be honest, the whole year I was set on going,” Mills said. “Having a ‘no plan B’ kind of mentality was really crucial for me. I just didn’t want to leave anything on the table.”

“I think it would be a little different,” Watts said when asked if they all might have left for the NFL if one did. “So obviously just having those guys come back too definitely helped influence my decision.”

That’s not to say the re-recruitments were the same. What Cross wanted wasn’t exactly what Mills did. What Watts needed wasn’t the same as Kiser. How NIL worked for each was different. And yet, by early December, Freeman had earned assurances from all four that they’d be back at Notre Dame for a final season, taking what would have been a good defense and making it potentially great under Al Golden.

When Notre Dame opens on Saturday night at Texas A&M the lens will focus on what’s new, from quarterback to offensive coordinator  to offensive line. But if the Irish leave Kyle Field with their CFP path unblocked, it will be what’s old that clears the way. And that started with convincing one of these four Double Domers — earning multiple degrees from Notre Dame — to start the chain reaction.

It would be the most important leadership moment in Notre Dame’s entire offseason.

Even if Cross wasn’t voted a captain.

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Cross made it easy on Notre Dame. When the Zoom calls and meetings with players began last November, the defensive tackle with an NFL pedigree already knew what he wanted to do. Cross had been thinking about coming back from the moment there was a decision to make, about the time he crushed Duke’s offense and its quarterback in late September, long before he said the words to Freeman.

With an NFL father of the same name, Cross had a better appreciation than most of what the NFL looks like, what it takes to make it and what it takes to stay. Cross figured he was ready for the former. The latter felt like more of a gray area, even during a season of 66 tackles and seven tackles for loss, enough to put him on All-America lists.

“I’m a very self-aware person,” Cross said. “Don’t get me wrong, no one really wants to be in college for six years, but at the same time, for the long run, this is 100 percent the best thing for me. It was really kind of a no-brainer.”

Cross wanted to finish his master’s degree in non-profit business administration, then train like an NFL player while in college. He took up golf, with moderate success. He figured he could be better in front of a microphone, better standing in front of the team, better connecting with Notre Dame’s alumni network like Tom Mendoza, whose name adorns the business school. When he finally put the question to his dad around midseason, the former New York Giant didn’t hide his preference.

Cross told Freeman that he’d be back early, so early the head coach could use it in his pitches to Kiser, Mills and Watts after Clemson.

“I think me staying was definitely a big thing for the rest of the guys to stay too,” Cross said.

The decision resonated most with Kiser, who was on the fence about coming back to Notre Dame or trying to make an NFL team, probably on a practice squad. Scouts told Kiser they liked his film; there just wasn’t enough of it. Last year’s starting linebackers JD Bertrand and Marist Liufau — Freeman approached Bertrand about coming back, too — played more than 600 snaps each. Kiser logged barely half that (354), sort of stuck as a former outside linebacker trying to play inside.

Kiser wasn’t in a hurry to leave, but with two Notre Dame degrees — he finished first in his master’s accounting class — there wasn’t a tractor beam to stay. Kiser had been frustrated about how Golden used him last season, in part because when he did get reps, Kiser produced. When Notre Dame stopped Ohio State on fourth down to potentially set up a clock-killing drive, it was Kiser who made the tackle.

Jack Kiser has 185 career tackles in five seasons. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

So if Kiser came back, he wanted to know if Golden would rely on him like Bertrand the year before. He pressed to know why he’d played 10 snaps against Ohio State but 47 against Clemson. He wanted to know who was next at quarterback. NIL wasn’t a dealbreaker or dealmaker, although Kiser got deals with Under Armour and Dish Network. Kiser met with Freeman, defensive line coach Al Washington and assistant athletic director Dave Peloquin, alongside his family. He liked what he heard. He just had to trust it.

But at that point the surest thing for Kiser was Cross. And he could believe in that.

“Obviously when you’re a linebacker, it matters who lines up in front of you. When you have studs up there, it makes your job a whole lot easier,” Kiser said. “I kind of get to own a spot this year versus bouncing around, and hopefully be the guy running the linebacking corps and the defense.”

Now Kiser just needed to break the news to his roommate.

Mills could have gone in the third round of last spring’s NFL Draft. Or the sixth.

Draft feedback for the two-time Freaks List selection ranged from a defensive tackle projected to play immediately in the pros to one who wouldn’t be an automatic part of a 53-man roster. While Mills played last season like it would be his last at Notre Dame, the Zoom meeting with the coaching staff began to slow his exit plans.

Like Kiser, the decision to come back wasn’t just an up or down vote. Would the staff play him more on third down, letting Mills show off his pass rush skills to help boost his draft stock? Freeman said the Irish would. Could Notre Dame help Mills create a brand that comes with a national program but doesn’t come as easily to defensive tackles? Check there too, with Mills part of Notre Dame’s media trip to New York this summer that included Watts, Kiser, Cross, Leonard and Beaux Collins.

To keep up his end of the bargain, Mills cut weight. He’s down to 295 pounds from about 315. He spent the offseason training with new strength coach Loren Landow, focusing more on flexibility than mass. Mills couldn’t bend like a pass rusher should. It showed on tape. He focused on his hips, spine, calves and ankles, to name a few body parts. Landow considers “bend” to be the biggest key performance indicator for a defensive lineman to thrive in the NFL. Notre Dame pitched Mills on getting that training in college.

“I felt like I had 100 discussions with different people, what I’d have to do, what it would look like coming back or going,” Mills said. “Ultimately for me, I felt like I had another level I can get to that I know is there. Last year was really a step forward to that. This year, how can I put that all together?”

Notre Dame’s returning experience

Player	Pos	Season	Starts	Snaps
Howard Cross III	DT	6th	22	1,586
Rylie Mills	DT	5th	22	1,299
Jack Kiser	LB	6th	18	1,167
Xavier Watts	S	5th	17	1,107

Snap counts via TruMedia

Mills knew what his roommate wanted, not that Kiser had been letting on. The two had a modest apartment last season near campus — typical college kid stuff, nothing fancy. Mills and Kiser avoided talking stay-or-go shop at home. When their dads would ask the other during game weekends, they tried to shut it down. Roommates didn’t want to pressure one another, even if they wanted the same thing.

Maybe Kiser coming back didn’t make Mills’ return automatic, but it at least moved the defensive tackle toward a fifth year. Mills talked to agents and checked with Isaiah Foskey and Kurt Hinish about their rookie experiences. What he heard from Freeman and Washington aligned with what he’d heard from agents, basically that there are no sure things in the NFL or college.

NIL was part of the equation, even if it’s not “retire tomorrow money,” according to Mills’ father, Troy. Still, it helped make coming back to Notre Dame more attractive for a player who’d been looking to leave for much of the season. When Mills finally decided, the sentiment was more exhalation than celebration. The decision felt right for Mills, but in the sense that leaving for the NFL wouldn’t have felt wrong, either.

“The great thing was there were no bad options,” Mills said. “Either way, I win.”

Mills and Kiser now share a new penthouse apartment just southeast of campus.

Watts understands the question, as strange as it sounds.

Does the All-American safety who led Notre Dame’s defense in snaps and college football in interceptions feel like a veteran player or not? For how much Watts might be a known quantity now, he was a breakout player a year ago. He’d been a former receiver who moved to safety, then to linebacker, then back to safety. Some days it feels like it took Watts forever to get to this point. Some days it feels like he just arrived.

“I can’t say I’m ready for something new because I haven’t done it here,” Watts said. “I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. It came so fast.”

Watts was the last of the four to announce this return, doing it via a Western-style video shot around Notre Dame’s bowl trip to El Paso. He had to borrow jeans from a staffer to play the part of cowboy because he didn’t bring any on the trip. But really, Watts decided to come back in early December, telling his parents via text message.

The safety had gone back and forth on the decision, never quite leaning toward leaving. His draft feedback was similar to Mills, anywhere from the second round to sixth round. If Watts believed the best-case scenario, returning to Notre Dame didn’t make much sense. It was just hard to believe it.

“That was the one thing I didn’t like,” Watts said. “It was all over the place. I didn’t want to fall into a trap where I don’t go second round, then go somewhere lower.”

Unlike Kiser and Mills, Watts didn’t need an expanded role. He just wanted to do a better job of playing the part he already had, while finishing his master’s degree in business sports analytics. Watts connected with NFL defensive backs, including Justin Simmons, formerly of the Denver Broncos, who trained with Landow. He tried to clean up his breaks in coverage, shaving wasted movement. He wanted to be a bigger voice in the locker room with an eye on being named a captain.

Watts counseled with his parents in Nebraska. His father, Jeff Watts, said he doesn’t remember a time when his son was leaning toward leaving, not that the NFL didn’t have pull. But by the time Watts made his decision, he knew Cross, Kiser and Mills were returning, in that order.

If there’s such a thing as locker room peer pressure, Watts felt it.

“After talking with Notre Dame and just seeing the vision on what could be, it was like, ‘I want to go back for another year,’” Jeff Watts said. “Now you’re literally applying for a job that you get to determine how long you’re going to stay on the job and to a certain extent how much you’re going to get paid to do it.”

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Notre Dame has never had a defense like this. It would have been impossible before.

Mix an extra year of eligibility because of COVID-19 waivers with NIL investments, plus a third-year defensive coordinator and stable coaching staff, and it’s all set up Notre Dame to have one of the oldest defenses in college football and school history. What that looks like on Saturday night in College Station, Notre Dame won’t say exactly, but it has a pretty good idea.

During summer workouts, Cross, Mills, Kiser and Watts helped lead player-run practices, one that included installation of two-minute defense. It was something the Irish usually get to during the second or third week of training camp, when the coaching staff is right on top of the roster. This time the Irish players did that work on their own.

“And we’re playing really well and everybody’s talking, we don’t have any (missed assignments),” Kiser said. “And in the summer in July, we’re able to do that? Like, that’s a pretty big deal.”

None of this happens without Notre Dame’s re-recruitment of four seniors who decided they wanted to stay. Even if they came to those decisions independently, Freeman tried to inject order into chaos by getting them to come back one at a time, in the right sequence, until Notre Dame had what might be a near perfect defense at the ready.

“I think this has a chance to be the best defense, I think it has a chance to be the best team,” Watts said. “We’re loaded at every position. It’s gonna be special.”

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(Top photo of Howard Cross and Rylie Mills: Joe Robbins / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)