The Notre Dame football team comes into the 2024 season riding the momentum their defensive unit brought last season. The Fighting Irish finished last season as the sixth-ranked scoring defense. The defensive unit is bringing back some key members in Benjamin Morrison and Xavier Watts. They’ve also added to the secondary while adding sixth-year senior R.J. Oben to the defensive line. The Notre Dame defense will be one of the most-feared and talked about units this season. We’re starting here and breaking down each part of the defense for the upcoming 2024 season.
Notre Dame Football Defensive Breakdown
The Defensive Line
The defensive line could be the biggest question mark for Notre Dame. While they did lose a few parts within the pass rush, they did add the aforementioned Oben from Duke.
Oben recorded 14.5 sacks and 20 tackles for loss in his past three seasons. Joining a dominant Fighting Irish defense makes filling up the holes easier. Howard Cross III and Rylie Mills‘ return and should be able to stay consistent.
Cross recorded 66 tackles last season, 28 solo tackles, and 38 assisted tackles, seven of which were for losses. In addition, he had two sacks on the season.
Meanwhile, Mills had 45 total tackles last season, 22 solo tackles, and 23 assisted tackles with 2.5 sacks.
Donovan Hinish and Jason Onye round out the line, making this one tough defensive line to get through for runs. Forcing the pocket to collapse will help set up the next group to be just as successful— the linebackers.
The Linebackers
The linebacker group lost a good player, with JD Bertrand leaving for the 2024 NFL draft – getting selected by the Atlanta Falcons. Bertrand went out on a solid note, recording 76 total tackles last season with 7.5 tackles for losses and 2.5 sacks. However, Notre Dame will have Drayk Bowen ready to step up in the middle this season.
Bowen had little playing time last season. However, he did have 11 tackles with one forced fumble in his playing time. He’ll be joined by Jaylen Sneed and veteran Jack Kiser on the outside.
Sneed has played in limited action, and the Fishing Irish will need him to step up this season. He had 14 total tackles last season with nine of them being assisted. He was able to add on one sack and one forced fumble. Kiser will be leaned on for this group and his veteran stats show why.
In four seasons, Kiser has 185 total tackles (111 of those are solo tackles), 11 tackles for loss, four sacks, and four interceptions. This may be the more “inexperienced” group of the defensive unit but they’ll be able to lean on the veterans of this team to continue to succeed.
The Secondary
The best group of the Notre Dame unit is their secondary and they put the fear into their opponents when it’s time to step on the field. We’ve talked a little bit about this unit in our ‘2024 Season Preview’, mentioning the aforementioned Watts and Benjamin Morrison.
Watts had 52 stops last season, ranking home fourth on the team. Meanwhile, Morrison broke up 10 passes last season with three interceptions.
The Fighting Irish also landed Jordan Clark from Arizona State and he had 97 stops with 13 broken-up passes in the past two seasons. Rod Heard II transferred from Northwestern, adding depth. He had recorded 194 career tackles with 10 tackles being for losses and eight broken-up passes. These two will help make up for the losses.
Leaving the team was Cam Hart, who departed for the 2024 NFL draft. Also leaving were safeties DJ Brown and Thomas Harper who combined for 86 tackles last year. Overall, this group is still set up for success and will be the main group the defense rallies around.
