I was sitting down to put together a little something about Notre Dame cornerback Leonard Moore, and started double checking some Fighting Irish defensive stats. While I’m quite familiar with them, I stared at the listings for a few minutes and thought… there’s some funny stuff going on here.
So, here are some of those thoughts that I had:
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Xavier Watts might forever be under appreciated by college football fans. He finished tied for 3rd all-time for career interceptions at Notre Dame which was more than Irish legends, Shane Walton and Todd Lyght. Sometimes “legend” status takes a little bit of marinating — but it shouldn’t since Watts was so incredible.
Watts is tied for 7th for interceptions in a season (7), and one of the guys he’s tied with is Manti Te’o. I don’t think (and neither do you) we will ever see a linebacker pull down that many picks again. Much was said about Te’o’s Heisman campaign, but it was THOSE interceptions that really set him up.
If I asked you to name the top ten leading tacklers in Notre Dame history — how long would it take you to come up with the name of Te’von Coney? The former Irish linebacker is currently 10th all-time with 314 from 2015-2018.
We will NEVER see anything like the Bob’s again. Bob Crable and Bob Golic sit atop the all-time tackle leaders at 1 and 2 respectively. From 1975 to 1981 the pair combined for 1000 tackles on the dot (521 Crable & 479 Golic).
While the Bob’s are well represented in the top 10 for single game tackles, Chinedum Ndukwe had a 22 tackle game against Air Force in 2006 which is third best all-time (the Bob’s are tied for first with 26 against Michigan and Clemson).
Isaiah Foskey holds the career sack spot with 26.5, but Justin Tuck (24.5) and Stephon Tuitt (22.5) did their damage with one less season.
Speaking of ONE season… in 1996, Bert Berry had 10 sacks (6th), Renaldo Wynn had 9 sacks (8th), and Kory Minor had 8 sacks (9th). Like seriously — three guys on one defense that sacked the QB enough times to be ranked in the top ten at Notre Dame.
There are two teams that Notre Dame has just killed via the sack, Pitt and Stanford. These are all in the top five for sacks in a single game:
- 2002 Justin Tuck — 4 sacks vs Pitt
- 2003 Justin Tuck — 4 sacks vs Stanford
- 2005 Victor Abiamiri — 4 sacks vs Stanford
- 2018 Jerry Tillery — 4 sacks vs Stanford
- 2003 Justin Tuck — 3.5 sacks vs Pitt
And that’s all I have. You can holler about it in the comments.